14 Years NED

It's been 15 years since my diagnosis of stage 3c papillary, serous adenocarcinoma of the ovary. 15 years since my suboptimal debulking (tumors left in lymph nodes, on my bowel and on my liver that could not be removed). 15 years since I developed ascites so chronically and severely that I had to have it drained every 3 days for two months. 15 years since I ended up on 24/7 IV nutrition because I lost so much albumin protein from the the repeated draining of the ascites that my normal tissues could no longer hold fluids.

I am grateful to the conventional doctors, some who stepped over the line for me, who pitched in and did what they could do and felt was right. But I credit my ultimate survival and continued good health to the alternative doctors who helped me recognize what had gone so terribly wrong in my body to make it a cancer-growing machine.

My gyn/onc concluded, after my surgery, that I had less than a year to live and the chemo was not going to be effective on the tumor (based on an assay). But I got help from alternative oncologists in Mexico and oncology naturopaths in the U.S. and we chipped away at the tumors with things that made the chemo I was receiving more effective, while also reducing the side effects of conventional treatment. Surprisingly, after my last chemo treatment 14 years ago, I was NED, and although it is common for a patient to have success with first line treatment for ovarian cancer (Carbo/Taxol is 80% effective) more often than not, the patient is sooner or later given the bad news that they recurred.

Once I received the miraculous news that I was NED, my naturopath worked with me to address the root causes of why cancer grew inside of me in the first place. This is where conventional medicine fails its patients. It never addresses what caused the cancer. In fact, it acts as if there is no explanation and that the patient was healthy and vibrant one day, and diagnosed with a horrific disease the next. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and what I've learned from the practitioners I've seen and the books I've read on the subject is that your body has to be really messed up for tumors to grow in it.

In fact, cancer cells are really just your normal cells that have been exposed to such a toxic environment that they start behaving differently in order to make a last ditch effort to survive. They are impacted at a genetic level through epigenetics and they frantically try to multiply and avoid dying when they should in order to continue their lineage. Isn't that just what a tumor is? Cells that multiply exponentially and won't die willingly. Due to other imbalances in the body, the tumor is then able to have blood vessels built to bring it a blood supply and through its behavior is able to hijack the liver to produce food for it.

I can lose a lot of people when I try to describe the physiology of tumors, but what is more important is to understand that you can alter the imbalances in your body so that tumors can no longer grow. My naturopath did extensive testing and we identified that some of the things contributing to my tumor-friendly body included: hormone imbalance, high cortisol, high growth factors, chronic inflammation, sticky blood, too much copper, too much stress, lack of exercise,'.. We addressed each, mostly with with diet and supplements, and one by one, these imbalances rectified. In order to prevent these imbalances from coming back, I changed my diet and lifestyle to one that is anti-cancer and I continue to follow this way of life even today. For those of you who will say your cancer was caused by your BRCA mutation, you should also know you can use diet and lifestyle to minimize the effects of the BRCA mutation and thus reduce your risk of recurrence.

I only share this information because I understand your pain, ladies. I want you to know you don't have a death sentence. Knowledge is power and the more you know, the more you can advocate for yourself.

Blessings.