I posted this a few years ago on my personal Facebook page and now wanted to share this deeply personal and very exciting story with the rest of you…
1 week before this last Christmas I got given the most wonderful present in the world…. here’s what happened.
Just over a year ago (October 2014) my mum Alli was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a family we weighed up the different treatment options, carefully investigating research and EBM (evidence based medicine) papers. As a family who has never been one to opt for “drugs as first port of call”, and after a lot of prayer, mum felt convicted to try natural therapies.
Mum asked me to support her through this, but as someone who was still studying I didn’t feel well enough equipped to handle this, and as her daughter I didn’t feel that I could be completely objective with her treatment. But that didn’t stop me from researching the heck out of this, asking my mentors for help and finding mum the best damn practitioner I could.
Mum spoke with her doctors about her choice and presented them with a comprehensive list of things I’d compiled for her of things she needed to implement. One doctor was supportive, the other was not, despite the thorough EBM and treatment plan presented to him.
Thankfully, I know a pretty amazing naturopath who was fantastic in the treatment she prescribed. I’d implemented many things for mum already, so it was nice to know I was on the right track and to have her add a few extra things to the mix.
Mum has been amazingly compliant (kudos ma, coz your treatment was tough and rather depressing on the food front!!!) with what was an incredibly strict diet and treatment programme and today was rewarded with the news from her oncologist that she is 100% cancer free!!!!!!!!
Not everyone has been supportive of the choice to use natural remedies to treat cancer, with many people being downright nasty during a time that was already difficult and emotional for everyone involved. I was told that I was playing with her life and even had people question if I actually loved my mum because I was stupid to gamble with her health. To those people I say, I will happily be called stupid, naive and a quack a thousand times over if it means that mum could be cancer free without damaging drugs, without radiation, without chemotherapy, without nasty side effects and without 10 to 15 years of follow up treatment.
This was such a rewarding experience for me to see the thing that I am so passionate about and truly believe in being proven. Nutritionists and naturopaths often come up against a lot of criticism due to the lack of EBM available as a result of the major deficit of funds available for natural therapies research.
This is not to say that natural remedies are always the best option, but that are a credible one. You should always speak with your healthcare practitioner to discuss the best treatment options for you, though I do encourage people to explore the options available to them. Pharmaceuticals are often not the only or best choice for your health and it pays to be educated on what is going into your body.
So here’s to nutritional medicine and kicking cancer’s butt!