Most of the people who come to see us are usually desperate and lost. They don’t know what else to do. Some of them have never had any experience with cancer before. So they’re not sure what to do: go for surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy? Yet many others are told bluntly that there is no further treatment available to them or that there is nothing that can be done. In simple language, it means to go home and wait to die. They receive a good supply of painkillers or morphine to help them with pain. There are also the most experienced patients. They know what these treatments are about, because they have been through them all. They seem to have been fine and thought they were fully cured. Then the cancer strikes again. They come looking for other ways to help. Whichever category you fall into, we have the following tips for you: Go get healed!
1) Never say die and never give up. While you are still breathing, know that there is still hope, even when they tell you that you have no more hope. Hold on to your hope and believe that you still have hope. Some people may accuse us of trying to give people false hope. It is cruel to raise false hopes. But on the other hand, some doctors tell you that: “You only have three to six months to live. There is no medicine, there is no cure. Just prepare to die.” Some patients are told to sign up for hospice for further treatment (and you know why!). Don’t you think such insensitive comments or actions are even more cruel?
We have written many books with stories about false hopelessness. Goh had colon cancer that had spread to his liver. He could barely walk and his stomach was swollen. They told him to go home and prepare to die. He was in the hospital for two months and was only prescribed morphine. The doctors on the ward even refused to see him. However, this “hopeless” patient recovered and became much healthier than he was before he had cancer and lived for another two years.
Carisa, the two-month-old baby, had stage 4 neuroblastoma and was given three months to live. As of this writing, Baby Carisa is now over 7 years old and still alive.
Melisa was sick with cervical cancer that had spread to her liver and lungs. She was asked to write her will as the doctor concluded that she only had three to six months to live. She lived another three years before complications arose from her radiotherapy treatment (before taking herbs). The incredible and astonishing thing about this case is that her thirty spots on her liver have disappeared.
Raju had bone cancer of unknown origin. He couldn’t move and he had to sleep sitting up in a deckchair. The doctor gave him six months to live. After two months on herbs, he came back alive and was able to visit India twice. He is now very much alive and driving. In fact, if there is one message this article is meant to convey, it is HOPE!
We are fully aware that during times of distress, cancer patients become very gullible and will grab at any drop that promises even the slightest chance of life expectancy. We have heard of vendors visiting your home, even in the middle of the night, offering magical potions with the promise of a cure. The mother of a child with cancer told us about a salesperson who called her four or five times a day to check on her son. And every time the phone was located, she was advised to take more and more of the capsules she was selling. So the son ended up taking sixty capsules of the product a day, plus a dozen other supplements. Use his discretion and be cautious.
From the point of view of science and medicine, hope and feelings do not count or exist. These attributes do not belong to the physical body because they do not appear on the X-ray film or on the CT scan. Therefore, they are not supposed to exist. However, you and I know that there are things like hope, love, feeling and inspiration. These are attributes of the soul and mind. They exist and they are important, regardless of what René Descartes would have you believe or what the medical world says. The feeling of no hope kills. So, we say again that there are no false hopes. But there is false hopelessness because no mortal on earth can play God.
When the terminally ill come to us, we tell them this: “Don’t worry. We all have to die someday. It’s a matter of when: tomorrow, next month, or the next ten years. But, let’s tell you, you don’t have to die.” yet, just because you have terminal cancer. We may be younger than you and not have any cancer, but we may die before you. So don’t worry so much. Death is not an issue here. What matters now and in the future is that as long as you’re alive you don’t have to suffer. Let’s pray that we can help you lead a normal life without pain. When the time comes and you have to go home, let’s pray that you die in peace.”
Petrea King of Quest for Life Foundation, Australia, said: Life is not a competition about how long we survive. It’s about the quality we live by.
This is what Cancer Care Therapy is all about. We see healing on many levels: physical, mental, and spiritual. We may not be able to heal the physical body, but we can touch and heal the mind and soul.
2) Empower yourself. “Knowledge is power” goes a saying and I truly believe it to be true. Therefore, I advise you to read and ask questions. Seek knowledge so that you understand your illness. Research has shown that those who feel hopeless, powerless, and accept their fate lying down survive poorly. We tell cancer patients to get up and live! Don’t settle for sitting at the bottom of the pile with the mindset: my doctor says this and my doctor says that. So you will end up following everything he says. We’re not asking you to defy your doctor’s instructions, but we also know that you can get carried away by your nose with no idea what’s going on. It may not always be good for you.
Let’s look at the case of Melisa again. She had approximately thirty different sized spots scattered all over her liver. The oncologist recommended that he go for liver surgery. Melisa asked the oncologist: “How are you going to get all the spots out of my liver?” Of course, this question irritated the learned doctor, but he saved Melissa’s life! The question may sound stupid but it makes a lot of sense. In the absence of a satisfactory response, Melisa declined surgery. And she was absolutely right.
Guat had breast cancer. When they asked her to go for chemotherapy or radiation therapy after his mastectomy, she asked the surgeon, “Can these cure me? Can you guarantee it?” The doctor was stupefied; there was no guarantee. That being the case, Guat refused further medical treatment. For her, if that’s what it’s all going to come to, then she preferred to die in peace without the agony of the side effects of medical treatments.
3) Re-evaluate your strategy. Use your instincts and common sense. Mind-body healers advocate the use of intuition or the sixth sense when making important decisions in life. Not all decisions made based on scientific data are wise or correct in many of life’s situations. Statistics and data can be misleading, cold, dead, and insensitive to human feelings. For example, ask yourself if the treatment you are undergoing is good for you or kills you. Of course, when undergoing invasive treatment, your hope is always to achieve a cure. Ask your doctor if there is a cure for your condition. Some patients receive chemotherapy only for palliative, not curative, reasons. Will treatment make your life better or just more bearable?
Dr. Jeffry Tobias (in Cancer) wrote: “an important decision…to stop, (to know) when to say no more.” In fact, it’s wise to know when to pull out and say “enough,” as long as the treatment is spinning you in a circle. There was a lung cancer patient who came in and told us that his oncologist only spent half a minute with him each time he went in for chemotherapy. Our advice to him was, “Find another oncologist who can be more understanding and can give you more of his time and experience.” How much can a “half minute” doctor help you? Can you expect such a busy and time-poor doctor to save your life? Evaluate my comments and make your own decisions on all these topics. Sometimes common sense is what it takes to save your life.
4) Make wise decisions. Gurdjieff said: “The wise man is not educated and the educated man is not wise.” These are words of wisdom. To enable you to make sound decisions, you should keep the following in mind:
a) Do not make decisions based on or out of fear.
b) Seek more information, from different sources and viewpoints, if possible, before making any major decisions.
c) Weigh the options, both for and against. Don’t just look at the bright side of things. Consider the worst possible outcome as well.
d) Connect with your inner self. Look for your intuition, common sense or instinct. Take time to be alone, to be quiet. Relax and let your inner voice speak to you. If you are too busy or worried about others, you cannot listen to your own inner voice.
e) Reach a decision you can live with. It is her body, it is her liver or her breast that is going to be removed or operated on. Ask yourself if you can live with that decision. It is your life that is at stake. Doctors and others can only help, but you bear the brunt of what they do to you.
f) Once a decision is made, stay the course. Then reevaluate your strategy if it hurts you.
5) Confidence and fluency. Dr. Joseph Murphy (in The Power of Your Subconscious Mind) said, “As you believe, it’s done to you.” The causes of healing failures are mental coercion, lack of confidence, doubt and hesitation. All of this reflects negative attitudes. If you come with the primary goal of “doing everything you can for a cure”, you probably won’t get it. In your intense desire to heal yourself, you can become very tense and have no peace of mind. Have you ever experienced a moment where you are trying really hard to figure out and solve a problem? Your mind hits a dead end. Try to take it easy. Relax and go to sleep. When you wake up the next morning, things will look easier and you will be able to solve your problem in no time. This is because the subconscious mind does not respond to mental coercion.
6) Forgive and let go. Negative thoughts like painful memories, bitterness, hate, anger, etc., engender negative reactions and block the free flow of life. Let your life express itself in terms of love, forgiveness, sharing, caring, harmony, peace, beauty, and abundance. By loving and forgiving yourself and others, you let go of your negative emotions and this is the first ingredient needed for healing.