You Have To Start Somewhere

Right now, I really can't say I know very much about how diet affects tumor growth or spread. I know so little that I could sum it up in XYZ might be good for you and ABC might not. That's ok though. I'm not terribly bothered by that. This whole notion came to me one day while I was making myself something to eat and I began to think about all of the strange ingredients they put into food nowadays. Everything is so processed that it's ridiculous. Very rarely are things made from scratch, everything is premade in some fashion, to be whipped together in 10 minutes to make a meal. Unzip this package & nuke, throw the contents of this bag into a pan and fry - instant meal. It doesn't seem good. I really distrust this whole process of food being so altered before it reaches you, that you really have no idea what you are eating. I began thinking about chemotherapy and all of the toxic things they are putting into me and decided that while I am going to be enduring that onslaught of chemicals, that I would go out of my way to limit all other weird substances from my body. This meant to make a radical change in eating - stop consuming processed items and begin making things from scratch or eating whole foods. Now, I should say, I didn't have a bad diet to begin with. I am a vegetarian of 14 years, eat dairy sparsely, don't take sugar in my coffee or eat junk food. However, there is always room for improvement. And for me, in my current tug of war with cancer, I've really begun to think lately about what else I could be doing to better my odds of getting out of this thing alive. So, the idea came to me about trying to eat more honestly, with less help from manufacturing plants across north America. I was pretty sick one day after I had gotten home from the hospital - and I was thinking about getting some of those Thai noodle dishes they sell at the market to eat(Thai something or other - they are little noodle bowls, like healthy versions of ramen) since they are easy on my stomach. But then I thought about it, and this food is wrapped in a plastic packaging, with a flavor packet made up of god-knows-what and some oil thing of undisclosed nature. Then it hit me - I could probably make this myself at home. I looked up a recipe for Asian vegetable stock and it was very easy - some vegetables, garlic, ginger, and some oil and seasoning. That's it. All stuff I could go pick up in 10 minutes at the grocery store - and did. The noodles, well those would be hard to make from scratch and I had some in mind from the store - they were the ones in the Asian food section imported from Vietnam - and the two ingredients are rice and water. That seems pretty reasonable. So, there I took one step to say - here is some processed item with things in the ingredient list which I am not familiar, but I can find a way to make this from scratch at home. It just seems like a good idea - know what is going into your body. The world of western medicine doesn't truly know what the catalyst for cancer is in a many cases and I think that I'd feel a lot better now and that I'd be giving my body the best shot possible by adopting this new strategy of eating whole foods.

That was the initial spark for me - eliminating processed foods, start making things from scratch or eating whole foods. It began with a noodle bowl/broth dish and moved on to me making wraps from scratch and sweet potato fries. This was just a few days ago, but it's pretty easy I am finding to implement the new diet and I keep a list of "whole foods I can eat" where I jot down ideas as they come to me throughout the day and a list of "things to make" - which is kind of cool to think of things you have always bought premade (tofu, bread, etc) and begin making it on your own. Well, it wasn't long before thinking about my diet began to blossom and I began to evaluate some things I had heard about "cancer fighting foods". Now, off the bat I should say, I really have only heard about this idea on new-agey, feelgood, treehugger websites where they claim everything under the sun about raw food, juicing, etc and that it can cure your cancer. I'm skeptical - extremely skeptical. I'd like to say I agree, but cancer is a mess, especially my type - Ewing's Sarcoma - which grows so quickly that if left unchecked could gather your family and friends together quite soon for an outdoor event. I have no idea what causes cancer, but the great thing is - neither does medical science. I mean, they really have very little knowledge into cancer. Any doubts about this statement should be cleared up by how they treat it - they poison your entire body just to kill one thing. That is very clumsy science. And the side effects? Hair loss, sterility, digestion issues, heart problems, problems with other major organs, destroying your immune system - I brought this up to my oncologist and he agreed with me when I told him that in 100 years they would look back at how we treated cancer and gasp in horror. I likened it to drilling holes in peoples heads in early times to let out the bad spirits or blood letting to cure people of ailments. My oncologist nodded and referred to the current medical treatments for cancer as "barbaric" but also noted - it was all we have. I agree with him there, but you have to admit, for all the insane amount of money and research invested - we know almost nothing. So, while we know little about the causes of cancer, once it is in your body, raging like a wild boar - you have to deal with it. A part of my tumor showed up in my pectoral muscle as a small peanut size bump and within two weeks had reached the size of about 2/3 of an egg. That's how fast it grows. Now, I am not thrilled about pumping tons of awful chemicals into my body, but beet juice just wasn't going to cut it. So, I know I have to continue on with my treatments because there really isn't a plan B. However, my recent "eureka!" moment about my diet brought me to begin to think about the power of diet in preventing new cancer and halting the growth of my current tumor(s). So, here's where I begin, not knowing a lot, but really wanting, after about six months of feeling shell shocked and detached from my own health, to try to make a positive contribution to my body being rid of cancer. I'm now completely open to the idea of changing my diet to include foods that have cancer-fighting properties - phrases spring to mind like: eliminating free radicals, stopping inflammation, and apoptosis when thinking about what food and drink can do as an adjunctive therapy to chemo. So, I'm going to start researching what foods I should include and what to avoid and I'll follow all of my progress here. Initially, I was just going to use an old yellow legal pad for making lists and a folder to keep printouts of my findings, but I figure why not put it up here, using this medium, on the off chance that someone in my same situation may stumble across it and it may bring him or her some benefit. That -and I really don't have a ton to do with the wide open schedule that chemotherapy affords you - so it will give me a little project to work on. So, it begins here, with me knowing very little, but I'm sure within a week that will all change.