My attitude on cancer is – ‘Kick Ass and Take No Prisoners’. Each time I was diagnosed with cancer, I wanted cancer gone … and gone fast. I took control of my healing and became a warrior on a mission to win my battle. Make no bones about it. This was a fight for my life. If you have cancer you know what I’m talking about. It is a fight for your life. Especially in late stage cancer, it is paramount to become a warrior and build your army to fight and win.
If you have cancer you must believe your body is incredible and has the ability to heal, even in late stage cancer. My goal in sharing my cancer experience and what I did to get well is to inspire you to take control of your healing. Make decisions based on knowledge and faith, not on fear.
Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer the first time (almost 9 years ago) I was a junk and processed food junkie. I had so many warning signs through the years. My body was telling me to straighten up and take care of it. I did not listen. I was young and thought I was invincible. In my teens years I had hepatitis after taking bites from a piece of bologna my friend was eating. She had hepatitis and contaminated me. In my twenties I had a hernia in my stomach and a serious kidney infection (a medical doctor thought it was Ecoli). In my thirties I had signs of diabetes. Almost daily I was getting dizzy spells. One day I almost passed out and everything went black, so I went to an emergency walk in clinic. After taking a urine sample the doctor told me to see my family doctor immediately because he thought I had diabetes. Then, just after my first diagnosis of breast cancer, an optometrist diagnosed me with early signs of glaucoma. My left eye was blurry.
In my twenties and thirties I ate lots of processed fast foods, sugar products and drank lots of soda. I didn’t drink water because I didn’t like the taste. I suffered from constipation and an upset stomach most of my life. Flavored antacids were my candy of choice.
Emotionally I was a wreck. I grew up in fear because my father was an alcoholic who threatened my mother’s life constantly. My parents divorced when I was in high school and my father remarried and had my beautiful sister, Judith Barsi. She was a child actress with a promising career. When I was 30 years old, my father did the unimaginable. Child protective services were going to remove my sister from her home. My father couldn’t handle losing his little girl, so if he couldn’t have her, no one could. He killed my sister and my stepmother and he committed suicide. Just years later my brother Barna drowned. My mother and I are the only survivors in my immediate family. My mother was devastated and her devastation took a toll on me.
I’m sharing these personal details with you because I believe the emotional trauma I experienced contributed to my weakened immune system. I also believe I was vitamin and mineral deficient from the years of dietary abuse.
I never went to see a doctor about my diabetes scare because my brother had just died and I couldn’t handle more stress. The dizzy spells came more frequently and so did the shooting pains in my breast. Within a year, symptoms of breast cancer appeared including: inverted nipple and pucker or dimple next to the nipple. A needle biopsy confirmed breast cancer.
The surgeon recommended a mastectomy with radiation and chemotherapy. I agreed but with enormous hesitation. It’s hard to put into words how I felt. Under those current circumstances, without any doubt, I KNEW I was going to die, even with treatment. It’s a knowing that comes from deep inside and not from a place of fear. Surgery was scheduled a few weeks later. In the meantime, I began to research and learn about a healthy diet, immune building supplements and herbs and alternative cancer treatments. Someone told me about a program in California where people go to learn a healthy lifestyle while cleansing and detoxifying the body – CedarBrook. After speaking to Mary Ann, the director of CedarBrook, I felt like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew with certainty this was the right path for me to take. I cancelled my surgery and went to learn about natural health and cleanse my body. I give full details of my cleansing program and experience in my book, “Triumph Over Cancer, A Natural Approach”, available on this site.
Long story short, after one week at CedarBrook, I was armed with knowledge and confidence to do battle with cancer and win. For the first 30 days upon arriving home I juiced fresh organic vegetables. I ate raw vegetables during this time when I needed to feel the crunch of something in my mouth. During my research into healing the body naturally I came across many opinions about juicing carrots and cancer. Many people think there is too much sugar in carrots. I didn’t believe it, so the base of most of my vegetable juices was carrots. I always diluted my juices with some water.
After 30 days I felt fantastic. Also during the first 30 days, I learned about the Incurables Program, which included cleansing the liver, gallbladder, kidneys, bladder, colon and the blood. At CedarBrook I did the same type of cleanse, however, I decided to do it again during the first 30 days I returned home. I also did some powerful hydrotherapy treatments. Go to the top of the page and click on the ‘Hydrotherapy” for more details. The most powerful hydrotherapy treatment was the Cold Sheet Treatment. I still do Cold Sheet Treatments annually. After many Cold Sheet Treatments I eliminated a rope-like thing that looked like the shape of my colon. On it were 3 whitish looking balls like cocoons. The same evening I eliminated something that looked like a crab with 3 arms or legs on each side. It had the consistency of chicken fat, a fleshy sort of thing. The next morning I felt like I was 16 years old again. My natural healing protocol took about 10-12 hours a day to do. It was a lot of work. Looking back, I’m amazed I did it.
My blood test results a few years later were excellent and I felt great. For the first year I ate a vegan diet and then transitioned into a vegetarian diet. My weight stayed consistent between 125-130. I was so excited about feeling great and having witnessed the physical symptoms of the breast cancer disappear that I had to learn more. I studied to be an Herbalist and graduated from Dr. John R. Christopher’s School Of Natural Healing.
Then six years later my health took a turn for the worse!
The second battle with cancer. This time: Stage-4 Cancer
Seven months before I was diagnosed with cancer the second time, I went to CedarBrook for my annual total body cleanse. This year was different. I didn’t stay for the whole cleanse and left in the middle of doing a liver flush. HUGE mistake. The liver cleanse entails drinking olive oil with fresh squeezed lemons and garlic. In the past it’s been great because I stayed for the entire process and felt fantastic afterwards. This time I was under pressure from travel and work to cut my cleansing period short. Along with this, I was being given a large daily meal expense allowance. If you have already browsed my website you know that I am a compulsive overeater and I’ve struggled with it most of my life. I really thought I had control over my overeating, but I was wrong.
Long story short, because I cut my liver flush short, my liver became congested. It couldn’t act as a filter. Three months later, my system backed up badly and my digestive tract and colon were inflamed and felt like they were on fire. My mouth was even frothing from all of the acid. My skin broke out in lumps and bumps and my stomach filled with fluid. For weeks I had a fever.
This experience was much different than the first time with breast cancer. This time I burnt my digestive tract and colon up and had to begin the healing process there. I couldn’t eat anything or even juice. Remember, the first time I went right into cleansing my body and juice fasting. This time, within two weeks I dropped over 10 pounds.
Because of my Herbalist and natural health training I knew what to do immediately to heal my digestive tract and colon. I knew I had to cut the inflammation and heal the lining of my stomach and colon. So I took the following steps:
- I drank ¼ cup of very good Aloe Vera Juice 2 to 3 times each day for two weeks. Then I made Slippery Elm Gruel. I mixed 1 tablespoon of powdered slippery elm with ½ cup water and drank it 3 times a day.
- I took powdered probiotics to help replenish friendly bacteria into my system
- I drank miso soup for protein (I found it at a health food store), put sea salt (not white table salt) under my tongue and then drank water to give me minerals from being so dehydrated. I also put liquid ionic minerals in water.
- I drank nutritional healing broth made from organic vegetables (recipe in my books) and in the Lidle Café Recipes on the Healing Voice page of this website
- I ate some homemade chicken soup my mother made me.
Yes, you read it right. I was no longer a vegetarian. My mother insisted that I have her chicken soup. I ate it and enjoyed it so much. It’s about all I could eat during these two weeks. Amazingly, my stomach and colon felt pretty good after two weeks. The inflammation was gone. However, I still couldn’t eat much because my abdomen was continuing to fill with fluid.
I went to see a naturopathic doctor and he ran some blood tests (available at the top of this page under Medical Records). After a physical exam he confirmed the existence of fluid in my abdomen. The test results came back and they were alarming. I knew I messed up by clogging my liver, but I never thought cancer would grow so quickly. I wasn’t afraid of cancer because I knew the secret was to keep my immune system strong and stay on top of it. This time, my immune system was very weak, my blood was weak and very thick, my body was filled with inflammation (except my colon and stomach) and most of the cancer tumor markers were elevated (especially the ovarian tumor marker). I was also continuing to lose weight.
To top it off, my appetite was ravenous! I wanted to eat but couldn’t because of the fluid build up in my abdomen. And…all I wanted to eat was MEAT. For years, I felt like gagging when I saw meat, especially ribs. Here I was a vegetarian for years and now I was craving red meat. I told my husband to bring me a cow and a straw so I could drink the blood. That’s how much my body was crying for me to build my blood. I was anemic. Before I could get myself to eat meat I asked God to make it loud and clear that it was okay for me to do so. I closed my eyes and at random opened the Bible to a passage that said something like “I will make unclean meat clean for you”. Pretty cool huh! I believe God spoke to me loud and clear.
Bill, my husband (who is a wonderful, supportive husband) brought me home a medium rare hamburger almost every other day for weeks. It wasn’t a junkie fast food burger; it was high quality beef from a local restaurant, yummy! This was unusual for me to crave so much meat, so I got on the web and began researching why. This is the time I also began to learn more detail about blood tests and what they meant.
The naturopathic physician who ran the initial blood tests gave me a few herbal tinctures to move my lymphatic system. He also had me drink powdered turmeric in water (I couldn’t do too much because it nauseated me). I stopped seeing him because his office visits were getting too expensive. So, I began seeing a young naturopathic physician fresh out of school who gave me his full attention. I began weekly nutritional IV therapies and ozone treatment. My veins were so weak and thin that I could only go once a week.
I had to go to the hospital to have my abdomen drained every few weeks for several months. The medical oncologist I was seeing at the time kept pushing me to do exploratory surgery. The mammograms, ultrasounds, abdominal ultrasounds and MRI didn’t show too much abnormal. It wasn’t until I got a chest x-ray (cancer in my bones) and several biopsies on the bumps under my skin (including the Mayo Clinic) that the cancer diagnosis was made.
The medical oncologist gave me –maybe- two years to live. Well, that wasn’t good enough for me. Between my naturopathic physicians, another wonderful medical oncologist, an energy worker and a hypnotherapist, I was determined to beat this cancer again.
I listened to the CD my hypnotherapist made for me everyday, as many as 2-3 times a day or more. It’s the Healing Garden where I merged into my healthy body and saw my future. I’m telling you, this was the TURNING POINT this time around. I encourage you to try my Healing Garden CD. It’s so valuable. The key to accelerating healing is merging into your healthy body and feeling what it feels like to be healed and well.
To read more about the Healing Garden CD, go to my store page and click on Healing Garden.
A very good friend of mine had stage-4 lung cancer many years before I was diagnosed with cancer the second time. She went to Saint Marc’s Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. She got well. At that point I was hesitant about going to Mexico for treatment. I felt like I was finally beginning to make headway about 3 months into my healing program by doing everything I knew how to do. My abdomen was still filling with fluid, but after six times of draining the fluid, it was beginning to slow down. I knew I was beginning to climb back up the hill. It appeared I had begun to see the light at the end of this tunnel.
My friend and my mother convinced me to go to Saint Marc’s Hospital for a consultation with Dr. Hughes Bellevue, MD, PhD. My husband and I went down to Tijuana. Dr. Bellevue said all the right things and after a few hours of thought and visiting other clinics in the area, my husband and I made the decision for me to go through two weeks of his cancer protocol. Dr. Bellevue is a medical doctor and believes in treating cancer both traditionally, if he has to, and alternatively. His approach is a metabolic one. He attacks cancer from many angles while building a strong immune system.
Below are some of the pictures of the hospital and my experience with getting the pick line to work (it was a pretty terrible experience and I told Dr. Bellevue that if it didn’t work soon, I was going home. Finally after an hour, he got the IV to work). (Click on Pictures below to enlarge)
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