The ever changing tapestry of a Cancer Patient’s life.

So much has happened since I last wrote a post. Cancer makes for an interesting social experiment. Everyone has a story of some miraculous recovery that they have seen and would happily pass on references for the treatment centre or doctor or medicinal plant. The alternative cancer cure evangelism industry is truly alive and kicking.

Naturally, there is no way this wouldn’t have affected me. The biggest culprit in this is my mother. She is now a woman on a mission to cure her only daughter of Cancer. She is constantly reading what can help or talking to people around her if they know of a magical story. Once her arsenal is filled, she is ready to attack me with all kinds of suggestions and daily morning concoctions that look and smell like nothing you can imagine.

I myself am a firm believer in healing oneself naturally and hence am very amenable to such suggestions. I hear them out and have already tried two such things that lead me to a completely different path in my treatment.

The first suggestion that came my way was about a Tibetan medicine practitioner, Dr. Yeshi Dhondhen. He was the Dalai Lama’s physician for 20 years and is 96 years old. He has a clinic in McLeodganj. I would write a detailed post later on how to access him because it is quite tricky. His diagnostic methods are based on analysing pulse and urine.  You can read more about him here (http://yeshidhonden.com/)

The second suggestion was about The Health Awareness Centre (https://www.facebook.com/thacmumbai). It is a group of wellness/nutrition therapists based out of Mumbai. They believe in tackling illness through changes in our diet. I went there to understand how I can eat healthy to counter the effect of chemotherapy and other strong drugs that I was to consume. The nutritionist who met me, in a way, opened the doors for me to understand that there are other options to Cancer treatment. The Centre is a firm believer in reversing cancer through diet and has had many people who had opted for this path and have seen results.

After meeting them, I started reading about the alternatives to chemotherapy, and about studies that compare patients who opted for chemo with those who didn’t. I also read about alternative healing modalities etc.

After much contemplation, I have arrived at the conclusion that I want to trust the natural mechanism of my body to heal. It has to be the toughest choice I’ve ever had to make and it elicited enough hue and cry from all quarters. It just feels right, so I’ve decided to go for it.

I am not however going to be stubborn about it. If I feel it’s not working, I will happily jump the allopathic bandwagon and write odes to modern medicine.

If the readers of my blog know of anyone who has tried the non-chemo way, it would really help me to know about it. There is so much noise on the internet about this. The medical guys calling the alternative therapy guys names and vice versa. There seems to be little documentation that objectively lists down both options with its pros and cons. I’m hoping to do that over the next few months as meticulously as possible.

Till we meet again.

A!