Essiac Essentials

recommended, without being given time and space to think it through. In that situation you usually forget that you are allowed to think and that you are entitled to time and space to do it in. You do not have to be carried away on the momentum of the system which is programmed to launch you into one of several narrow channels of prescription and therapy. You have your own state of shock to deal with and often that of your friends and family as well, all at a time when you least need it and decisions have to be made.
    Dr. Steen goes on to say that “spontaneous cures are cases in which the body has rejected the tumour, in much the same way as a transplant patient rejects a transplanted organ. This suggests that the patient's immune system can occasionally succeed in killing an established tumour.” A strong immune system activates the body’s natural advantage over radiation and chemotherapy treatment in that it can selectively eliminate the cancer cells while sparing the healthy, normal cells.
    It has been recognised that the immune system becomes suppressed when the body/mind is in a state of stress. Within the immune system there are a number of different cells, each with specific functions. One group of these cells is programmed, among other things, to detect and to dispose of the cancer cells which are continually being produced as part of your natural bodily processes. Initially, the body goes into the familiar shortterm, adrenaline-fuelled ‘fight or flight’ emergency response, shutting down all immediately non-essential functions, including the immune system. The chemical reactions released at the onset of stress ‘switch off’ the cancer-killing cells.
    The chronic stress situation resulting from an ongoing, semi-paralysed state of fear and shock reduces the blood supply to the brain and diminishes the ability to think and respond positively at a time when positive response may be your only active recourse. Impossible as it may seem at first, it is important for your health and wellbeing that you resume control of yourself and your life as quickly as possible. You are only as helpless as you think you are. You have not lost the capacity for joy. Everything else is purely circumstantial. All pain, anger, disappointment and grief depend only on your ability to hang on to those feelings, to give life to those emotions, to magnify their reality. Even a terminal diagnosis is simply ‘passing by’. Let it pass. Remember that you are still alive — healing can happen — and that it is possible to be grateful to the doctor who has presented you with a unique opportunity to grow in awareness as never before.
    It is important to understand exactly why your doctor is recommending radiation and chemotherapy. It is equally important to know whether you are being offered the treatment as a cure or simply as a palliative exercise. You have a right to know precisely the anticipated outcome of such treatment. Just as you should know exactly what herbs you are using and the possible outcome of the effect they may have, you must know what you are accepting when you agree to radiation and chemical therapies, and you must know if you are about to become a statistic on a drug trial. You don’t need to find yourself in a position where the ‘cure’ has become more life-threatening than the disease and, if you are not satisfied with what you are told, you should ask for a second opinion.
    Similarly you should question the necessity of a biopsy and/or radical surgery. If you are being advised a course of steroid medication, you should be made fully aware of the side effects of such treatment. High doses of steroids depress the immune system and leave you wide open to infection. Steroids may make you feel very unwell and do you no good at all. At the same time, steroids can reduce tumour size and bring relief from pain. So find out why it is being recommended and balance the anticipated benefits with the inevitable side effects.
    Persuade the doctor to let you begin on the smallest possible dose. Mali was told in 1993 by the doctor in the Veterans Hospital in Richmond, Virginia where her husband, Greg, was being treated for a brain tumour, that steroid medication “swells up the face, gives a voracious appetite and puts unnecessary weight on the torso. It wastes the muscles of the arms and legs, causes stomach ulcers and rots the pancreas. In high doses it can also account for behavioural problems and is addictive.