Written by:Jan Abbott

I decided to explore every alternative medicine and therapy I could find. I also sought out two cancer support groups. I saw many practitoners - pranic healer, naturopath, iridologist, hypnotherapist and the list goes on. Amazingly, each therapist gave me some information or insight that I needed to hear at that time. I also strongly believe in the power of the mind and I set to work on bringing a positive mind-set into my every day living. One way or another I was determined to have every base covered.

At the first three-month check, nothing had changed, but more importantly nothing had got worse. At the next three-month check, I discovered a small lump in my left breast. An ultra-sound showed two lumps in this breast, but the result came back, non-malignant. What a relief! I felt I was making some progress because the lump under my arm appeared to be slightly smaller than the previous scan. Had I managed to stop or slow down the illness, I was asking myself. CT Scans still showed no other cancer in the body. In May 2003 I took a well-earned break with my daughter and husband to England to visit my parents.

While I had a rest from work, emotionally I was getting very distraught. I was starting to face up to the fact that I had some very big problems with my long-term marriage of twenty-five years. When I arrived back in Australia in July 2003 my husband and I knew that I had to get the lumps in my left breast checked out again - it was bad news, the lumps in my left breasts were cancer. Further more, the lump under my right arm was getting bigger and I had lesions breaking out on my skin. Further test showed that it was very likely that I had secondary cancer in the bone. I was devastated. Had my plight been for nothing? After the initial shock, I sat down, got my mind together and started to do some soul searching. First of all I had to admit I still hadn’t found all the answers. What did I need to do?

At this point I decided to take an indeterminable amount of time off work. Prior to this, I had already reduced my hours to working only three days per week. I was fortunate to be living in the hinterland on eleven acres of rain forest. So at the end of September, I retreated from the world. I knew in my heart that this was what I needed to do. I also enlisted the help of a chinese herbalist. Both of these decisions proved to be a catalyst in finding my answers.

I ended up taking four months off work. I perfected my art of meditating and as a result gained many insights into the changes I needed to make in my life. My intuition became finely tuned. At the same time, the herbs were also supporting me to confront these changes. With the help of a friend, I did a slightly modified ‘journey’ from Brandon Bays book ‘The Journey’. This process called ‘the journey’, involves going back in your life and clearing any emotional traumas that are still affecting you today. I still did not want to go the conventional medicine route so I continued to explore other alternative therapies and health regimes

By the time March 2004 came around (eighteen months after diagnosis) I knew I had made huge progress on an emotional and mental level. I had made big changes in the way I approached life. I had found most of the answers. Because of all the work I had done on myself, I had become very ‘in tune’ with what my body needed. It talked to me nearly every day. It was finally time to enlist the help of a conventional doctor to clear the cancer from my body.

My body told me it was time for chemotherapy. It seemed strange that after all this time, I was now saying yes to something that I had fought so hard not to have. I had six weeks to get my body ready. Given my knowledge of alternative therapies, I started to use visualisations, hypnotherapy and chinese medicine to help with the assault that was to come. With the caring support of my oncologist and the nursing staff at Noosa, I sailed through four months of chemotherapy. Apart from loosing my hair and feeling a little tired, I experienced no side effects whatsoever.

Two days after my last chemotherapy, on the first day of spring, I left my husband and moved out of our family home with my daughter. It was the start of my new life. I wasn’t going to compromise myself ever again. I had learnt that being selfish and putting myself first once in a while is not a bad thing. I haven’t looked back ever since. In November last year (two months after completing my chemotherapy) my blood test came back as normal – it had come down from 3000 to a mere 37! My specialist proclaimed me a miracle. All visual traces of the cancer had gone.

I now lead a life where I savour every moment of every day. I appreciate life and the beauty that surrounds all of us. Having cancer was a very humbling experience. I was touched with so much love and prayer from friends and family that just this experience alone was an amazing privilege.

I learnt that there truly is abundance out there and when you are with the flow of life, it has no option but to find you. I also learnt never to question the help that comes from the ‘spirit’ world - it’s forever around us wherever we go. I was once told that if you are prepared to take the first big step and banish your fears, then the universe also takes a big step to meet you.

Finally, one of the most precious gifts I received from my journey with cancer was that I learnt a great deal about myself. I shed a few skins and found the truth of who I am. I know it is only early days for me, but I trust that what ever comes to me in the future I can deal with.
People ask me now, what was the single most important thing that helped the most with my battle against cancer and I have to say it was many many things. If I had to choose one it would be that I believed in myself, and everything else just followed. Cancer doesn’t have to be a sentence – it can actually be the greatest opportunity of your life.

Jan Abbott resides in Tanawha on the
Sunshine Coast.
Jan will be a guest speaker at the Cansurvive Support Group in Nambour on the 10th May.
All are welcome. She is an experienced
presenter of seminars.
Jan is also in the process of writing an
interesting and supportive book on her
journey with cancer, with many helpful guidelines for those who are challenged with cancer.

janiceabbott@bigpond.com

HOPE BEYOND DESPAIR

Written by: Beverley Baillie

To begin, let me relate to you a little story I found in a book entitled “In the Eye of the Storm” by Max Lucado – which I highly recommend to anyone going through a tough time.
 
CHIPPIE THE BUDGIE never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over.
The problems began when Chippie’s owner decided to clean Chippie’s cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She’d barely said “hello” when “sssaopp!” Chippie got sucked in.
The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie – still alive, but totally stunned.
Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do … she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air.
Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.
A few days after the trauma, the reporter who’d initially written about the event contacted Chippie’s owner to see how the bird was recovering. “Well.” she replied, “Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore – he just sits and stares.”
 
It’s hard not to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over …. That’s enough to steal the song from the stoutest heart.
 
When I read the above forward to the book, I surely identified with that little story as I felt I had been through the mill of hard knocks and probably had a bad case of the “why me’s” as well.
 
In May 2002 my surgeon gave me the news that no one ever wants to hear – “You have cancer”. One moment I’m sitting on my perch trying to handle the rat race and the next “sssaop” up the vacuum cleaner tube I go. If you’ve been up there, you’ll know how earth shattering it can be. I was in unbelief as I tried to grapple with the ramifications of a cancer diagnosis. It always happens to that other person, never me! You know???
 
I did what most women who have been brought up in a home where authority was taught to be respected, I dutifully followed my surgeon’s advice all the way to the surgeon’s table. To cut a long “saga” (as my surgeon described it) short, after three operations in three weeks, I lost my breast. Now as I’m usually a very organized person with everything in it’s place and a place for everything, my practical joker husband said that loosing a breast was a very careless thing to do! - and in hindsight I would have to agree with him. I’ve had to learn to laugh or else I may cry. Anyway laughter takes less energy than crying and is good medicine.
 
Jokes aside, it is no easy matter to go through that trauma. Just as Chippie would have bounced off the walls inside the vacuum cleaner, I also bounced off the walls of fear, doubt, dread, anxiety and uncertainty, all of which are part and parcel of facing cancer as well as the grief of losing part of my femininity, something I still struggle with.
 
If it hadn’t been for my belief in a merciful and compassionate God who is not only there in the good times but also in our times of struggle and grief, I think I would have suffocated right there in the vacuum cleaner of despair.
 
My surgeon put me on the drug tamoxifen to stop any further cancers in my other breast he said, but the side effects caused lots of depression and tears. He advised against having chemotherapy as my lymph nodes were clear and said he couldn’t see any good reason to put me through the trauma that chemo causes most people when he felt there was no need.

My G.P. strongly disagreed upsetting me in the process and urged me to see an oncologist about chemo and radiation which we did. Then it was decision time! We had qualified physicians giving very conflicting advice on future treatments and this in turn added more stress to what was already a very stressful time in my life
.
After reading articles in books and on the internet about chemo/radiation and how they drastically reduce one’s immune system and therefore would affect the body’s ability to fight any recurrence, and after consulting the only other physician I knew I could trust, the “Great Physician”, we chose to follow the surgeon’s advice. This proved to be a blessing.
 
Well, I slowly crawled out of the vacuum cleaner all covered in the thick dust and soot of depression. I didn’t realize at that time though, that I still had the ordeal of the soaking and blow-drying yet to come.

By this time my husband had been researching as much information as he could about breast cancer as well as safe alternatives to the conventional way of monitoring breast health. When he asked my surgeon if he thought mammograms could contribute to the breast cancer risk, the surgeon answered in the affirmative, along with hormone pills and stress, he said. All had been at the bottom of my cage.
I threw my pills down the gurgler with great gusto, angry that I had been misled about their safety. I reluctantly gave up one of my part-time jobs and other responsibilities so that I could give myself some space and some much needed rest. I had my levels of absorbed radiation checked by a health clinic in Brisbane and found that my body had absorbed far too much that would mostly have come from mammograms over the past 12 years.
 
At this point, I add that the mammogram and ultrasound that my doctor asked me to have after he found the a lump during a routine examination, did not indicate that there might be cancer present in either breast. I merrily went on my way and had repeated tests done in three months that showed no change. I was ready to go home and forget about the lump passing it off as only a fibro adenoma as my doctor suggested it possibly was. However, he referred me to a surgeon for a third opinion. The surgeon subsequently performed a lumpectomy and it was only then that cancer was detected.
 
We then questioned the accuracy of mammography to give a true indication of the real picture. Furthermore, after talking to a health promotion officer at Breast Screen Queensland, we were informed that the type of cancer I had did not always show up on mammograms. I asked how many breast cancers were my type and she said between 20 to 30%. I was astounded as that only accounted for the type I had, what about the rest?
 
Well, next came the soaking! Three months later, my surgeon felt a lump in my other breast, which he confirmed was just like the other one. He sympathetically put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You didn’t want to hear that did you?”
 
If you can imagine for a moment what Chippie would have looked like after being soaked, well that’s just about how I felt.
I was still struggling with the aftermath of the first cancer and mastectomy and now faced a lot of fear, dread and depression as a hot wind of another came blasting my way. So much for tamoxifen!

In a time of deepest depression, I laid myself on the ground before God and asked, not for healing but for His goodness, mercy and peace, which in itself was uncanny, as my head said I desperately wanted healing But my heart knew that, no matter what lay ahead, (and maybe because of what may lie ahead), I most importantly needed His peace. I believe He heard and answered that prayer in a fascinating way.
 
My husband started looking for ways to monitor breast health other than mammography. He read about thermography in a number of books on cancer and health care and started looking on the internet and making inquiries and it was through these inquiries that we contacted the people at Meditherm. We found that Thermal Imaging can show an abnormality developing in one’s breast 3-5 years before it becomes a lump big enough for mammography to detect. One then has very early warning to make changes to ones lifestyle or any other area to help the body help itself and hopefully stop it in its tracks. On the internet, there is a case history of a doctor in America doing just that as she continually monitored the situation with thermology.Controlled tests have shown that thermography is equally as accurate as what mammography claims to be, although from my own experience as stated above, I now question the accuracy of mammography.

During this “searching” time of questioning and looking for answers, another form of cancer treatment was mentioned which we followed up immediately and in so doing, found that there are ways, other than surgery, radiation or chemotherapy to deal with cancer. After making enquiries about the different type of cancer treatment and in consideration of it, I experienced that unmistakable peace that I had asked God for and how could I not mistake that peace in the midst of the huge turmoil I was in.
 
I realized that I needed to make choices. I could just sit and stare like Chippie and let the world tell me who I was and what to do or I could get back on my perch and make the most of the way things had turned out and make informed choices about my own health.
  We decided to jump out of the boat of conventional medicine into what I won’t say is alternative but certainly a different stream. We immediately made plans to (a) start the treatment and (b) cancel my next round of surgery which did not please my surgeon muchly! In doing so, I have avoided the need for more devastating surgery or worse. The treatment developed by a highly qualified man involved using naturally developed substances, diet, and utilizing my own immune system. Thankfully, my earlier decision not to have chemo would have left my immune system still intact.
 
Now in dealing with this cancer, I was winging it, not knowing anyone else who had used this method. We were told that the treatment only worked against cancerous cells and had no reaction against normal cells. I knew I had to take the chance that this would not work and that I was wasting valuable time. Also it wasn’t easy to go against the accepted way and receive a hot blast of skepticism from the doctors and even from some friends, but my strong conviction was that I was doing the right thing. Don’t ask me to explain that other than to say that, after much prayer, I just knew in my “knower” that I should go that path. I was now full of hope and I found that there is no such thing as “false hope”. Hope is Hope full stop!! And I found that hope is a powerful weapon.

With high expectations, the treatment was started. We were even more encouraged to find that, true to word, it didn’t react anywhere except in the area of the lump which proved the validity of the treatments’ claims that it only reacts if there are cancerous cells present.

After finishing the treatment, my medical advisor advised me to have biopsies done to give me peace of mind that the treatment had worked. I had to wait for two lo o o ong months after the completion of the treatment before having the biopsies. This was a time of waiting and wondering, of being positive one day and full of doubts the next, but I knew the choice I had made and I knew I had to stick with it because of my strong belief that this was the right choice.
 
After the biopsies came a three-day wait until we received the pathology results. It was like having my life handed back to me when my husband called me and told me that the doctor had rung with the results of the biopsies - which were all clear.
I first got down on the ground and thanked God for his goodness, mercy and grace and then celebrations followed – and also Telstra became much richer. I should have gone out and bought shares. After the biopsies, I had some blood tests done, being tumour marker tests for cancer in breast, lungs and gastrointestinal. These came back in the normal range and a month later I had a thermal image taken that revealed no suspicious thermal asymmetries in my breast.

Leaving the boat of conventional medicine was the scariest but most rewarding step I’ve ever taken!!
Thankfully my husband supported and walked with me even though it was tough for him too.
 
It was now time to get back up on my perch. We realized that early warning to breast abnormalities was the key to nipping potential problems in the bud before it got to the stage of having to come in with the ”heavies”. Thermology filled that bill nicely being 3-5 years earlier warning than mammography. It was very accurate in gauging thermal asymmetries in the breasts and as important, it involved no radiation and no compression or contact with the body.
 
We found that there was an opening for someone to do imaging from Brisbane and further north so we decided to apply to Medithern to do training. My old brain got quite a shock after many years of not being used to its full potential but it survived and now my husband and I are trained thermographers Level 1 with mobile clinics in Nambour, Hervey Bay, Brisbane, Rockhampton and Emerald.
 
Making the right decisions during a time of stress is very hard to gauge. We make the best decisions at the time that our limited knowledge allows us to. We then sometimes find out that there are other alternatives and that our only letdown has been lack of knowledge.
I spent quite some time in “regret mode” and had a bad case of the “if onlys” but found that this is very unfruitful. We only find the fruit on a tree by looking up and reaching out not by looking down and expecting it to drop in our laps. I would urge anyone facing treatment decisions to become as informed as possible about all treatments available so that wise decisions can be made.
 
I have attended the Cansurvive group at Nambour on a number of occasions and have found a loving, caring, informative and most supportive group of people who give so much comfort and help to people who are struggling with cancer and to the carers of people living with cancer. As I was living out west at the time of my cancer struggles, I did not have the benefit of having a supportive group such as Cansurvive to go to for help and encouragement, but I did have my supportive husband and family, my wonderful friends, and of course God who is ever present to help and guide us through the storms in our lives. Without them, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to persevere when times were really tough. I love them dearly.
 

Beverley Baillie

Beverley Baillie can be contacted as follows:
P.O.Box 5015
Torquay,
Qld. 4655
Phone: 4125 1500
Mobile:0418 821 535
Email: weseepain@bigpond.com