Part 1 My cancer journey – my health in my hands

My path took a dreaded turn last year, and yet I am very grateful to have experienced it all. My cancer was a wake up call. A reminder that life is precious and we can either struggle through blindfolded or choose the harder journey of self-discovery and self-love. So I am sharing my story, in the hope I can help others on their own quest for health.

making my hospital room a more nurturing, beautiful space

Part 1 of this blog is my medical story and how I made a choice to manage my own health. Part 2, out next week, will explain all the complementary and alternative therapies that together have changed the course of my life. And in Part 3, I will share what I’ve learned about us humans, and how it can help anyone with a chronic health issue, to look forward to a healthy and happy future.

My cancer diagnosis

Let me first tell you a little bit about what happened with me last year. In February 2019, I was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in 13 years. After my diagnosis, I was in a whirlwind of emotions – mostly fear of the unknown and terror that I would leave my kids (Maksim, who had just turned 9 the day before my diagnosis and Sofia who was 4). But also devastation that I would lose my breasts, and all the grief that goes along with that. My surgeon was very forceful in his recommendation that I have a double mastectomy –

considering I have the BRCA2 gene mutation, this was the second time I’d had breast cancer (at 28 and then 42), and I had been on hormonal treatment for 11 years (which clearly hadn’t worked!). While it was very hard to find my voice and speak up for myself, I had been through this 13 years ago and knew that this time, I needed things to be different. I needed to be in charge of my own health and make my own informed decisions from a place of knowing, not a place of fear.

My loving partner, Brad and I

Thankfully, my very supportive partner helped me step off the rollercoaster for long enough to breath. My tumour was only tiny – 5mm – so I took some time to visit an energy healer, who had helped many people get rid of their tumours and live long, healthy lives. I spent time in the ocean, time alone that I sorely needed, time looking at my past and present, looking at my thought patterns and sorting out what I could improve to live a healthier life. (This is an ongoing journey and I now believe, we all need to do this work if we want to stay well. And there are many ways to do it – more about this in Part 2.)

My own decisions

After a few months of close monitoring, the tumour continued to grow, so I decided to have a lumpectomy. Tumours begin growing 10 – 20 years before they are detected by our mammograms and MRIs. So I believe, while I was making amazing progress with my energy healing, it was just a little too late for my right breast. In the piece they removed, they found another tumour 2.5mm in size that hadn’t even been detected before (perhaps because of previous radiation to that breast). So I went back in for a mastectomy and left with a MRSE infection – hospital acquired and resistant to standard antibiotics.

The sickest part

feeling really sick and miserable in hospital with a post-op infection

The scariest thing about having a post-op infection, was that I might need another operation to clean out the infected tissue, and then be back at square one. After three more trips to hospital, severe pain and weeks of hard-core, IV antibiotics, I was close to breaking point. I had acquired a second infection in my gut, also from my time in hospital, and made worse by all the antibiotics… And they wanted to give me more antibiotics to fix it! That is when I took my health back into my own hands, listened to my body, stopped the IV antibiotics which were making me so sick – and I’ve not looked back.

On top of all that, if I hadn’t done my research, I would have been given chemo too. With my particular type of cancer and being the second time around, the research showed no survival benefit at all from chemo. And yet, the two oncologists I saw both would have treated me with chemo. Being able to find and interpret the latest, specific research saved me from months of sickness. And from my experience 13 years ago, the effects of chemo can last for many years to come.

How I got through cancer 

friends and family helped me through it all

The most important things I did for myself during this really hard time of physical pain and healing were these:

1. listening to my own body and following my intuition (through meditation and muscle testing)
2. taking my health into my own hands, getting informed and speaking up for my right to choose
3. accepting the love and support of my closest friends and family, who I could not have done this without.

How these points actually save lives

Interestingly, these concepts are not new, to me or many others who’ve been through a healing journey. In fact, they are common to all the cases of radical remission from terminal cancer studied by author Dr Kelly Taylor. The thousands she studied had been given weeks or months to live by their doctors, and all went on to heal themselves of cancer and live for many years. Her book, Radical Remission outlines all the things these people did in common, and it’s been my guiding light for years, but especially in 2019! While diet, supplements and herbal medicine are all present, it is the emotional healing tools that make up 2/3 of the book. They are:

1. using your intuition,
2. taking charge of your own health,
3. creating a spiritual connection,
4. social support and
5. healing emotional wounds.

my surprise personal concert in hospital from gorgeous friends, The Brothers Calling!

Read more about them in my blog – Emotional Health – your missing link?. If we focus only on Western medicine and physical treatments, we miss a great deal of what is crucial to our health and survival!

Another amazing case of radical remission is Anita Moorjani, who not only healed herself of terminal cancer – she actually came back to life! If you haven’t heard her amazing story of spontaneous remission, please check it out here! Or watch the documentary Heal on Netflix.

Join me next week for Part 2 of my cancer journey

a healing space, Gaia

I am truly inspired by these stories and look forward to sharing more of what I did and what I’ve learnt in my next 2 blogs. It has taken me a year to feel ready to move on with my life and be well – and it is something I work on every, single day! I used to think I could fix myself – now I know, I will be working on health and wellness for the rest of my life. I continue to learn new tools that are helping me be a happier person, a better mum and a more holistic healer.

Please feel free to contact me for more information or to book a Skype consult. Just email me on kate@ktsnutrition.com.