In June of 2025, Dr. Joe Dispenza invited me on stage to share my healing journey during a 7-day meditation retreat in Cancun. Watch it here.

The post Giving My Story at the Joe Dispenza Retreat appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

After my diagnosis, books were amazingly helpful sources of inspiration and knowledge. During a two-year period, I probably read twenty to thirty books on the topic of cancer. I am a voracious reader, so this came naturally to me. 

But I would say these eight books on healing cancer were the ones that had the most impact on me and my understanding. Many of these books I went back to again and again. 

Some books on healing cancer focus on cancer from a purely physical perspective, while others focus on mental, emotional and spiritual ways to deal with cancer. 

Here are my top eight: 

Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds by Kelly Turner

Kelly Turner, Ph.D, spends several years interviewing hundreds of cancer patients across the globe who have defied the odds and survived far beyond their prognosis. Backed by research and examples, she hones in on nine factors that came up: 

• Radically changing your diet 
• Taking control of your health 
• Following your intuition
• Using Herbs and Supplements 
• Releasing Suppressed Emotions 
• Increasing Positive Emotions 
• Embracing Social Support 
• Deepening Your Spiritual Connection 
• Having Strong Reasons for Living 

You Can Conquer Cancer: A New Way of Living by Dr. Ian Gawler

Dr. Ian Gawler, an Australian diagnosed with bone cancer back in 1975, tells his amazing tale of recovery and discusses how to heal by incorporating spiritual, emotional and biological approaches. 

This book takes a truly integrated, holistic approach to cancer, emphasizing nutrition, the power of the mind, meditation, family and social support, and the spiritual dimension of life.

Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer to Near Death to True Healing by Anita Moorjani

One of my absolute favorite books of all time, I go back to this one again and again. Through her own inspiring and mind-blowing journey, Anita Moorjani provides a beautiful example of how what ails us spiritually and emotionally is at the root cause of cancer. A New York Times Bestseller because it is so profound and full of amazing insights. 

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

This book, published back in 1984, argues that almost anything can be healed if you’re willing to do the work to uncover and address the emotions that led to the illness. The author spent decades working with clients, helping them to heal from various ailments through a metaphysical approach. 

Later in life, when she developed cervical cancer herself, she knew that it stemmed from the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and her suppressed anger as a result. Without any treatment, she was able to heal herself through doing the work she so often prescribed to her patients. 

Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality by Dawson Church

For those who really want a science-backed text on how the mind can affect healing of the body, look no further. The author is a researcher focusing on the field of neuroscience, and in this book, he addresses energy, our inner thoughts and how they contribute to our external reality. 

Although the book does not focus solely on cancer, he discusses several studies and personal experiences that deal with healing from cancer via changes in the electromagnetic field. 

AntiCancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber 

Authored by a renowned neuroscientist who finds himself with brain cancer, AntiCancer, another New York Times Bestseller, explores various elements that cause cancer to appear (lifestyle, environment, trauma). It discusses various ways to enhance healing using the body’s own natural healing capabilities through diet, lifestyle changes and mindbody practices such as yoga and meditation. The author is an advocate of both conventional and alternative approaches and uses science to explain why. 

Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment by Dr. Keith Block

Another book that blends both conventional and alternative approaches to treating cancer, Life Over Cancer is well worth a read. This book focuses on mostly a biological approach, as in what to eat and what supplements to take and why. But it also advocates stress reduction through meditation and yoga. 

I loved that this book also discusses what you can do to optimize your recovery during surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. 

Through this book, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of your terrain (body) and what will cause cancer to thrive and what will shut it down. 

How to Starve Cancer Without Starving Yourself by Jane McLelland

The author, Jane McLelland, was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and beat the odds through her own determination. She became a cancer detective and through the use of diet, supplements and pharmaceuticals, she was able to heal herself. 

Through her book, I gained a much deeper understanding of cancer, its many pathways, and how we can strategically starve cancer. 

The author has started a revolution as many cancer clinics are now following her protocol. 

What about you? What books on healing cancer would add to the list? I’d love to know what books were instrumental in helping you heal and get through a difficult illness? Leave a comment in the comments section.

Read more about meditation and how it can heal here.

The post 8 Inspiring Books on Healing Cancer appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

Back in March 2021, I had the privilege of being featured on Lesli Williams’ podcast: Miracle Healings where I share my story.

The post Listen: My Story on Miracle Healings Podcast appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

Until it wasn’t.

The Pain

In February, I started having severe pain in my lower back. Initially diagnosed with a bulging disk, I started physical therapy, but six weeks later I was in even more pain. This was amid the beginning of the Opioid Crisis, so doctors looked at me suspiciously with my back pain with no clear origin. They were not going to dole out any narcotics, they told me. Plus, 80% of Americans have had back pain at some point in their lives, so why was I special?

Yet the pain just kept getting worse. My nurse practitioner kept looking at me suspiciously like I was just out to get narcotics. Except my pain was no joke. I had never been on any medications my entire life, and Advil wasn’t touching this. The pain got so bad that I kept making 3am trips to the E.R. where I would be hooked up to a morphine drip.

X-rays were taken, but nothing was found, and I was always sent home with that same suspicious look that said: there’s nothing wrong with you.

After several more weeks and several tearful phone calls with the nurse practitioner who was handling my case by subscribing nothing but physical therapy, I finally got ahold of her.

“I need an MRI. I KNOW there is something wrong with my body.”

She said it would just be a waste of $500, my copay. But finally, after several weeks of persistence, she ordered it.

The MRI

I had the MRI on April 16th, 2018. I was in so much pain, it was insanely difficult to lie on my back, and lie still. While initially the radiology tech told me I should hear back within 5 to 7 business days, after my MRI, he rushed to help me out of the machine with extra care as if I were his 90-year-old grandmother. As I finally stood up, he said, “Well you should hear back in the next 24 hours.”

That evening I got a call from the nurse practitioner, the one who looked at me the last 8 weeks like I was just out to get narcotics, the one who rarely returned my phone calls. “So, we found something on your MRI. There’s a 2 to 3 inch mass on your sacrum, about the size of an egg”

“A mass? What is that? Like a tumor?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “Most likely. We don’t know if it’s benign or malignant, but I’m referring you to the orthopedic surgeon…”

Benign or Malignant?

I couldn’t even think straight after that. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting this. A tumor? Seriously?

I knew tumors could be benign and that they didn’t necessarily mean cancer. Because me having cancer just did not compute. I was the girl that ran half-marathons, rarely went a day without exercise and put kale in her smoothie every morning. Cancer was for people who smoked, ate fast-food and drank excessive amounts of alcohol, all the things that repulsed me. I used to make my ex-husband eat his pizza outside; it wasn’t allowed in the house.

It had to be benign. Something the doctors would remove surgically, and then I could get back to my normal life.

After apologizing profusely to me, the nurse practitioner wished me luck and told me to call her anytime I had any questions or concerned. Funny how once she knew I had this tumor, she was suddenly reacting like I wish she would have 8 weeks ago. Even though I had just been hit with some potentially bad news, I felt a twinge of redemption: See, there was something wrong with me. I’m not out just to get your narcotics after all, am I?

By that time, the ER doctors had prescribed me Norco. Within a couple more weeks, I would get onto Percocet, and even then, the pain medication barely scratched the surface of the pain I was feeling: intense nerve pain firing up and down both legs and severe throbbing bone pain, as if my pelvis was broken. Later, I would find that this destructive tumor was eating away at the bone. It was also involving and getting wrapped up in all my root nerves that ran from my sacrum down to my feet.

The Bad News

A week later, on May 7th, 2018, the results of the biopsy came in and guess what?

“You have cancer.” Bone cancer, a sarcoma, but not just any bone cancer, the rarest of all bone cancers: Sacral Chordoma, which only affects about one in every one million. Which means there’s very little research or known treatments.

“What we do know,” said the doctor, “is that this type of tumor is slow-growing, and that means we cannot treat it with chemotherapy.” Good, I thought, I wouldn’t touch chemotherapy with a ten-foot pole. I was also soothed by the sound of slow-growing. “It’s also resistant to radiation.” Ok, I said. So surgery, right?

“Right. Surgical resection of the sacrum is the only known and proven treatment for this type of cancer.”

“Ok, sign me up,” I said. “When can we do it. Let’s get this thing out of me.” By this time, I had been dealing with intense pain for three months, unable to surf, travel, sometimes I couldn’t even drive. I was just so ready to do whatever I had to do to get my life back to normal. I was constantly high on pain medications, unable to sleep at night. My whole life for the last three months had been one long, horrendous nightmare and I was ready to get back to my life, or take the necessary steps to get back to my life.

Little did I know, I would never get back to my “normal” life.

More Bad News

“Unfortunately,” Dr. H said, “The surgery is quite invasive. It requires resection (amputation) of your sacrum from S2 to S5. Because we need to remove the sacrum, we also need to remove the root nerves which control bladder and bowel function.”

“Wait, what? Are you saying that surgery is my only option, and that with this surgery…I’ll need to wear adult diapers for the rest of my life? At 35 years old? That I won’t be able to control my bowel or bladder function?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. But surgery is the only way…” What happened afterward is a distant memory. I just melted into uncontrolled sobbing and let my mom do most of the talking.

And just in case that wasn’t enough bad news…

I would go on to get a second opinion and then a third. And then a fourth. All four doctors (3 orthopedic surgeons and a radiologist) suggested surgery. “It’s the only way,” they said. “We’re so sorry.” I also learned that I would likely have to have a colostomy, and with all the hardware that would be going into my pelvic region, I was told I most likely would never be able to surf again.

Never surf again? I don’t know what was more devastating, that with this surgery I’d lose bladder/bowel control for the rest of my life, or that I’d never surf again. I was a beach girl who lived to surf. After each and every medical opinion, a loud and defiant thought kept running through my veins over and over again like a song stuck on repeat: there’s no way I’m getting that surgery.

Find out what happens next in My Story: Part Two

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The post My Story: Part One: You Have Cancer appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

I wanted to surf. I wanted to save my bowel and bladder function. I wanted to keep my body intact. I was grasping for any way to salvage a normal life.

A Desperate Search

There has to be another way. This thought consumed me. I knew it to be true and I knew it my bones. So, I set out to find this other way. As soon as I got home, I googled for hours and came up with nothing. It was one of the most depressing moments. This cancer was so rare that all I could find was information reiterating what the doctors had told me: surgical removal of the sacrum and its root nerves were the only treatment.

I desperately wanted to find some evidence that I could solve this a different way. I wanted to find someone who had gotten through this without surgery. But I couldn’t find anything. My searches came up short. I couldn’t find any patients to connect with, nobody to talk to, just a bunch of scientific journals and conventional medical mumbo jumbo. I felt defeated.

But I kept searching. I got ideas and books from friends and family. Nothing that was an alternative to surgery in their eyes, but one book in particular gave me an idea. Radical Remissions: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds by Kelly Turner talked about various alternative healing methods. After years and years of digging into the research on what contributed to remissions of cancer, she came up with nine healing factors that were consistent in her search. One of them was on becoming more spiritual. In that chapter, there was a case of a young man with a brain tumor who had healed after going to see a medium and healer, John of God in Brazil.

So I decided I would go see John of God in Brazil. (Of course, I overlooked the point that he lived and meditated there for hours and hours for over two years before he was cancer-free, among other factors, but I was desperate. After hours of anecdotes and miraculous stories of people who had healed from one visit, I was hopeful.)

Off to Brazil

Because the doctors had told me the tumor was “slow-growing,” and because my surgery that I was still determined not to have was scheduled a month away, I figured I had time. My little sister and I took off within a couple weeks to Brazil. Sitting on a ten-hour flight with a sacral tumor was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done, but I was determined.

I saw John of God and had some interesting, inexplicable things happen like a sensations of hot and cold at the site of the tumor, energy pulsating through my body. However, after two weeks in Brazil, my pain got so bad, that I decided to come back home. Being in a foreign country, away from family with the kind of pain that made me want to go the ER just didn’t feel right. I was scared.

When I got home, it was mid-June and I was due for another MRI, as protocol for my upcoming surgery. I still hadn’t committed to the surgery, and was still determined to find another way, but I also knew that I had not been healed by going to Brazil. I knew that I still had a tumor.

But after I got the results of the MRI, my doctors were blown away. And so was I.

MRI #2

Since the previous MRI six weeks ago, the tumor had TRIPLED in size! No longer the size of an egg, it was now the size of a grapefruit. Dr. H, the orthopedic surgeon, was stumped. Chordoma’s main feature is that it’s slow-growing. But this. This was an aggressive tumor. Doctors felt that I may have been diagnosed. 

So the doctors did another biopsy and again confirmed that it was in fact classical Chordoma. But for some reason, the one in my body was behaving abnormally and aggressively, like a well-mannered child suddenly going haywire.

Dr. H was so dumbfounded. While he had initially insisted on being the one to do my surgery, even after I had requested a referral to the UCLA Chordoma specialist, he now granted me my wish. Apparently, the surgery was going to be much more complex, so he threw in the towel and handed the reigns over Dr. Hornicek, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who specialized in Chordoma cases.

The only problem was that Dr. Hornicek had a two-month waiting list. I had an aggressively growing tumor that tripled in size in six weeks, and now I was going to have to wait two more months with this thing growing inside of me? What size would it be by then? A spaghetti squash? A pineapple? What fun I had gotten myself into.

The Truth about Surgery

Luckily, I ended up getting an appointment within two weeks. By this time, with the tumor, the pain, and fear growing exponentially inside of me, I resigned to the surgery. So now, I just wanted this thing out of me, regardless of the consequences. I needed to be out of this pain.

However, after meeting with Dr. Hornicek, now the problem was scheduling the actual surgery. Because this surgery involved four surgeons: orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, plastic surgeon and general surgeon, they all had to find one day on their busy calendars to do my surgery.

I should also mention that this surgery was actually two surgeries, on two separate days. One incision in the front, and then two days later, an incision in the back. It was explained to me that it’s difficult cutting through bone, and just like you would cut down a tree, you have to cut it down from both sides.

I would be in the hospital for two weeks, followed by an in-patient physical therapy habilitation center for another 3-4 weeks. Following the surgery, doctors would have to clear me to sit, something that could take up to six weeks. And even then, I would only be able to sit for 15 minutes at a time. I would also be using a walker for 3 to 6 months after the surgery.

By this time, I had joined this Facebook group of Chordoma patients around the world, where I heard more horror stories. I met people whose wounds still hadn’t healed months after surgery, who had to have blood transfusions during the operation, and several more, who years later, were still taking narcotics just to get through their day. I did not want to have this surgery, but I did not know what else to do. The pain kept getting worse.

I ended up waiting 8 more weeks before they finally scheduled the surgery. 8 more weeks of increasing pain, tumor load and fear, alongside the grief that I would likely live the rest of my life unable to surf or have a normal, continent life.

But luckily and serendipitously, I never ended up having that surgery.

Continue to My Story: Part Three

The post My Story: Part Two: There Has to Be Another Way appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

“I’m sorry…I just heard the word ‘tumor’ and my ears perked up, and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop…but I had stage 4 breast cancer last year and am now completely cancer-free. I never had chemo or surgery. I healed through natural therapies.”

She had my attention.

Oasis of Hope

A thirty minute conversation ensued. She told me about an alternative therapy cancer clinic in Mexico called Oasis of Hope where she had gone on and off for the past year and credits their program and at-home protocol (mostly nutraceuticals) for saving her life.

She was with her husband and three small children. As we said goodbye, she said, “…and my name is Crystal, and here’s my info if you have any questions.”

“How funny,” I said. “My name is Crystal, too.” I took her information and went home and looked up this clinic in Mexico. I spoke with the doctors. But the price tag was steep: around $30,000 for three weeks of in-house treatment, including a dendritic cell-vaccine, the holy-grail of their treatment, followed by several months with an at-home nutraceutical protocol, which basically means taking a bunch of vitamins and supplements every day, up to 70 pills. I was seriously considering it. What if, I didn’t have to have the surgery?

After I went for a tour, it just felt right. UCLA still hadn’t called me about a surgery date. The treatment program here was only three weeks.

What did I have to lose? Well, besides all my money. I actually didn’t have the money so I maxed out four different credit cards and the rest I paid for with money from a Go Fund Me account my friends had set up.

Off to Tijuana I went, fingers crossed, hoping for the best. My desire to heal outweighed my desire for financial stability. What good is it to have money in the bank if you don’t have your health. Plus, at the very least, since I did have an aggressive tumor, at least this would slow it down or stop it from growing.

I have nothing but good things to say about the Oasis of Hope Hospital. It’s a welcoming, healing environment with freshly-cooked, healthy vegetarian meals, green juices and daily coffee enemas.

After breakfast, most of the day is spent getting high dose Vitamin C infusions and other alternative therapies such as Ozone therapy, heat therapy, and the best part: a dendritic cell vaccine, which has been shown in multiple studies to supercharge your immune system enough to fight off cancer. Of course, it doesn’t work for everyone.

Every day I was seen by the nurses who took my vitals and the oncologists I had a chance to meet with a couple times a week. I met some beautiful people there and formed solid friendships. One woman in particular, Jackie and her husband, I really connected with. If I missed the cooking class because I was in treatment, Jackie would bring me the dairy-free date brownies they had made.

I noticed Jackie also walked around with books by Deepak Chopra (Quantum Healing) and Joe Dispenza (Becoming Supernatural). “Oh, you have to check out Joe Dispenza, she said. “Whenever I’m feeling down, I just watch his videos on YouTube and it’s like a switch from sad to happy.” I made a mental note to look him up later.

CT Scan

Two weeks into my treatment, I don’t remember what the reasoning was, but the doctors decided to give me a CT scan. I expected it to be smaller because I was feeling good. I even kept accidentally forgetting to take my pain medication.

Plus, here I was in this state-of-the-art hospital getting natural chemotherapy (high dose Vit C), downing green juices, having daily coffee enemas along with other cutting-edge treatments like HBOT and other oxygenated therapies. I was even surfing.

Yes, I brought my surfboard to a cancer clinic in Tijuana. Because it was right on the beach, and there were waves, and it was August. My pain had subsided enough by that time, or maybe the pain meds were just doing a better job, so that I could surf small waves. The doctors and pretty much everyone else got a kick out of it. The doctors would look at my MRI and then back at me. “How is that you’re surfing?”

I knew I stood out walking in and out of the hospital with a bikini and a surfboard. When I’d go in for my treatments, the medical staff kept mistaking me for someone who was there simply accompanying a patient, instead of the actual patient. In every part of the hospital for the first two weeks, I was told “this area is for patients only.”

“I AM the patient,” I would insist. I just didn’t look the part.

When the results of the CT scan came in, I was in shock. The tumor had increased in size. “Perhaps we’re slowing down the growth,” the doctors said. But I was in tears. I didn’t have any more room in my body for this tumor. Why was it still growing? More fear poured into me.

Another Option

Towards the end of my last week, I had a final meeting with the oncologists on site: Dr. Contreras and Dr. Cecena, both renowned American-educated oncologists whom I respected. From the beginning, they weren’t fans of this morbid surgery. What I didn’t realize was that they had been doing some research on my behalf.

They told me that day that they’d uncovered some studies of Chordoma patients who had undergone Proton Beam Radiotherapy as an alternative to surgery. They told me Proton Beam Therapy was an alternative form of radiation, explaining how it was more targeted, and thus much better than traditional photon radiation.

However, because Chordoma is such a radio-resistant tumor, the only catch was that very high doses of the protons are necessary. And according to the studies, the survival rates are just as good as those with surgery as long as high doses (77Gy) are used. Plus, they told me, the proton beam therapy has a synergistic effect with the dendritic cell vaccine.

This wasn’t the first time I had heard about Proton Beam Therapy as an option. But when I had brought it up to the orthopedic oncologists, all three dismissed it as something that did not have good results. If I chose this route, “I would likely die within five years” they said.

Proton Beam Therapy had not been around for very long which is why there were very few studies or cases on treating Chordoma with it in the absence of surgery. However, some small scale studies had been done on people who either refused to have the surgery, or were just too old for their bodies to handle the surgery, so they took on the next best thing: high doses of proton beam therapy.

So that’s how I decided that I would do Proton Beam Radiotherapy instead of surgery. On my last day at the clinic, the doctors at UCLA called telling me they’d scheduled my surgery for the following week. I called them back and told them, I’m not doing the surgery. There’s a new treatment in town and his name is Proton.

*Update (2025) 

I went to Oasis of Hope in 2018, and I still think it is an amazing place that can contribute to overall healing. I’m also still happy with my decision to go (despite the enormous price tag) because it the oncologists there opened up my eyes to an alternative to surgery (proton-beam therapy). However, having said that, five out of six patients that I stayed in touch with after my stay have passed away. Everyone who passed away had different stages of disease, some had gone the traditional route, others had not. So they may have passed away anyway.  Having said that, I probably would not be comfortable recommending alternative treatments like those at Oasis of Hope to anyone as a replacement for traditional medical treatment. It’s a very individual decision, and my only recommendation is to do what feels right, to listen to your intuition. 

Continue to My Story: Part 4

The post My Story: Part Three: Oasis of Hope Cancer Clinic appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

I immediately liked Dr. Urbanic and felt like I was in good hands. I could tell he cared about me as a person and didn’t see me as a medical record number. I liked that he took my lifestyle into consideration and desire to still surf and be active. 

Treatment Protocol

I would come in for eight weeks of Proton Beam Therapy, five days a week, Monday-Friday. I would be zapped with 77 grays, the dose of radiation. The typical radiation dose for cancer patients undergoing treatment hovers around 45 to 60 grays, but still, I had no idea what I was in for.

I was already in so much pain and by that time had switched from Percocet to morphine. There’s no way that my body could tolerate more pain. I was a 10 out of 10 whenever anyone asked, which was often. I was told that I might experience something like a bad sunburn on my skin and possibly some diarrhea.

The Pain and Side-effects

But by the fifth day of Proton Beam Therapy, I could no longer walk. Or sit. Or stand. When I sat, the pain was unbearable. I could only tolerate it for about twenty seconds. Standing caused all the nerves that ran up and down my legs to fire up. It was like being zapped or shocked endlessly, as if my nerves were going haywire. I could stand for only about 90 seconds.

I never had diarrhea, and the “sunburn” that was supposed to be the worst part was nothing compared to the internal bone pain and the nerve pain shooting up and down both legs. The bone pain felt as if someone had taken a bat and beat my sacrum repeatedly. The nerve pain felt like someone was slicing my nerves open with a sharp knife.

Unable to Walk, Stand, Sit

I remember trying to make myself a smoothie one morning. Once I made it to the kitchen, I put in the fruit and the protein powder and then would quickly go to the living room and lie down on the floor (always on my stomach) to alleviate the pain. After a few minutes, I would get up, put in the almond milk and sometimes the chia seeds too, if I could make it standing that long.

I usually had to lie down on the floor two or three times before I could finish making my smoothie. From then, it would be several months before I could stand up long enough to make my own meals.

Getting out of bed in the morning, I felt like a 95-year-old woman as I wiggled my body in the perfect position to slowly dismount one toe at a time. With both feet planted on the ground I would slowly rise up to standing, grimacing in pain, one vertebrae at a time. I would see others’ heartache at the site of me trying to stand up, a once-athletic, once-vibrant, 35-year-old, suffering from so much physical pain.

I also remember not being able to stand up long enough to take a shower, but I couldn’t take a bath either because the skin above my sacrum was so badly burned. I ended up taking showers sitting on my knees. Awkward, I know. Also, awkward was getting to and from treatments in the car. I had to lay down on my stomach in the back. This was pretty much my position 23 hours a day: laying down on my stomach. Anything else was pure torture. I could sit on the back of my heels on the floor which I would do often for about 20-30 minutes of the time.

Quitting

By the time Monday came around, my second week of Proton Beam Therapy, I quit. I just couldn’t bring myself to get in the car and walk into another beating.

I sent Dr. Urbanic an email. I’m in too much pain, I wrote. Can’t make it. Won’t do it. Nope. Sorry. This is not right. After a few phone calls, he convinced me to come back by telling me he’d increase the pain meds and put me on steroids, and I reluctantly agreed. More morphine and now a strong steroid (6.0mg Dexamethasone). But it still took every ounce of strength to walk through those doors to the California Protons Center for each subsequent treatment. But I did it.

In October, about four weeks into my treatment, I moved in with my Mom and Dad. Around this time, the pain started getting worse. So I quit again. I told my mom, I’m not going. I’m not getting in the car. I then sent another email to Dr. Urbanic reiterating that I was in too much pain. I needed a break at least.

He called and called. Then a few other doctors started calling. I finally took his call. “We can hospitalize you if we need to, but we need to get you through the treatment. You can’t stop. You can’t take a break. I’m worried that if you stop this, there will be no other way to treat it.”

By then I had learned that surgery was out since most surgeons can’t operate on damaged post-radiation skin, especially with this high dose because the skin is so damaged that the wound won’t close. Having an open surgical wound, or a wound that won’t heal is an invitation to sepsis and subsequent death.

Increase in Pain Meds

So I succumbed and continued with the treatments. My morphine dose went up again, and by this time I was on 180mg of morphine each day. In total, I was taking 9 different pain medications. You can imagine how fuzzy my mind was at that time, so forgive me if I don’t remember all of them, but some of them were Flexeril, Gabapentin, Dexamethasone, Tramadol, Effexor, Cymbalta, and Dilaudid, another narcotic on top of the morphine. Most of these were at the max allowed dose.

Around that time, my mom came home from the pharmacy with something called Narcan. “What is that?” I asked. “In case you overdose,” she said. “The pharmacist and the pain management specialist thought we should have it on hand in case…”

That’s when I realized that by taking so many pain medications, I was risking my life. I’d learn later that this was normal for cancer patients. There’s a delicate balance, a fine line between relieving pain and risking death from overdose, or irreversible damage to the body, not to mention the potential addiction to opioids.

The eight weeks of proton beam therapy were blurry, to say the least. I used a walker to walk into my treatments. I couldn’t sit in the waiting room chairs, so the nurses would lead me back to an empty room where I would lay on a bed, waiting for my treatment session. Each day, I made a big red X on my calendar, counting down the days.

Deep Depression

At times, in so much pain, I prayed to not wake up in the morning. I often wondered if I should have just had the surgery because anything would be better than this. Now struggling with depression, I told God that if I could ever free myself of pain again, I would live my life to the fullest. I could have a good life if I were just out of pain.

At this point, I could deal with having cancer, with not being able to surf or walk again, but I could not deal with this level of physical pain. I wondered if I would ever be off of narcotics or whether I’d have to be on them for the rest of my life, like many other chordoma patients I had met through a Facebook group.

Finally, after eight weeks, I completed the treatments. To celebrate the completion of the treatment, the staff (who was amazing and supportive) awarded me with a medal.

And the Tumor?

Every week I was having CT scans to check on the progress and every week Dr. Urbanic told me the same thing: it’s about the same size; it hasn’t shrunk. And each time, my heart sank. What I wanted so desperately to happen wasn’t happening.

Even worse, what I would find out later was that the tumor was actually still growing, little by little. Proton beam therapy had only slowed down the growth, not stopped it.

I could understand to some extent why he didn’t tell me it was still growing. The growth was probably too slight to see on a weekly basis. It also could have been inflammation, rather than actual growth. But one thing was for sure. By the end of my eight-week treatment, the tumor had not shrunk. I felt do defeated. But there was still hope that because radiation is cumulative, it could shrink in the coming months.

This was a very dark, dark time for me. I thought a lot about death. About my family. About what’s important and what’s not. My body was also overflowing with fear, depression and anxiety. Despite the darkness, I still held onto hope that it would shrink. My next MRI would be in three months, in February 2019. It had to get smaller, it just had to.

Continue to My Story: Part 5

The post My Story: Part Four: Proton Beam Therapy appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

I was also starting to experience less pain, and I started to reduce my medications.

Cannabis–Better than Morphine

I will say that the best thing for my pain ended up being CBD/THC oil. I saw a cannabis nurse (through a company called Holistic Caring) that I was referred to through my naturopathic doctor. The cannabis nurse, Elizabeth, recommended the specific ratio of 1:1 CBD/THC and told me specifically where to order it because I needed top quality stuff.

So I took it not expecting much. But WOW! This stuff worked. I got more standing power. Now I was able to make my own smoothies now and sit at the dinner table and eat dinner with my family for around 20 minutes or so.

I had over the previous six months smoked marijuana and had taken various edibles to help with the pain. And while there was some relief, nothing compared to the cannabis oil, whether it was the quality of the product or the ratio of CBD to THC or both.

Naturopathic Treatments

Also, in those three months, I was seeing a Naturopathic doctor, Dr. Reese at Lotus Rain Naturopathic Clinic, who, along with her staff, was amazing. I continued getting high dose Vitamin C and she had me on a supplement regime that I followed. It was pretty similar to the supplements that the Oasis of Hope clinic recommended I keep taking.

I was full of hope for this MRI. I had less pain. I still had the dendritic vaccine in my body. I had the reactive oxygen species (ROS) from radiation in my body doing their thing. I was told they’d work together synergistically. Plus, I was taking 50+ anti-cancer supplements per day, all aimed at boosting my immune system.

The Power of Prayer

I also constantly heard that people were praying for me, actually, multiple congregations praying for me: My Mom and Dad’s church, my grandma and grandpa’s church, my Grammy’s church. It felt good to know that I was being prayed for and I will always count it as a contributing factor in my healing.

I was also praying and praying, hoping God would shrink the tumor. My hope kept me out of the darkness, though I was still somewhat depressed most nights.

MRI #9 Results

The first week of February, I got the results of my MRI. The report popped up in my inbox and I was excited to finally see some good news. 

But when I opened the report, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It was bigger: 14.1 x 12.0 x 10.7.  I couldn’t believe that I was now at 14 cm, when the tumor had started off at 5 x 7 cm when it was discovered. How? I slipped into uncontrolled sobbing. I went to a dark place in my mind where I believed death to be imminent at this point. This was the lowest of the low for me.

I refused to conceptualize the size of the tumor. I didn’t want to think about anything bigger than a grapefruit eating away at my bones, like Pac-man growing bigger and stronger, munching away.

In retrospect, I realize the tumor at this point was something between a cantaloupe and a honeydew melon, though of course it’s not symmetrical.

This was my 9th MRI. Every single MRI that I had gotten showed growth. I was tired of seeing the words “continued significant growth of the destructive mass” in the first line of my reports.

Hitting Rock Bottom 

I had done so much, had tried so hard and felt so defeated. I had flown to Brazil to see a healer hoping for a spiritual healing. Instead, all I got was a triple dose of my tumor. Then, I spent $30,000 of money I didn’t even have at the cancer clinic in Tijuana for a dendritic cell vaccine and other treatments that did not work (though they may have slowed the growth). Next, I spent every single reserve of strength getting through 8 weeks of grueling proton beam radiation. Then, I spend hundreds of more dollars on naturopathic appointments, treatments and supplements.

I should also mention that I was doing some major emotional excavation, trying to root out the emotional or psychological reason for having this cancer. I tried EFT, Recall Healing sessions, hours and hours of journaling, hypnotherapy, reiki, etc.

I learned a lot about myself through this work and what the emotional triggers for disease were. Yet digging up my past emotional traumas was not making the tumor go away. It was STILL GROWING! (In retrospect, I do feel these things were extremely helpful, but at that time, I didn’t realize it.)

Sisters to the Rescue

My sisters, my main support system, came over as they normally did whenever I was in crisis mode. Crying and feeling sorry for myself, lying on the floor in a fetal position I wailed, “I don’t want to die” to which my sister Rachel responded very matter of factly, “we’re all going to die.”

Her words were a much-needed slap in the face that jolted me out of my self-inflicted misery. She was right. We all are going to die. Why was I creating so much drama and suffering over something that afflicted the entire human population? That was the best thing that anyone could have said to me at that time. With that realization, I re-focused, re-centered and re-evaluated.

I had to try something different. There had to be some other way…some other way…some other way. I kept repeating the thought over and over because I knew that it was true. I wasn’t giving up.

Continue to My Story: Part Six

The post My Story: Part Five: Still Growing appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

Dr. Joe Dispenza

I remembered Jackie, my cancer sister from the Oasis of Hope clinic in Tijuana, and how she told me that she often watched Dr. Joe Dispenza on YouTube and how it made her feel better. I didn’t know much about this guy, but I decided to check him out.

Within one hour, I was hooked. Joe Dispenza was all about feeling the emotions of your future in the present. The key to healing was in producing, evoking the emotions of love, gratitude, joy, peace, wholeness, whatever emotion you would feel if you were in fact healed. It made sense to me. 

Dr. Joe Dispenza uses neuroscience to explain why and how our thoughts and feelings can contribute to your personal reality. That you’re sending your body messages with your thoughts and feelings and how to change them. If I’m stuck in a state of fear, anxiety and depression, how is my body going to produce a healing response? How do I get out of that? He prescribes meditation.

Random Stranger or Angel?

That’s when I suddenly remembered something so profound that I couldn’t believe I had forgotten. Prior to my diagnosis, back in March or April of 2018, I had been sitting on the beach, reading a book, watching the waves, bummed that I was in too much pain to surf. An older man in his sixties approached me and asked me what book I was reading. I happened to be reading the book, Ask and You Shall Receive, a spiritual text by Abraham Hicks. This sparked a powerful conversation on spirituality that lasted over an hour.

His name was Paul, and in our conversation, he told me his story, that he’d had stage 4 cancer, but when all treatments failed, he was placed on hospice care. Instead of staying home and waiting to die, he came to the beach to meditate. Eventually, he got into a state of complete surrender after meditating for hours each day. Weeks later, he was feeling so great, he went back to the doctors and they could not find a single trace of cancer in his body. At the time, I had no idea I had cancer, so all I thought was “what an amazing story.”

During our conversation, we talked on and on about meditation. I had dabbled in it myself, but would give up after a few weeks of just being “too busy.” I remember him saying “Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening to God. When we meditate, we can hear the divine messages come through.”

He also told me that he completely changed his life, leaving his stressful corporate job behind and now he was in the process of becoming a comedian. He invited me to an open-mic night where he’d be performing that night. Eventually we parted ways. I went back to popping pills and wondering what the heck was wrong with my back.

Trying to Find Paul

After I was diagnosed a few weeks later, I saw Paul two more times. By then I knew there was something more to that conversation. It wasn’t just a coincidence. I wanted to talk to him again, to tell him, “OMG I have cancer!” I wanted to ask him how to meditate, what kind of meditations he did, etc. I wanted his advice.

When I spotted him, I was in my neighborhood, driving by and saw him from the car as he was walking down the street. Once I realized it was him, I pulled over and ran across the street trying to find him. But I couldn’t. I walked up and down the street where I had seen him. It was as if he had disappeared.

The next time I spotted him, a few weeks later, I was at the local farmer’s market which gets pretty crowded. I saw him on the opposite side of the street, but because of all the vendors in the middle, I had to go all the way around. When I finally got to where I had seen him, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I spent the next 40 minutes looking and looking, but never found him.

Meditation: Feeling at Ease

Eventually, in the midst of the chaos of treatment options and MRI’s, I forgot about Paul. Until that day in Feb. 2019, when I started listening to Joe Dispenza, whose message was similar to Paul’s—meditation is powerful and it heals. I downloaded a few of Joe Dispenza’s guided meditations and got started. The mediations were long, about one hour, but I decided I would start doing one every morning.

I didn’t feel anything profound during the meditations, but after seven days, I felt completely at ease, as if all the fear and anxiety completely dissipated from my body. It was amazing. I no longer cared so much about what happened, about the outcome. I had this feeling that no matter what happened, everything was going to be Ok. In retrospect, I realized this was the state of surrender. 

I stuck with the mediations every morning. After several weeks, I started noticing I could take longer walks, even hikes, stand up longer, drive, and sit for longer periods of time. I started noticing my pain was dissipating, so I started to further reduce my medication. 

But I never connected feeling better physically with the meditation. I don’t know why, it just didn’t cross my mind. I think it was probably because I had started to feel better physically a few months ago when my radiation treatments had ended and because of the cannabis oil. I felt that the meditations were simply helping my mental state, putting me more at ease.

How Meditation Works to Heal

Later on, I would have the epiphany that disease is really psychological dis-ease that manifests in the body. So healing will take place when we can get our mind back to a state of being at ease, the opposite of dis-ease. And that’s what meditation does. It’s simply a tool to put our minds and nervous systems at ease.

A lot of times the psychological conflict that is causing the dis-ease to manifest physically is a result of childhood trauma buried deep in the subconscious mind and we may not even be aware of it. When we meditate, we slow our brainwaves enough to access our subconscious mind, to sit with the pain rather than avoid it. 

A Meditation Retreat?

In March of 2019, about one month after having started my daily meditation practice, I saw that Dr. Joe Dispenza had these seven-day mediation retreats that he does monthly all over the world. I checked his events calendar and saw that he had one in July of that year in Portland, Oregon, the closest location to me in San Diego.

But then I saw the price tag: $1800. By this time I had racked up so much debt from treatments and because I also hadn’t been working for 10 months, I was in a financial mess accruing over $40,000 in debt. I was still unable to drive or work. 

There’s no way I could afford to go. But then, I saw through his Facebook group which I had joined, that there’s a scholarship program that awards fully-paid scholarships to a few people for each retreat. So I applied.

I didn’t know whether I would be able to sit that long on an airplane, or if I’d be in too much pain, but I felt that because I was feeling better and better, I would be able fly and sit long enough to go by July. After submitting my application, I forgot about it.

Three months after I had started meditating, on May 1, 2019 it was time for my next MRI.

Read what happens next in My Story: Part Seven

The post My Story: Part Six: Finding Meditation appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.

A Day I’ll Never Forget

On May 2nd, 2019, the very next day after my MRI, I had just finished doing my morning meditation when I heard my phone ding from a new email. When I opened the email, it was the Give to Give Foundation telling me that I had won the scholarship to the 7-day Joe Dispenza retreat! I couldn’t believe it. I was so elated!

Less than one hour later, I came home to and just as I walked into the house my mother blurted out the words that I have wanted to hear for so long.

“The oncologist called with your MRI results. Your tumor shrunk. By a lot.”

What? I couldn’t believe it! I quickly beelined to my computer to look up the report, and finally, saw the words written “a decrease in size from the previous study” and sure enough, the tumor had shrunk quite a bit. Instead of being the size of a honeydew melon or a cantaloupe, it was now about the size of an orange. It had shrunk by about 30%. No wonder I had been feeling so much better.

What a relief! I celebrated the good news with my family. I figured, along with almost everyone else, that the proton beam radiation was finally doing its thing. A delayed response. (And I still think that’s somewhat true.)

Divine Downloads

Two nights later, I woke up at 3am, sitting straight up with a powerful thought that hit me suddenly, what I now call a divine download. The thought was this: You’re healing because of the meditations. Don’t you see why the two things happened at the same time? On the same day? (The scholarship award and the news that my tumor had shrunk) There’s a connection! I had previously thought this was a coincidence, but later I would learn this was a synchronicity.

The term synchronicity was first coined by psychologist Carl Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.” In other words, a synchronicity is not mere happenstance or a random coincidence. Many believe that a synchronicity is a sign from above that you’re on the right path.

Wow. So meditation was doing way more for me that I had thought. I won’t insist that meditation alone was responsible for the shrinkage, but I do believe (at the minimum) it was a powerful facilitator in getting my tumor to respond to the treatment. Perhaps, it cleared away the negative thought patterns or fear and anxiety that blocked my healing.

I have always known that disease is more than just a physical process, that it stems from our emotions and subconscious thought patterns which we may or may not be aware of. Meditations taps into that, disrupting our subconscious programming.

The Role of Meditation

In the meantime, everyone wanted to take responsibility for the success on the last MRI. The oncologists at the Oasis of Hope cancer clinic, the radiologist, the naturopathic, even my chiropractor. “You see? It’s just a delayed response to the treatment.” I didn’t argue with any of them; I’m sure all of those aspects played a part.

I allow people to come to their own conclusions, but the undeniable facts are that the tumor was growing and growing and growing and did not start to shrink until I started meditating. I had started meditating with Dr. Joe’s meditations in February of 2019 and three months later (May 2) had my first positive MRI, along with the synchronicity that occurred.

And I cannot forget Paul, the “random” stranger on the beach who “randomly” came up to me on the beach weeks before I would find out that I, myself, had cancer and told me he’d healed himself from cancer with meditation. 

Divine Interventions

About a year later, chills would run up and down my spine when I heard Paralympian Amy Purdy’s interview with Oprah when she describes a man who, two weeks before her near-death experience in which she would lose both her legs to a meningitis infection, told her “not to be afraid when she crossed over to the other side.” Watch the three-minute clip below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6XjLyeDcKY

Whether these not-so-random strangers are angels simply or humans with divine messages, these types of stories convince me that we’re not alone in our journeys. You may have also heard stories in which a random stranger saved someone’s life, yet they could never find this person—they just disappeared.

Soon enough, July rolled around and I was ready to head to the 7-day Joe Dispenza meditation retreat. By this time, I was still on my pain medications: morphine and Gabapentin. But I had finally kicked the steroids and the other supplemental pain medications.

Reducing the morphine little by little, I was able to sit long enough to go out to eat in restaurants, stand long enough to cook and make my own meals and take long walks in the hills behind my parents’ house though I still walked with a limp due to nerve damage in my left leg. I was starting to put my normal life back together, looking to move back out on my own again. I even went back to work part-time, teaching ESL classes at UCSD in June of that year. 

Continue to My Story: Part Eight

The post My Story: Part Seven: Synchronicity appeared first on Cancer Free For Life.