Before rushing to choose treatment based upon assumptions, it makes sense to get a second opinion on a diagnosis/prognosis regardless of where you receive your original diagnosis. Good practitioners encourage or at least cooperate with patients who want to seek second opinions. If your doctor does not cooperate but, instead, pressures you to hurry into treatment with their facility, that is all the more reason to seek a second opinion. Your medical records are yours and you are entitled to one free copy of every document including scans (the films or digital records–not just the reports). Look for physicians and treatment centers who have considerable experience in your specific diagnosed condition.
It makes sense to ask your oncologists (cancer doctor):
- what the cure (not the remission) rate (percentage) is for the treatment they are recommending–keep in mind oncology often discusses “success” that is defined as temporary shrinkage of tumors rather than eradication of tumors and most patients don’t realize this fact.
- where you can get specific information about the research that underlies the suggested treatment.
- if they would take the treatment if they were in your shoes
- what the side effects are common both now and later……keeping in mind that chemotherapy and radiation impact healthy parts of your body adversely immediately as well as years later
- how long the specific treatment has been in use and how many patients your doctor has personally and successfully treated in the recommended way
- what you can do with your nutrition and lifestyle to improve your recovery and the effectiveness of treatment (definitely get second opinions on the information given because medical schools focus primarily on physical aspects and you are a spirit with a mind living in a physical body and all three aspects are critical)
- if they will put you in contact with other patients they have successfully treated who would be willing to discuss their experience with you.
Patients who “beat” cancer are the ones who are aggressive in managing their own cases and who learn as much as possible about their own condition. Patients who “stand up and fight” are the ones who win. Those who passively accept their diagnosis/prognosis and submit to others for their recovery generally do not do as well. The best advice a physician (who was a friend) ever gave me after I was diagnosed with a rare type of pancreatic cancer, was, “You know you’ll have to be your own doctor in this”…..then she seemed to surprise herself and said, “eat lots of blueberries”…..a strange idea at the time but still the best advice I’ve received to date. Doctors are not trained in nutrition but she had read something somewhere and it just came out.
My book, Slam the Door on Cancer, is available at www.amazon.com and might be helpful to you. BEFORE rushing into surgery, chemotherapy or radiation, consider your options. BEFORE considering your options, it is key and critical to pray for guidance in making choices that will work WITH your “fearfully and wonderfully made” body rather than undermining its wonderful built in healing mechanisms.
A cancer diagnosis sends an electric shock through your body and fear opens the door to discouragement. If the enemy can keep you afraid or discouraged, he can demoralize you and erode your hope. Faith and hope cannot be separated. You will need faith to claim your healing. God’s Word is filled with healing promises. I recommend Charles Capps’ book, God’s Creative Power for Healing, to give you powerful Scriptural confessions to speak into your atmosphere.
Put on the full armor of God (Eph 6:11) especially the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit (God’s Word). You may feel very ill and think you cannot fight. You MUST and you CAN WIN……if you make up your mind to do so in full present tense faith rather than future tense hope you WILL WIN. You may question your unworthiness to be healed when so many who are prayed for are not. Sadly most prayers for healing do not follow Biblical instructions making them impotent. Jesus always spoke to the condition commanding it to come in line with true health. He told us to do the same not to beg God to do what Jesus has already done. (See Isaiah 53:5, Mt 8:17 and 1 Peter 2:24.) Beware of prayer lists.
You may have been taught it is not always God’s will to heal. Christ taught otherwise. We have wills too…..we have choices to make for healing just as we do for salvation. Deuteronomy 30:19 teaches “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life…..” You may think you haven’t “lived good enough” to deserve to be healed. Open the Bible and start reading what it says about healing…..the same thing it says about being saved.
Get your Biblically correct prayer warriors (not random prayer lists) praying first that you will be blessed with insight to make right treatment decisions and do it BEFORE starting treatment rather than jumping into treatment and then “adding prayer for good measure”. If you hurry, you may be praying against God’s will regarding your treatment. Surround yourself with people who believe in divine healing even if it means finding a new church. This is a life and death matter. What you and the people around you say will impact your faith for healing. Talk about “when you are cured” not “if you are cured”.
When you are at peace with a treatment path and you are certain you explored all the possibilities, never look back and never let a crack open in your heart faith. The enemy will work on your mind and try to convince you you can’t win….keep your heart focused in full faith. God’s Word keeps you focused. Have your friends and family read the Word aloud to you and with you. Speak it aloud to reverse the enemy’s curse on your life that has allowed disease an entry.
Know that even BEFORE you do anything else, you can start changing imbalances in your own body chemistry that will make your body inhospitable to cancer. Cancer cells happen in everyone periodically. Our immune systems can usually take care of them but sometimes persistent toxins (physical and emotional) break us down and weaken our ability to fight. Imbalances within our bodies occur and cancer can get a foothold and then a stronghold.
- Stop taking in toxins as much as possible:
- FORGIVE anyone you hold a grudge against and let go of ALL remorse, bitterness, self loathing, hate, etc. These are toxins that fester and literally eat your body alive.
- Eat ZERO sugar either in your food or added to it–read every label. SUGAR IS CANCER FERTILIZER! Do not drink prepared fruit juices, white bread or any other food that has a high glycemic index (converts quickly to sugar when digested). Use a little Stevia or Agave Nectar (organic) as natural sweetener.
- Eliminate caffeine and consume ZERO artificial sweeteners.
- Drink only purified water and lots of it. The consensus of my resources was home “distilled water”. You can purchase countertop distillers. Don’t worry about losing minerals from water. It’s something you can deal with otherwise.
- If you can’t get a home distiller right away, drink the best filtered water you can–NOT water in plastic bottles because they may have set in hot trucks for long periods of time and had plastic leach into the water. Get purified drinking water at a health food store in polycarbon jugs (not plastic).
- STOP taking in animal protein including meats and dairy products (except for yogurt, kefir or cottage cheese blended with organic cold pressed flax oil per the Dr. Budwig protocol). You need to make sure your cell walls are healthy so that wastes can be thrown off and nutrients can be taken in. The Budwig protocol (the cultured dairy makes the flax oil water soluble and easier for the body to use in repairing cell walls). Check our home page for informational websites.
- Avoid too much protein (like FDA food pyramid wrongly recommends). Cell wall health is undermined by too much protein. Animal based protein takes a lot of time and energy to digest and stays in GI tract a long time allowing absorption of more toxins. Meats and dairy are processed with many substances not meant for animal or human consumption. Read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell for more information.
- Eat lots and lots of vegetables–try to eat 70% or more of them raw–all colors. Eat lots of berries and a little bit of pineapple, mango, peaches. (Citrus converts too quickly to pure sugar.) You will get the enzymes, nutrients, fiber, protein (yes plenty), calcium, you need. A vegan diet is scripturally sound. Daniel Chapter 1, Genesis 1:29, Jeremiah 2:7a and more. Ezekial 4:9 brand breads and cereals use sprouted grains that are lower glycemic index and full of nutrients. Use unsweetened coconut, almond, or rice milk….organic. Coconut oil is a good butter substitute (don’t overdo it). USE ZERO margarine. Use ZERO vegetable oils other than olive oil and coconut oil for cooking (not too hot) and flax oil cold (salad dressings etc.)
- The vegetable diet will help you get your body from acid to alkaline and cancer cannot grow or thrive in an alkaline body. If you get off the “Standard American Diet” which is based on meat protein, you will be on the road to health which begins at the cellular level.
- Get all the fresh pure air you can and exercise to move oxygen to cells….cancer cannot thrive in well oxygenated environment. Budwig helps here too. Deep breathing exercises are very helpful.
- Avoid soy as it is extremely high in protein and controversial. If you are sick, why mess with something controversial.
- Eat absolutely ZERO prepared foods (boxed, processed, manufactured, etc.) Do NOT believe the label “all natural” means safe and healthy. It usually does not.
- As Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.” and “First do no harm.”
A great way to get toxins out and nutrients in is to make and drink fresh vegetable juice–first thing in the morning. Check out the directions in The Hallelujah Diet by George Malkmus. You can buy organic carrots in bulk at most super markets and there are a lot of juicers on the market. I got one at WalMart that will work a while longer…when I replace it, I’ll get a more “commercial grade” machine.
Take charge of your health, work WITH your wonderfully made body which is designed to heal. Make up your mind……”choose life” and “choose health”. Jesus took 39 stripes for our healing…Isaiah(53:4) said it, Matthew (8:17) Said it and Peter(1 Pet 2:24) said it. Isaiah said “by His stripes we WERE healed” and Peter said “ARE healed”…..Jesus said, “It is finished”–the curse was reversed. He did NOT hang on that cross so we could settle for “symptom management” or “temporary remission”. God wants his children well. Doubters will say, “Why did Paul have a thorn in his side?” and “Why did Paul have to ‘leave Trophimus sick in Melitum’?” Scripture does not say Paul’s thorn was a physical illness and Throphimus had a will too….we don’t know about his measure of faith at the time. People will say that Isaiah and Peter (cited above) mean “scriptural healing” rather than physical healing. Matthew 8:17 specifically refers to Isaiah’s prophesy and specifically says “infirmities” and “sickness”. Marilyn Hickey’s CD “Eight Ways God Heals” is tremendously encouraging and purely Scriptural. It has gotten me past many enemy attacks. www.mhmin.org is her website. Be Healed by Marilyn Hickey is an uplifting book as is Dodie Osteen’s Healed of Cancer or.
You can claim your blood bought healing and steward it with making right decisions about what you let into your body and what you clean out of your body. If you gain your health at the cellular level, your entire body will be healthy. As with salvation, healing is life changing and all to God’s glory. It is important to not return to the old unhealthy lifestyle and way of thinking or you can lose your healing. It is important to not let the enemy talk you into giving up your healing when symptoms re-visit. STAND UP AND FIGHT! No one else can do it for you….healing is a spiritual battle but you don’t battle alone. If a symptom tries to arise, command it off you “in the mighty name of Jesus”–the name above all things including every symptom the enemy can counterfeit.