My cancer story

Cancer.

The one word that no one wants to hear. The word that stops us in our tracks and causes us to go completely pale. The one word that has the ability to make every other problem in our life seem completely miniscule and irrelevant because none of that other shit matters when it comes down to this.

I never thought I or anyone in my immediate family would ever deal with this horrible disease. Cancer was something that people with a family history got. People with the cancer gene. If you didn’t have it running in your family, you didn’t have to worry. Right?

Earlier this year my dad was diagnosed with cancer.

This is the reason I decided to settle back in NYC, when I realised I couldn’t be living elsewhere with this going on.

I will never forget the moment when he told me, the moment when everything changed. I’ll never forget how quickly my stomach dropped, the shattering wave of fear that overtook my body.

There was a lump on the side of his mouth near the upper jaw for the past several months that wasn’t going away. It wasn’t painful but he had decided to finally go to the doctor just to see what was up.

Stage 3 cancer.

I never thought cancer would be something my immediate family would ever deal with.

I never thought I’d witness my dad look so small and scared and hopeless, which is how he looked when he told me.

I never thought I’d face losing a parent in such an awful and painful way.

How could this happen?? My dad has always been the healthy, robust one in the family.

Ok so he did have some health problems going a long ways back. He had gout for the past 30 years. I’ve heard stories from my mom that he suffered from poor health as a child. But I guess it’s always seemed like he’s been the healthiest one in the family because his spirit and will is so strong.

My dad is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. When I think of him, words come to my mind like decisive, strong-willed, focused, masculine, authoritative, directed, intense.

But in that moment when he told me the news, all I saw and felt in his energy was fear.

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We talked of treatment options. Radiation and chemo were extremely risky for someone almost 70 years of age and he didn’t feel good about going for either of those.

By chance that night I mentioned gerson therapy to my dad as an alternative form of cancer treatment that I’d heard of people doing. I only mentioned this as an example that there were many other treatment options out there besides radiation and chemo but he became immediately interested. He took down the name and the next day emailed me to say he had done several hours of research on the program, was extremely impressed by all the testimonials of success and he was in!

I should note this was a major shock to me as my dad is not the holistic-minded type. He’s the logical, practical, “I’ll believe it when I see it” type who has no interest whatsoever in alternative practices or healthy diets. But apparently the testimonials in gerson therapy impressed him enough to give it a go.

When I visited my dad a week later, he had already ordered a bunch of gerson books, a new juicer, and had the whole program laid out on his computer. He spent a long time explaining the protocol to me and how it works and what you have to do – and that felt really good. I felt relieved that he had found a treatment he was so excited and gung ho about. While I don’t agree with everything gerson advises and think a few of the food recommendations and avoidances in the program are downright harmful, I felt the overall protocol was probably the best I could realistically see my dad being on. The emphasis on juicing would no doubt be incredibly healing for him. If I could get him to opt out of eating the recommended wheat bread and yogurt on the diet, this could just work.

Gerson therapy, for those who aren’t familiar, is an alternative cancer treatment that centers on a huge amount of juicing, organic fruits and vegetables, coffee enemas, and the avoidance of all animal protein, except for yogurt. The treatment has been shown to help many terminal cancer patients, including those with advanced stages of cancer.

My dad went a month on this fruit and veggie regimen, consuming 13 fresh juices everyday, and then decided to go into radiation treatment in conjunction with gerson as his doctor was really pushing for it. This is where things took a turn for the worst.

It turns out that a side effect of radiation on the mouth area is that it distorts your taste buds. Severely. Suddenly my dad could no longer taste his food. Everything (even the sweetest fruit like dates) tasted intensely bitter and like metal. It became so bad that he could barely get himself to swallow any foods. Sometimes he would force himself to eat something only to throw it up afterwards. His mouth and throat became filled with cold sores so large and painful that no food could be eaten. The radiation began giving him intense migraines that kept him up all night and on constant painkillers.

Over the next couple months he dropped down to 86 lbs, became a walking skeleton, so emaciated and frail and weak. My energetic, robust dad who had always looked 15 years younger than he actually was, now suddenly resembled a sickly, old man.

At this point, he was mostly sticking to the gerson protocol as best he could, not because he wanted to but because anytime he strayed and ate too much of something on the forbidden list, the tumor would swell up and become hot and painful. Not eating at all was often preferable to choking down something bitter and unappetizing.

Despite all the weight loss, his doctor said the radiation treatment seemed to be going well. My dad’s tumor was shrinking at an accelerated rate, much quicker than most people who receive radiation and my dad said he knew the gerson diet was responsible for this fast recovery.

Things were tough but seemed to be going in the right direction.

After his final dose of radiation, my dad said he felt so confident the cancer was gone and so eager to put this all behind him, that he decided to transition into the gerson maintenance diet – basically the diet that’s recommended to cancer survivors who’ve been declared cancer-free for a year or two.

A warning flag went up for me. It’s too soon to change your diet. The doctor hasn’t given you a final test yet.. there’s a chance the cancer is still there. Keep up with the juices and fruit and veggies!

But my dad (understandably) just wanted to be done. “I know it’s gone,” he said. Plus he couldn’t do the diet anymore. He had lost way too much weight and needed to bulk up and get his strength back with calories and protein. Dairy, eggs, and meat would be fine – they were even recommended. The most important thing was that he put on more weight now.

I’m sure where you can see where this is going…

Recently my dad got tested and unfortunately the tumor (which had shrunken so much that it was almost gone) has now started growing again. Not only that but at a much faster rate.

Where do we go from here?

I’m really not sure. I know what I WISH my dad would do…. I wish he would continue eating a diet full of anti-cancer fruits and vegetables. I wish he would fill his days with green smoothies and salads and soups full of onion and garlic. I strongly feel that the key to beating cancer is flooding the body with nutrition in the form of raw fruits and veggies; If you look at the diets of what so many longterm cancer survivors ate, this common link runs through almost all of them.

But he’s sick of eating this stuff. He’s sick of his meals tasting bitter or sour or having “no taste.” Even more than that, he’s turned off to receiving help.

The homemade meals I bring over of smoothies, potato and veggie stew, raw vegan pie and banana ice cream get thrown in the garbage after one bite. The supplements and herbs I bring over to help him heal remain unused. The groceries I offer of organic asparagus and papaya sit around until eventually they rot and are thrown away.

He tells me not to bring any food over because I’m just wasting my time and money but what else am I supposed to do? How can I not keep on trying, while seeing him get worse and worse?

And this is the main issue that I’m having so much trouble coming to terms with. The realisation that brings me so much sadness and despair and grief. The realisation that, try as I might, I cannot save my dad.

The whole thing makes me feel so powerless, so utterly helpless knowing I have no control over what he chooses to do or not do. No way to alter his lifestyle choices. No control over preventing his cancer from spreading and getting worse.

I keep having all these thoughts…

If only it were me instead of him.

If only he would listen.

If only he hadn’t gone for the radiation that messed up his taste buds and ultimately made him weaker.

If only he were more open to natural treatments.

If only he would do more research.

If only.

I keep wishing there was some way I could magically take the cancer from him into my body instead, as awful as that sounds. Because at least if I had it, I’m 100% confident I would get rid of it. I know too much about what causes cancer, what gives it fuel, and what kills it off.

I find myself thinking, “But HOW can he go on eating foods that are harming his body? How can he just decide, ‘It’s too hard to eat healthy’ and give up?” If it were me and I were faced with a terminal illness, I would find a way to get that food into my body every single day regardless of how bad it tasted because it’s a matter of life and death!

But that is me thinking everyone is exactly like me, which of course is not the case. That’s me thinking like a raw vegan who’s had tons of schooling in nutrition and has been on the healthy eating diet path for the past decade. That’s me who went from carnivore to vegan overnight and never looked back, never cheated once, never wanted to cheat once. That’s me speaking without any food addictions and an iron willpower pushing me through.

Most people, including my dad, are not like this with food.

It makes me upset, it makes me angry, it makes me frustrated, it makes me hopeless and miserable. But feeling this way does nothing to help him, so I don’t express any of these emotions to him. I sit back and nod my head and say ok when he talks about more radiation and doctors. Because the last thing he needs is for me to not be on his side.

I’m trying so hard to be on his side and to support whatever he decides to do, even if every cell in my body is desperately screaming for him to change course. This is not what he wants to hear.

Outside I present as strong, contained, holding it together, able to handle it all. But inside, some days I feel like I’m falling apart.

Anticipatory grief is a very real thing.

And it’s been so hard for me to blog or film or carry on creating content and being my usual positive self like everything is fine because nothing feels further from the truth. I’m ok. But I’m not ok.

There’s so much I’ve been wanting to share with you these past several months – my new house, finally settling down after a year and a half of living out of a backpack, adopting my new bunny, living as a minimalist, homesteading, updates on my diet and how things have evolved… just to name a few! On the one hand there’s been so many wonderful, exciting new things happening in my life. Enough to almost make me forget what’s going on in my family. Deep beneath it all though, a pervasive sense of dread stays lurking in my mind. One conversation with my dad is all it takes to shoot me back to reality, the stark and harrowing reality that my dad is not ok. And I’m not sure if he will be ok.

There’s nothing I can do to change this, to change him and make him better.

I think this pain is very familiar and real to anyone who’s a parent, to anyone raising or caring for a child. Or anyone with a loved one who suffers from an alcohol or drug addiction. The realisation that yes, we can do our very best to try and influence this person in our life to make the best choices for his/her wellbeing but we cannot make these choices for them. We cannot make someone do anything they’re set against doing. At a certain point, we have to let go and simply be there as best we can. As best as they allow. Even if all they’re open to receiving is emotional support or presence.

In the end, we cannot save or change anyone but ourselves.

And it’s so painful and terrifying to come to terms with this reality.

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Part of me has been afraid to share these thoughts with you because I worry that no one wants to hear this kind of stuff. That writing about my grief and struggles will turn off people who come here for positivity and to be inspired. I don’t know how to brush these feelings aside and “carry on as usual” though; attempting to force myself feels fake. All I can be right now is hopeful, on the good days. And honest with where I’m at. And I hope that maybe in doing so, it reminds you that it’s ok to not be ok too. It really is.

Life is not just about the light and the good and the beautiful. It’s interwoven with so much darkness and pain as well and we must be willing to sit with and honor ALL our feelings, not just the positive and pleasant ones.

We also must hold compassion, not just for others but for ourselves.

Each time I feel wracked with guilt for not being as productive as I once was, for feeling unable to operate like my old self, for having days where all I want to do is curl up under the covers and cry my eyes out or watch something totally mindless to distract from the pain, I remind myself that I need support and care too – and can’t expect myself not to be affected or altered by stress.

Each time I feel grief-stricken and upset over my dad’s unwillingness to change his ways (and then guilty for feeling angry towards a cancer patient!), I remind myself to be gentle. I remind myself that I’m only human and am doing the best I can in this moment.

I remind myself of all the struggles I’ve overcome myself in the past 2 years – losing my home, losing my job, losing my health, losing my pet, living without a permanent home for 1.5 years straight – life has not been easy or stable and the effects of this must be taken into account. I remind myself of where I have been and where I am now, all that I’ve risen above thus far; I remind myself that I am a survivor. I’m stronger than I know, more capable than I believe, and no matter what happens, in the end I will always be ok. (And you will too. No matter what you’re going through).

We can be so hard on ourselves, so critical of where we’re at, feeling like it’s not enough, we’re not enough, we should be doing more, having more, being more. We compare ourselves to others who seem to be doing it all and being it all with ease and say, “Why can’t I just get with the program and be like that too?” But the truth is, if that person had been in your shoes, experiencing life exactly as you have up to this point, they would probably be right where you’re at too.

Self-compassion, forgiveness, and understanding will heal when we feel like we’ve lost it all. When we feel totally broken down and alone. We need this compassion to move forward, to heal and soothe our souls and to realise that where we are right now, wherever we are, is truly ok.

Time heals, things change and get better. They always do.

We are all doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, the life experiences we’ve been dealt, and the resources at our disposal. I am, you are, my dad is, we all are doing the best we can.

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I hope to come back to blogging and YouTubing more on a regular basis but please be patient if for a while it’s sporadic and I hope you understand.

I appreciate you being here reading my words and your commitment to keep on rising, as best you can. Good days and bad days, the whole bit. I’m right there with ya.

Hugs,
Diana