A Slice of the Real Anti Cancer World

Copyright, Terry Turner, 2009

Thursday was my last radiation day for which I am grateful, but that or something left me feeling sort of deflated. Never the less, several of you have asked what am I doing out here in terms of recovering my health and defeating my cancer which, as mentioned, when discovered was eating my spine, eating into my my spinal column, attacking my spinal cord, my ribs, and working away to digest my left lung.... a nasty silent aggressor.

One person said, I suppose you stroll up and down the beach a lot. Ha! Stroll? Those us who arrive in this part of the West are sitting on the edge of our graves. We have been, almost without exception, given an emotionless death sentence by members of an oncology team who seem totally bereft of feelings other than trying to figure out how to scare you into killing yourself by committing to about $200,000 worth of chemotherapy and, maybe some fun options like having lots of your body cut up and, maybe some radiation as well too burn you until you can't swallow, digest, or take a dump.

You may recall they told me I was a Hail Mary Miracle Case in the beginning --- small cancer, easy to deal with, then suddenly I was rather drastic and needed urgent chemo, and then, in quick order I only had a two percent chance of survival, even with chemo, and when Susan and I kicked back and said we would seek a second opinion and take a look at what we believed, in our hearts, to be true, that chemo and radiation and surgery produce dead survivors and that cleansing, nutrition, clean food, immune support and logical, safe, minimally damaging treatments produces not survivors but people who have recovered from cancer. Of course, Susan and I have been advocates for clean food, nearly impossible to get in America these days, and good nutrition most of our lives.

"Mr. Jolly," as I shall call my happy oncologist, called us the next day and said we could not start chemo fast enough, that it was too late for me in any case, and then he added, you will be paralyzed in a matter of days, your spine is already too week for you travel. Suzi was busy booking the flight and notes and other powerful encouragements were arriving daily from family and friends around the world. I am so happy that I can say that I had not one nay-sayer to deal with (other than Mr. Jolly) and in essence everyone supported our decision to head west for the best center of integrative and alternative and traditional care that could be found under one roof -- that roof belongs, of course, the Issels Medical Center.

So, when we get here, we are not strolling, most of us are glancing downward into the pit that is clearly the grave that modern diet and modern medicine have digging for us for years.... it catches up with some of us sooner than others. Exhausted and hardly able to walk, rise, sit, stand upon arrival here, a caring staff has its hands full to deal with us ... believe me, upon arrival, trying to grasp how quickly your life has been splintered, fearful of the darkness towards the bottom of the grave, mentally exhausted, ordinarily due long term pain (almost 15 weeks in my case before I had any relief), your emotions are slowly becoming a sea of fear, mush, and tears which, somehow, you must manage to marshall into a positive we can do this and win attitude. So, again no, we do not stroll the beach. The few of us with the strength to do so do, of course. I tried to make it to the beach but simply did not have the strength to stand nor the stamina to walk that far. I do thank God that I can daily hear and see the ocean from our little apartment.

So, what happens out west and what do we really do here. I will give you the best picture I can but every day is unique to the day, the patient, and the cancer, and the odd things that attend the day. For example, one day I was scheduled to go into Far Infrared Therapy but I came out of one treatment and for unknown reasons began to cramp and had to do some quick marching up and down the hall to try to relive the cramps ... and this, in turn affected the rest of my schedule for that day.

In the beginning intense medical history and test results are assembled form wherever such things can be had.. collected by FEDEX, Email, fax, etc. so that the doctors can assemble the best profile of you and your problem as possible and, of course, all the usual things such as weights, pressures, oxygen content, supplements taken, medicines taken, prior and other medical problems and histories and so forth. As I am 70, and having had a rather eventful life I have to be careful to remember every thing and just drafting this reminded me that I failed to report that I had a voluntary vasectomy in 1963. I must let the staff know tomorrow.

As this material begins to mature into one's database, the various treatments, tailor made for each case, each person, and each day begin to be launched. There are no days on which all the same things happen day after day but, on most days, something like this will be the drill.

Susan and I arise about 5 Am, I joke that I do so to work on my original Issels Opera, "Have you had your coffee enema today? It's one thing that will help keep cancer away." I brew the un-roasted special coffee for my approximately cup and a half enema. It is hard to make enemas a pleasant topic and many of us, for a time, take the coffee enema morning and night.... twice the coffee, twice the fun.

We do some quick housekeeping, Susan is busy trying to figure out how to do a live organic type breakfast for me (not the huge portions of scrambled eggs with lots of cheese that I like) and invariably she wants to peel a large cucumber.... I like cucumber, of course, but some days, looking at the pale cucumber, I do realize it is not a good hot steaming biscuit of the type I am fond of making.

Between food preparation, enemas, showering, dressing, and all that goes with that, we have to begin to sort and assemble the supplements for the day.... these numbers vary, of course, from case to case, and time to time depending on the patient, the cancer, and the medical stats. In my case I start with three saucers. I put the morning, noon, and evening dose, individually, in each saucer. When each saucer has its allotment of pills, I leave the pills on the morning saucer as I must take them immediately after our breakfast.... not my beloved hot biscuit, gravy, or such of long ago and far away. The pills in the other two saucers I transfer to plastic bags for later use.

At this time, day in and day, I am prescribed one powdered drink called Wholly Immune. I am prescribed about 90 drops of three liquids in a quart of water (the Heel Detox Kit), and I take, ore or less about fifty assorted pills each day before any additional pills given me at the clinic.

The price of some supplements are rather breathtaking, though I am not complaining. One item called Salvestrol Platinum, 75 caps, costs about $195 per bottle....such is the nature of the battle.

Then we have to try to handle some of our emails, do things to try to keep our little interests going, and get showered and ready to move out by taxi or hitched ride to the clinic around 7:30 AM --- arising at 5 barely gives us time to do this, though I do admit to having a little fresh coffee before we launch fully into the day.

Arriving at he clinic, all our daily stats are gathered (weight, pressure, oxygen, etc.) and then we all begin to move off to our various treatments. Wednesday, as I recall, I had far-infrared therapy first in which the name of the game is weakened cancer cells with heat. Cancer does not like heat and so we strive to heat our bodies to around 105-106 degrees and hold that temperature to kill the cancer cells. There are two methods, one is dry heat, and one is in a closed chamber which will pull the sweat off your body in copious amounts and, in that case, you are trying to drink all the water you can.

Then you might move on into a hyperbaric chamber (an oxygen box) in which you are sealing in a large plastic chamber, rather shaped like a giant hot dog, and you breathe oxygen... it gets hot in the chamber and I usually ask for a block of ice.... as the pressure rises your ears pop, airplane style, and the heat goes up; the ice helps me keep cool and distracts me.

Probably then you might move on to, for example the IV room, where they punch the needles and ports into your arms that must be opened to become the highways for the various specialty IVs. Some IVs --- an IV is a bag of nutritional fluid or meds which is conveyed into your body via the needles --- are what I call shorties, maybe they only last an hour, some are dreadfully big and, like the type which are mainly large vitamin C dose type, nay last three to four hours. These long bags are bothersome in that you need to remain seated for long periods of time and they certainly interfere with bath room time.

With all this going on someone always has a little cup of this or a drink or that or another pill to be taken while the IV continues.

Somehow, with all this there are conferences to be held with the doctors, there are grief counseling sessions with Dr. Walter Lewis, a man for whom I have the greatest respect, and so on. Having the chance to personally talk with Dr. Issels, or Dr. Walter Kim, or Dr. Lewis is always a high point.

Then, thanks to a caring and determined staff somehow you will get more and other treatments worked in. Off to reflexology, quick let's get to acupuncture, or lymphatic massage. Let's keep moving, let's get some new blood draws ... just six or seven new tests today, and in between these wonderful nurses are seeing that you get down a ton of water, that you don't fall on your head, that you don't pull over your IV tower, that you get your green drinks, your green salad, and your green lunch.

Whirling around in the back ground are some great informational lectures, too bad the whole world cannot hear these which explain how our dead farms are providing us with dead food that is killing us, how faulty lab tests can be, how erroneous diagnosis can be, and so forth.

And, of course, there are some classes such as what types of ingredients to avoid, or how to select food, or how to prepare food (for many people the idea of preparing food is almost as alien to them as cancer, but prepare food you must if you are going to live. And, of course one must relearn how to think about food, how to select food, and how to eat food. Here is a clue for you. Eat more than half your food as raw uncooked veggies to take a great step towards avoiding cancer. Suzi and I feel that though we ate raw food, we did not eat enough in our rush to attend to business. I can assure you, in our present and future lives, nothing will replace the need to first and foremost take care of our personal health issues.

Towards the end of the day, the fat IV bags grow flat, at last, and as we make preparations to wrap up the day, it is not uncommon to get an immune boosting shot, made from you own blood, on the spot, to help launch your immune defenses to keep them fully stirred up and active against cancer.

This "schedule" of course is only approximation of our daily schedule but I think it will give you a picture of sorts. At the end of our day, around 5:00 PM, for two weeks, Suzi and I then had to gather up our books, my supplements, meds, and liquids and go to the Cottage Hospital where I would then take the daily radiation treatment which I had to have due to the advanced attack cancer made on my spine. By the time we process through the radiation treatment and return to our apartment, the clock is advancing on 7:30 PM, and it is time for us to figure out an organic meal, suitable to my program, and do all the nightly things that require attention before the 5:00 AM alarm calls us away.

The folks there were fabulous, kind, caring but and do note this, they seemed somehow disconnected on one level because they offered cookies at the entrance and candies throughout the facility to the public, clients, visitors and so forth.

Regarding all the candy and sugar, I so wanted to say, "Hey! Folks, don't you know cancer is trying to kill us and you are feeding cancer free sugars, its favorite food?" I did not tackle that with the administration. I was just too tired to go to battle, but, dear family, dear friends, don't just assume that what you see, what you hear, what you are offered is sensible. Anyone can see that offering sugar to a cancer victim is an actual crime. This of course raises the question as to whether people in the healing professions should engage in concerns about social amenities like cookies or should they do all that they can to educate their patients.

As I patient, I would prefer to be reminded to avoid sugars at all costs.

Addendum, my first radiation treatment was in August 2009, in Santa Barbara, California; by November I was again having radiation in Mt. Pleasant Texas at the Bo Pilgrim Oncology Center... Bo Pilgrim is the well known chicken king in a Pilgrim style hat.

Your Constant Curmudgeon,

Terry Turner

Image Credit; to the best of my knowledge the image is part of a small photocopy of a painting which was possible done by an American Indian person by the name of Ron Twelve. The copy was then glued on a Russian style three piece triptych and, to me, remains incredibly charming. The original title of the piece may have been Indian Easter. I regret that is all that I can offer in the way of information.