My Personal Journey:
When I was 26, I went in for a routine gynecological exam. I was told I had cervical dysplasia and would need to get it treated. OK, not so bad. Nothing to worry about. But, I was getting married in a month and I had my honeymoon to look forward to. This was not the time for this. I explained to my gynecologist that treatment would have to wait until I returned from my honeymoon. She agreed and in the meantime, ran some more tests. The day before my wedding, she called me personally to tell me to come in immediately. In just a few weeks, it had grown considerably. It needed to be dealt with now and she recommended I cancel my honeymoon. Really? This was the day before my wedding! What bride is going to do that? What difference could a few weeks make? Well, by the time I got back into her office, it had turned cancerous. It was very fast growing and it was not HPV-related (most cervical cancers are due to the human papilloma virus). Now, this is very rare because greater than 90% of all cervical cancers are related to HPV (www.cdc.gov)
An OB/GYN Specialist who taught at Loyola University, and specifically studied these rare cases of Non-HPV Cervical Cancers, was brought into my life through a series of wonderful “coincidences”. She said that the standard treatment was a full hysterectomy. However, what she was finding was that within 5 years, a high percentage of the women she studied were diagnosed with cancer elsewhere in the body. She believed that I should not get the hysterectomy. Now, back in the 1980’s, this was radical thinking. After all, this was a fast growing type of adenocarcinoma. Still, I trusted her. She actually sat down and took the time to talk to me. Because this cancer was so rare, there just wasn’t a lot of data out there. However, even though she only had a very small number of cases with my type of cancer, the correlation to a later cancer diagnoses was enough to sway me.
I won’t bore you with all the details but over the next 4 years I had multiple out-patient surgeries. However, it kept coming back. In the meantime, I had moved from Chicago to Phoenix. The doctors I saw in Phoenix were not of the same opinion as my beloved doctor from Loyola University. They were angry that I was not taking this disease seriously. A hysterectomy was an absolutely necessity. I searched my heart and continued to refuse. Because I had already undergone several surgeries, my new doctor said that if I refused a hysterectomy, the only option would be a radiation implant or chemotherapy.
Now, I was only 30 years old. This was just not in my plans! I was not going to have radiation implanted in my vagina and be placed in isolation. This seemed barbaric to me. And I was just too young to go through chemotherapy.* I was by myself during this meeting with the doctor so I had to hold myself together. I had just gotten horrific news and at first, I was numb. When I was finally alone in my car, I began to cry – loud sobs poured out of me. Why, God? Why was I going through this? I cried out for His help. I prayed with earnest for his guidance. Then, a peace came over me that was indescribable. I had given conventional medicine almost 5 years and they weren’t able to do anything to actually get rid of my disease. It was time to take matters into my own hands. It was as if I knew everything was going to be OK. I was no longer afraid. I knew God would direct me from this point on. I drove home, made dinner, bathed my 2 yr old son, and went to bed. I did not tell my husband what the doctor had recommended because I was not going to undergo any of his recommended treatment options. In fact, I don’t even think my husband asked me how the doctor’s appointment went because I was so calm and happy. He must have figured that everything had gone great!
I had one more out-patient surgery and never went back to that doctor again. I figured the surgery would buy me some time… I estimated I had about 2 years before it would spread to the point where I would be in big trouble. Yes, this was risky and some might say fool-hardy, so of course, I didn’t tell anyone about my decision. My parents, my husband, and my friends would have forced me to get conventional treatment. They would have never allowed me to go off on my own like this. In fact, I told my family that I was given a “clean bill of health” after the last surgery so they wouldn’t worry. Then, I moved up into the mountains with my husband and small son. It was time to “fix myself”… but where to start?
When I made this decision to get to the bottom of this cancer, I did not have any medical training yet. This was at the time when I was a Social Worker. At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about alternative medicine & treatments. The foundation for my upbringing was based on the protestant, middle-class, conservative out-look on life. There were a few basic tenants to this upbringing: Alternative medicine was considered for “hippies”. Feelings and emotions were not discussed. Everyone was to wear a happy face at all times. Publicly disclosing the “secrets” within the family was considered high treason. And above all, never ever rock the boat - Follow the rules laid out by the family and society and you will be successful.
So, here I was throwing all of that right down the drain. I had to trust. During those two years, I began a journey of healing that encompassed the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions of my “dis-ease”. To reduce this down to one paragraph is difficult. However, I will try to summarize this journey. First, I became a vegetarian, eating only organic food and reducing the sugar/processed foods to a minimum. Then I learned about the importance of the mental and emotional aspects of healing. I spent many hours allowing myself to feel and release the pain that I had stored within my body. This not only included buried emotional trauma but also all those “tapes” recorded in my brain that dictated my thinking and beliefs about myself. As I delved into the spiritual aspect of my healing, I learned about the energetic body through Reiki, Healing Touch, yoga and meditation. Just before my two year anniversary, I began to have symptoms of a “physical release”. Of course, my new doctor and my husband did not interpret it that way and they insisted on doing more biopsies. When the biopsies came back negative, my doctor called me into her office and asked me what I had done. When I started to talk, she put up her hand to silence me and said that although she didn’t understand any of it, to just keep on doing what I was doing!
Later that year, I was given a free ticket to a talk being given by a young cardiac surgeon. The tickets were literally being given away because no one was interested in hearing about this doctor’s radical beliefs. That person was Mehmet Oz! The room was 1/3 full – can you believe it! During that lecture, I could personally relate to everything that he was saying about the power of healing. I realized that I wanted to be a part of this new medical paradigm. I wanted to bridge conventional western medicine with holistic medicine. The next year I went back to school to become a RN and then again to become a Family Nurse Practitioner.
*(Now, I am in no way encouraging young people to refuse treatment – remember, this was 1990 and cancer treatments have advanced considerably since then.)