Gayle's Story (the full length version)
Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, and Metastatic Breast Cancer ~ A Testimonial To Macrobiotics
It is hard to say when it all started. I was a relatively healthy child, I think. I was active. I was slim. I had a wonderful wonderful grandfather who was a vegetable farmer, and grandmother who was an old fashion European style cook. That meant a lot of fresh vegetables that were unfortunately loaded with pesticides, and delicious freshly prepared homemade foods that were loaded with eggs, sugar, dairy, and animal fat.
I had a wonderful father who was a brilliant medical doctor. But what that meant, was antibiotics at the drop of a hat. For all of the common childhood ailments. And I got them all! There went my natural immune system!
By the time I was thirteen years old, at the onset of my first menstrual cycle, I developed a cyst on one of my developing breasts. It was large, painful, and draining. My father, and the family doctor were at a loss. They put me on antibiotics. Eventually it cleared up. Around this same time, my grandmother, the European cook, died a long, drawn out, horrible death from breast cancer. Watching my father and his colleagues unable to save her, was as painful as watching her death. That was my first memory of cancer. I was very young when my grandmother died, but her love of cooking was already deeply ingrained in me. (No pun intended!). I loved being in the kitchen with her.
Life got pretty wild after that. The teenage years. I got very caught up in the sixties and seventies. I practiced yoga. I became a vegetarian. Which simply meant that I no longer ate meat. But I still ate plenty of sugar and dairy! And I experimented with many recreational drugs while partaking in the free love ~ free sex movement as well. It was fun, and I was young and crazy. And indestructible so I thought.
During college, one of my friends got breast cancer. I was so busy partying that I really was not “there” for her. I couldn’t relate to how close to death she came. At some point during the course of her illness she was introduced to macrobiotics. I was still a “vegetarian”. I even managed some of the earliest health food stores and co-ops during those college years. But still, to me, at that young age, and in the height of my rebellious years, having to follow any rules at all, such as the “rules” associated with her macrobiotic diet, just didn’t work for me! Not knowing it yet, but in retrospect, and having always been a true “foodie” at heart, I was never the less fascinated with the exotic macrobiotic foods she began to use. I incorporated many of them into my diet, but that does not mean that I changed any of my bad girl habits! She got well though. And I filed that in the back of my mind, thinking that if I ever needed it, someday in the way distant future when I was old and gray, that I would change my diet to macrobiotics. That day, though unknowingly lurking around the corner, seemed lifetimes away.
Life continued. The partying continued. My diet fluctuated a great deal. At one point, I use nursing school as my excuse, I even began eating meat, eggs, pizza, chocolate candy, etc. During the cancer portion of nursing school we practiced breast exams. The student practicing on me actually found a very large lump in my right breast. The nursing instructor almost fainted when she felt it, and I was sent straight to a doctor. The doctor declared it to be a benign cyst. Mammograms were not prevalent back then, and I was only in my mid twenties, but I insisted on having it removed. Channeling my grandmother?? I was also way into western medicine at that point. The cyst was benign, and I falsely believed that it was a false alarm. I rocked on without missing a beat.
I then had a long and very stressful career as a nurse. About 12 years into my nursing career, I suffered a fall at work that resulted in a serious back injury. While being rehabilitated, I discovered a large lump in my left breast. A few of the doctors I worked with looked at it for me and said that it was probably a cyst. Something told me it wasn’t. I didn’t feel good. I was in terrible pain due to my back injury. I was weak. I was slightly overweight and very out of shape. Basically, I looked terrible. My hair was unhealthy. It was breaking off and falling out. I had a terrible case of colitis. I had blood in my stool and urine. I had dark blue black circles under my eyes. I was only 34 years old. And I was terrified. I just knew something was seriously wrong with me. But, I so wanted to believe those doctors, that I accepted what they said. I justified it by remembering the previous lump in my right breast that was benign. For two years, as I went through back rehab, I tried to ignore the lump. I kept reasoning with myself, that if it was cancer I would get much sicker (remembering my grandmother). I could not look at myself naked in the mirror, because I could see the lump sticking out. Then the skin around the lump began to pucker and wrinkle. Alarms went off in my head. Something told me I had to act. I mustered up all of my courage, and went to see the surgeon who took the first lump out years before. My father and my partner went with me.
The doctor immediately knew that it was cancer. He said gravely that it was “very advanced”. He was also suspicious that the back pain was metastases to my bones. I didn’t even tell him about the blood in my urine, etc. He said that I needed a bilateral radical mastectomy immediately. I was shocked to hear that. The lump was in the upper outer quadrant of my left breast, almost under my arm. I was like, hello, the lump is up here, and my now 36 year old breast is “down there”. And hello again, it has nothing to do with my right breast! Nothing had prepared me for the possibility of loosing one of my breasts, let alone two.
I walked out of his office in shock. I actually finally missed a beat! And I changed my ways. That very moment. I told my father that I had just finished paying off my car. I was really upset that I might die, and not get to use it without payments! And I told my husband that we had to become macrobiotic. He said, I am not sure what that is. I said, I know a little about it, and until we find out more we are not eating anything but brown rice, azuki beans, and miso soup. We started that night. Thank god for my college friend, and my years managing health food stores!
I also found another surgeon. He felt he could remove the lump, and all of the lymph nodes under my arm, while leaving my breast intact. There was a lot of drama. I had biopsies and MRI’s of the breast. The MRI lit up all over the place, resulting in more biopsies until it was finally determined that there really was only the one tumor. The lumpectomy proceeded.
During all of this, my partner, Jaime and I were very diligently following the macrobiotic recommendations the counselor I had found had given us. All of the medical aspects of my illness became rude interruptions to my newly begun macrobiotic practice. In fact, my macrobiotic practice was the one positive light, the light that kept me going throughout the entire terrifying medical ordeal.
I spent one night in the hospital for the lumpectomy, and Jaime brought me macrobiotic food that he had lovingly prepared. I just couldn’t wait to get home and continue my new way of life.
I saw how I had wasted the beautiful healthy body and life I had been given. I saw how I felt my body to be indestructible and my life to be endless. And I now saw the end of my life looming before me. It was the consciousness awakening people dream of finding, and I found it in an instant when I got cancer. I totally woke up. And in that waking up, I SO wanted to live. I wanted to live the new and healthy life that I saw before me that was full of exciting new possibilities in the pursuit of health. I wanted to make up for all of the years I had wasted. I actually “saw” my death. I saw my family at my funeral. I saw my parents glancing at their watch, impatiently wanting to get on with their life. After all. I was gone. There was nothing left to do. Life was going to go on, and I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be a part of it. An incredible will to live came over me.
So, after the lumpectomy, for about a week, I was in bliss, at home with my partner recovering, cooking and eating our macrobiotic food. It was all so great, until the pathology reports came back. The cancer had spread to 12 lymph nodes. My surgeon, who had been fairly positive going into the surgery, suddenly became seriously negative. His physicians assistant, who was about my age, literally started crying when he read the report. She looked at me as if I were already dead. I could see that they had lost hope.
By a fluke, the drains they had placed in my armpit and side after the surgery and intended to remove within the first week, drained such large amounts of lymph fluid, that they could not be removed FOR SIX WEEKS! And treatment could not begin until the drains were removed. The surgeon told me he had never had a patient need the drains in that long.
During those six weeks I gained a lot of ground, because I got to eat my macrobiotic food in relative peace. I mean, I was seeing doctors regarding my cancer treatment. But in between each doctor visit, in between each bone scan, cat scan, brain scan, as they scoured my body looking for more cancer, so sure it was lurking somewhere, I would go home and eat macrobiotic food, do body scrubbing, get shiatsu massage, walk on the beach and sing, and pursue all things healthy and macrobiotic. I would pour the lymph fluid out of my drains each night and visualize that I was emptying all of the cancer cells and impurities out of my body.
A particularly low day, was the day I went to a large medical center in Miami for treatment recommendations. The recommendation was a stem cell transplant that would require a several week hospital stay. I absolutely refused to do it on the grounds that I would not be able to follow my macrobiotic diet and lifestyle practices. And having been a nurse, I had a real aversion to prolonged hospital stays anyway! That doctor became very aggressive and threatened that if I walked out of there and did not get the stem cell transplant that I would be dead within 6 months, a year tops. I ran out of there with him screaming “you only have six months to live”.
I did find a somewhat non-threatening doctor who sat down with me, with his gigantic statistic book, and went over my odds of survival following his treatment plan. With all of the options available, (chemotherapy, radiation, and Tamoxifan) he brought my chance of survival for a mere 5 years all the way up to about 30%. That sounded terrible to me. But in a deft segue on my part, I quickly calculated that macrobiotics alone had to be worth at least another 75%, if not significantly more, and that brought my chance of survival up to over 100%. I didn’t discuss my macrobiotic practice with this doctor. Since macrobiotics is, simply put, pure REAL food. I couldn’t see how it would interfere with any medical treatment. And I really could not deal with any more negativity.
By this time, the drains had come out. I did not want to do any medical treatment. I had had a short glimpse of what health could feel like during those six weeks following the surgery. I followed macrobiotics to the best of my ability, and the results were awesome. My entire being transformed. Mentally and physically. I did not believe I would get sick again. But medically, statistically, due to the metastasis to my lymph nodes, (and not taking macrobiotics into consideration), I was slated to die. I had tremendous pressure from my family, from the doctors, and even from total strangers who had heard about my case, and were urging me to “do chemo”. Some of them other women who had had breast cancer. Some of them family members of women who had not survived. It touched me deeply that total strangers, macrobiotic and otherwise, would reach out to offer their support. My family also offered me a tremendous amount of love and support along with their pressure to do the medical treatment. My dear Aunt bought me every macrobiotic book in print and sent them to me every few weeks. I love her for that. I made a mental note: If I am allowed to live, I want to help others the way all of these people have helped me.
Yet still, not one person could definitively tell me what I should do.
I finally decided to do it all. I felt I needed to get rid of the cancer through all means possible. I really succumbed to fear and pressure, but I am glad that I did, because I have since come to understand, that my illness was so imminently life threatening, that while I was changing my diet and lifestyle to macrobiotics, and allowing my body to heal, I could have very well lost my life to the cancer that had invaded my body well before I had changed my ways.
During the chemo I had many experiences. I lost my hair. All of it. That was just devastating for me. I could no longer hide the reality of my situation from myself or the world. I realized then that appearances do matter. Not in the vain way that I had formerly thought, but in a good way. If I was to be the macrobiotic cancer survivor I was visualizing, I had to look the part. I had to emulate good health. And I could not do that bald!
Curiously, during the course of the chemo, while following my macrobiotic practice diligently, I was constantly told “how great I looked”. I considered that, was it possible, that the chemo was helping me to look better? In hindsight, and after many years of working with people undergoing chemo and not eating macrobiotically, I see the devastating effects of the chemo, and know that the reason I looked so “great” back then, was entirely due to my macrobiotic practice. I still get a good chuckle out of that memory. How naïve I was. I guess I just could not believe the power of REAL food.
I had a strict plan for undergoing the chemo. I was intent on not taking any drugs other than the chemo, and I stuck to it. Macrobiotics brought me through the chemo well. I was so busy re-arranging and re-prioritizing my entire life, my kitchen, all of my food, converting my electric stove to gas, pulling up the carpet and replacing it with tile, feng shui-ing my entire home, putting green plants everywhere, that I barley had time to even think about being sick. I would take quick breaks to run to the doctor for chemo, and then return home to resume my total immersion into my macrobiotic practice. I had none of the complications associated with chemotherapy to my doctors’ great surprise. I had gone in so much sicker than most of the other patients, and had sailed through it so much better. It was difficult though. Make no mistake. I knew I never wanted to go through that again. I vowed to be macrobiotic forever.
As soon as that year of surgery and treatment was over I had my first opportunity to go to the Kushi Institute to learn more formally about macrobiotics. That opened many doors. A world of friends, teachers, and information awaited me there, along with many survivors of a huge array of medically insurmountable health issues, and a constant support system to this day.
Everyone has asked me all of these years, “what my doctors say about macrobiotics”. I always answered the same: I never discussed it with them. It is not their area of expertise.
Well, 15 years after my cancer diagnosis, I ran into one of my doctors. The “chemo” doctor. He couldn’t believe how “great I looked”! We are about the same age, and I believe his exact words were: It isn’t fair that you look so good. Then he said, I have heard about you. I have heard about what you do. (My illness and subsequent macrobiotic practice morphed into a business that my partner and I run called Wholly Macro. We cook macrobiotic food privately and for home delivery, do shiatsu massage, teach cooking classes, lecture, and consult for people from all walks of life, from the very ill, to the elderly, to busy families and professionals). Tell me about your business the chemo doctor said. He turned up his nose when I described it as a health food oriented. When I mentioned macrobiotics specifically he really squirmed. I explained to him what macrobiotics is and how delicious the food is.
I mean, hey. I used to dabble in art during college. I used flax seed oil for my oil paints. Chia seeds were the ch ch ch chia pet advertised on TV. And I smoked hemp. Who would have thought I would be eating them now, along with all of the other healthy foods the macrobiotic diet encompasses!
Anyway, my doctor said, “I have to admit Gayle, I did not expect you to make it. In fact, none of the patients I have ever treated with your stage of cancer are alive today. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think that your diet must have made the difference”. So now, 15 years later, I have a new answer to the age old question “what do your doctors think”. I just love that!! I especially love the fact that it was a totally unsolicited experience and that I am the living proof of the truth of the power macrobiotics holds in assisting the body in the healing process.
And while I feel we are surrounded in this world, by a general population in progression towards degeneration, (just take a look around), I find my many macrobiotic friends to be moving towards regeneration, relatively unburdened by the numerous ailments that are so common in these times. I have had to make another mental note: since it took me at least half of my life to become sick, I feel that I owe it to my newly found self, the person I “found” because of my illness, to spend the rest of my life becoming more and more well each day, always expanding my health, knowledge, vitality, and understanding, while dancing this great, macrobiotic dance of life. The fact that I can dance is a miracle in itself, considering that I could barely even walk when I first got sick.
I am, by the way, totally cancer free, and on no medication at all. And still macrobiotic. I always will be. I am far from perfect. I still have minor health issues here and there. But I am alive, and I owe my life to macrobiotics, and to all of the wonderful macrobiotic friends and teachers who so selflessly devote their lives to its study, and to helping people like me find their way back to life.
It is hard to say when it all started. I was a relatively healthy child, I think. I was active. I was slim. I had a wonderful wonderful grandfather who was a vegetable farmer, and grandmother who was an old fashion European style cook. That meant a lot of fresh vegetables that were unfortunately loaded with pesticides, and delicious freshly prepared homemade foods that were loaded with eggs, sugar, dairy, and animal fat.
I had a wonderful father who was a brilliant medical doctor. But what that meant, was antibiotics at the drop of a hat. For all of the common childhood ailments. And I got them all! There went my natural immune system!
By the time I was thirteen years old, at the onset of my first menstrual cycle, I developed a cyst on one of my developing breasts. It was large, painful, and draining. My father, and the family doctor were at a loss. They put me on antibiotics. Eventually it cleared up. Around this same time, my grandmother, the European cook, died a long, drawn out, horrible death from breast cancer. Watching my father and his colleagues unable to save her, was as painful as watching her death. That was my first memory of cancer. I was very young when my grandmother died, but her love of cooking was already deeply ingrained in me. (No pun intended!). I loved being in the kitchen with her.
Life got pretty wild after that. The teenage years. I got very caught up in the sixties and seventies. I practiced yoga. I became a vegetarian. Which simply meant that I no longer ate meat. But I still ate plenty of sugar and dairy! And I experimented with many recreational drugs while partaking in the free love ~ free sex movement as well. It was fun, and I was young and crazy. And indestructible so I thought.
During college, one of my friends got breast cancer. I was so busy partying that I really was not “there” for her. I couldn’t relate to how close to death she came. At some point during the course of her illness she was introduced to macrobiotics. I was still a “vegetarian”. I even managed some of the earliest health food stores and co-ops during those college years. But still, to me, at that young age, and in the height of my rebellious years, having to follow any rules at all, such as the “rules” associated with her macrobiotic diet, just didn’t work for me! Not knowing it yet, but in retrospect, and having always been a true “foodie” at heart, I was never the less fascinated with the exotic macrobiotic foods she began to use. I incorporated many of them into my diet, but that does not mean that I changed any of my bad girl habits! She got well though. And I filed that in the back of my mind, thinking that if I ever needed it, someday in the way distant future when I was old and gray, that I would change my diet to macrobiotics. That day, though unknowingly lurking around the corner, seemed lifetimes away.
Life continued. The partying continued. My diet fluctuated a great deal. At one point, I use nursing school as my excuse, I even began eating meat, eggs, pizza, chocolate candy, etc. During the cancer portion of nursing school we practiced breast exams. The student practicing on me actually found a very large lump in my right breast. The nursing instructor almost fainted when she felt it, and I was sent straight to a doctor. The doctor declared it to be a benign cyst. Mammograms were not prevalent back then, and I was only in my mid twenties, but I insisted on having it removed. Channeling my grandmother?? I was also way into western medicine at that point. The cyst was benign, and I falsely believed that it was a false alarm. I rocked on without missing a beat.
I then had a long and very stressful career as a nurse. About 12 years into my nursing career, I suffered a fall at work that resulted in a serious back injury. While being rehabilitated, I discovered a large lump in my left breast. A few of the doctors I worked with looked at it for me and said that it was probably a cyst. Something told me it wasn’t. I didn’t feel good. I was in terrible pain due to my back injury. I was weak. I was slightly overweight and very out of shape. Basically, I looked terrible. My hair was unhealthy. It was breaking off and falling out. I had a terrible case of colitis. I had blood in my stool and urine. I had dark blue black circles under my eyes. I was only 34 years old. And I was terrified. I just knew something was seriously wrong with me. But, I so wanted to believe those doctors, that I accepted what they said. I justified it by remembering the previous lump in my right breast that was benign. For two years, as I went through back rehab, I tried to ignore the lump. I kept reasoning with myself, that if it was cancer I would get much sicker (remembering my grandmother). I could not look at myself naked in the mirror, because I could see the lump sticking out. Then the skin around the lump began to pucker and wrinkle. Alarms went off in my head. Something told me I had to act. I mustered up all of my courage, and went to see the surgeon who took the first lump out years before. My father and my partner went with me.
The doctor immediately knew that it was cancer. He said gravely that it was “very advanced”. He was also suspicious that the back pain was metastases to my bones. I didn’t even tell him about the blood in my urine, etc. He said that I needed a bilateral radical mastectomy immediately. I was shocked to hear that. The lump was in the upper outer quadrant of my left breast, almost under my arm. I was like, hello, the lump is up here, and my now 36 year old breast is “down there”. And hello again, it has nothing to do with my right breast! Nothing had prepared me for the possibility of loosing one of my breasts, let alone two.
I walked out of his office in shock. I actually finally missed a beat! And I changed my ways. That very moment. I told my father that I had just finished paying off my car. I was really upset that I might die, and not get to use it without payments! And I told my husband that we had to become macrobiotic. He said, I am not sure what that is. I said, I know a little about it, and until we find out more we are not eating anything but brown rice, azuki beans, and miso soup. We started that night. Thank god for my college friend, and my years managing health food stores!
I also found another surgeon. He felt he could remove the lump, and all of the lymph nodes under my arm, while leaving my breast intact. There was a lot of drama. I had biopsies and MRI’s of the breast. The MRI lit up all over the place, resulting in more biopsies until it was finally determined that there really was only the one tumor. The lumpectomy proceeded.
During all of this, my partner, Jaime and I were very diligently following the macrobiotic recommendations the counselor I had found had given us. All of the medical aspects of my illness became rude interruptions to my newly begun macrobiotic practice. In fact, my macrobiotic practice was the one positive light, the light that kept me going throughout the entire terrifying medical ordeal.
I spent one night in the hospital for the lumpectomy, and Jaime brought me macrobiotic food that he had lovingly prepared. I just couldn’t wait to get home and continue my new way of life.
I saw how I had wasted the beautiful healthy body and life I had been given. I saw how I felt my body to be indestructible and my life to be endless. And I now saw the end of my life looming before me. It was the consciousness awakening people dream of finding, and I found it in an instant when I got cancer. I totally woke up. And in that waking up, I SO wanted to live. I wanted to live the new and healthy life that I saw before me that was full of exciting new possibilities in the pursuit of health. I wanted to make up for all of the years I had wasted. I actually “saw” my death. I saw my family at my funeral. I saw my parents glancing at their watch, impatiently wanting to get on with their life. After all. I was gone. There was nothing left to do. Life was going to go on, and I wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be a part of it. An incredible will to live came over me.
So, after the lumpectomy, for about a week, I was in bliss, at home with my partner recovering, cooking and eating our macrobiotic food. It was all so great, until the pathology reports came back. The cancer had spread to 12 lymph nodes. My surgeon, who had been fairly positive going into the surgery, suddenly became seriously negative. His physicians assistant, who was about my age, literally started crying when he read the report. She looked at me as if I were already dead. I could see that they had lost hope.
By a fluke, the drains they had placed in my armpit and side after the surgery and intended to remove within the first week, drained such large amounts of lymph fluid, that they could not be removed FOR SIX WEEKS! And treatment could not begin until the drains were removed. The surgeon told me he had never had a patient need the drains in that long.
During those six weeks I gained a lot of ground, because I got to eat my macrobiotic food in relative peace. I mean, I was seeing doctors regarding my cancer treatment. But in between each doctor visit, in between each bone scan, cat scan, brain scan, as they scoured my body looking for more cancer, so sure it was lurking somewhere, I would go home and eat macrobiotic food, do body scrubbing, get shiatsu massage, walk on the beach and sing, and pursue all things healthy and macrobiotic. I would pour the lymph fluid out of my drains each night and visualize that I was emptying all of the cancer cells and impurities out of my body.
A particularly low day, was the day I went to a large medical center in Miami for treatment recommendations. The recommendation was a stem cell transplant that would require a several week hospital stay. I absolutely refused to do it on the grounds that I would not be able to follow my macrobiotic diet and lifestyle practices. And having been a nurse, I had a real aversion to prolonged hospital stays anyway! That doctor became very aggressive and threatened that if I walked out of there and did not get the stem cell transplant that I would be dead within 6 months, a year tops. I ran out of there with him screaming “you only have six months to live”.
I did find a somewhat non-threatening doctor who sat down with me, with his gigantic statistic book, and went over my odds of survival following his treatment plan. With all of the options available, (chemotherapy, radiation, and Tamoxifan) he brought my chance of survival for a mere 5 years all the way up to about 30%. That sounded terrible to me. But in a deft segue on my part, I quickly calculated that macrobiotics alone had to be worth at least another 75%, if not significantly more, and that brought my chance of survival up to over 100%. I didn’t discuss my macrobiotic practice with this doctor. Since macrobiotics is, simply put, pure REAL food. I couldn’t see how it would interfere with any medical treatment. And I really could not deal with any more negativity.
By this time, the drains had come out. I did not want to do any medical treatment. I had had a short glimpse of what health could feel like during those six weeks following the surgery. I followed macrobiotics to the best of my ability, and the results were awesome. My entire being transformed. Mentally and physically. I did not believe I would get sick again. But medically, statistically, due to the metastasis to my lymph nodes, (and not taking macrobiotics into consideration), I was slated to die. I had tremendous pressure from my family, from the doctors, and even from total strangers who had heard about my case, and were urging me to “do chemo”. Some of them other women who had had breast cancer. Some of them family members of women who had not survived. It touched me deeply that total strangers, macrobiotic and otherwise, would reach out to offer their support. My family also offered me a tremendous amount of love and support along with their pressure to do the medical treatment. My dear Aunt bought me every macrobiotic book in print and sent them to me every few weeks. I love her for that. I made a mental note: If I am allowed to live, I want to help others the way all of these people have helped me.
Yet still, not one person could definitively tell me what I should do.
I finally decided to do it all. I felt I needed to get rid of the cancer through all means possible. I really succumbed to fear and pressure, but I am glad that I did, because I have since come to understand, that my illness was so imminently life threatening, that while I was changing my diet and lifestyle to macrobiotics, and allowing my body to heal, I could have very well lost my life to the cancer that had invaded my body well before I had changed my ways.
During the chemo I had many experiences. I lost my hair. All of it. That was just devastating for me. I could no longer hide the reality of my situation from myself or the world. I realized then that appearances do matter. Not in the vain way that I had formerly thought, but in a good way. If I was to be the macrobiotic cancer survivor I was visualizing, I had to look the part. I had to emulate good health. And I could not do that bald!
Curiously, during the course of the chemo, while following my macrobiotic practice diligently, I was constantly told “how great I looked”. I considered that, was it possible, that the chemo was helping me to look better? In hindsight, and after many years of working with people undergoing chemo and not eating macrobiotically, I see the devastating effects of the chemo, and know that the reason I looked so “great” back then, was entirely due to my macrobiotic practice. I still get a good chuckle out of that memory. How naïve I was. I guess I just could not believe the power of REAL food.
I had a strict plan for undergoing the chemo. I was intent on not taking any drugs other than the chemo, and I stuck to it. Macrobiotics brought me through the chemo well. I was so busy re-arranging and re-prioritizing my entire life, my kitchen, all of my food, converting my electric stove to gas, pulling up the carpet and replacing it with tile, feng shui-ing my entire home, putting green plants everywhere, that I barley had time to even think about being sick. I would take quick breaks to run to the doctor for chemo, and then return home to resume my total immersion into my macrobiotic practice. I had none of the complications associated with chemotherapy to my doctors’ great surprise. I had gone in so much sicker than most of the other patients, and had sailed through it so much better. It was difficult though. Make no mistake. I knew I never wanted to go through that again. I vowed to be macrobiotic forever.
As soon as that year of surgery and treatment was over I had my first opportunity to go to the Kushi Institute to learn more formally about macrobiotics. That opened many doors. A world of friends, teachers, and information awaited me there, along with many survivors of a huge array of medically insurmountable health issues, and a constant support system to this day.
Everyone has asked me all of these years, “what my doctors say about macrobiotics”. I always answered the same: I never discussed it with them. It is not their area of expertise.
Well, 15 years after my cancer diagnosis, I ran into one of my doctors. The “chemo” doctor. He couldn’t believe how “great I looked”! We are about the same age, and I believe his exact words were: It isn’t fair that you look so good. Then he said, I have heard about you. I have heard about what you do. (My illness and subsequent macrobiotic practice morphed into a business that my partner and I run called Wholly Macro. We cook macrobiotic food privately and for home delivery, do shiatsu massage, teach cooking classes, lecture, and consult for people from all walks of life, from the very ill, to the elderly, to busy families and professionals). Tell me about your business the chemo doctor said. He turned up his nose when I described it as a health food oriented. When I mentioned macrobiotics specifically he really squirmed. I explained to him what macrobiotics is and how delicious the food is.
I mean, hey. I used to dabble in art during college. I used flax seed oil for my oil paints. Chia seeds were the ch ch ch chia pet advertised on TV. And I smoked hemp. Who would have thought I would be eating them now, along with all of the other healthy foods the macrobiotic diet encompasses!
Anyway, my doctor said, “I have to admit Gayle, I did not expect you to make it. In fact, none of the patients I have ever treated with your stage of cancer are alive today. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think that your diet must have made the difference”. So now, 15 years later, I have a new answer to the age old question “what do your doctors think”. I just love that!! I especially love the fact that it was a totally unsolicited experience and that I am the living proof of the truth of the power macrobiotics holds in assisting the body in the healing process.
And while I feel we are surrounded in this world, by a general population in progression towards degeneration, (just take a look around), I find my many macrobiotic friends to be moving towards regeneration, relatively unburdened by the numerous ailments that are so common in these times. I have had to make another mental note: since it took me at least half of my life to become sick, I feel that I owe it to my newly found self, the person I “found” because of my illness, to spend the rest of my life becoming more and more well each day, always expanding my health, knowledge, vitality, and understanding, while dancing this great, macrobiotic dance of life. The fact that I can dance is a miracle in itself, considering that I could barely even walk when I first got sick.
I am, by the way, totally cancer free, and on no medication at all. And still macrobiotic. I always will be. I am far from perfect. I still have minor health issues here and there. But I am alive, and I owe my life to macrobiotics, and to all of the wonderful macrobiotic friends and teachers who so selflessly devote their lives to its study, and to helping people like me find their way back to life.