Dear Sons and Daughters,
10 years ago I had cancer. You can believe me because I have the scars to prove it.
Every idiot knew how to cure me.
I was told red cordial, meditation, drinking grass juice, drinking my own urine, eating only vegetables, having my chakra aligned, never touching coffee, tea, alcohol, cows milk, doing yoga, doing pilates, becoming a buddhist, eating spoonfuls of flaxseed, gulping bottles of antioxidants, staying off antioxidants, going to Mexico and eating cyanide infused apricot kernels by the handful would all cure me.
Chemotherapy and Radiation would definitely kill me, they said.
I couldn't do all these things. I hate meditation, I hate it so much it really stresses me out. I was never giving up my morning pot of Darjeeling and I couldn't afford to go to Mexico.
My cancer was nasty, it was aggressive. As much as I thought my oncologist was great I wanted a second opinion and trundled off to the Peter Mac Cancer Hospital where as soon as my husband left the room, I said to the sympathetic young doctor, 'Really what are my chances of survival?'
'You want a figure - something concrete?'
'Yeah,' I said. She didn't flinch, she must have been used to this question and she said without blinking, 'You have a 20% chance of surviving the next three months.'
I went home clinging to the 20 percent.
People with cancer are desperate and vulnerable and will cling to any hope, any cure.
Enter all the idiots with their wellness blogs and cures, some who have had cancer, some who are pretending - though why you would want to pretend you had cancer is beyond me.
Yes some people have chemotherapy and radiation and they die anyway. Yes some people follow some of these bloggers advice, stay off the chemo and they die too.
My mum had cancer at the same time as me. She ate the apricot kernels by the handfuls, refused the chemotherapy and trusted God to cure her.
Tragically he didn't.
Thats the thing about cancer - there are no guarantees, some people die and some people have amazing fantastical miracle cures from weird things like red sugar filled cordial or beetroot and brussel-sprout juice - go figure.
But every time I read of some young person with cancer following some wellness bloggers advice and staying off chemotherapy I feel immensely sad. I do not think medicine is the be-all and end-all, but I do think when your life is at risk you should take every opportunity to save it.
Don't restrict yourself.
Do it all.
Medicine has years of research behind it and medicine and other options are not mutually exclusive.
I ate the flaxseeds and the antioxidants and was a vegetarian while I had cancer - do I think these things cured me? No, in honesty I don't - but I don't think they hurt and I think they probably helped. But I did also have the chemo, the radiation and the surgeries.
I figured that when my life was at risk why put all my eggs in one basket?
I thought, I'm going for life.
So I recon if you want to drink your own urine or only eat organic grass - fine - but have the chemo as well, do it all and give yourself the best chance!