Dear Salvatore,
Your technological display of openness is brilliant and inspiring: We should all have our own open source sites for what ails us. Sometimes cancer patients close down to the many cures or alternative therapies that friends and family offer because they are overwhelmed by the multitude of choices and perspectives. It seems that your invitation for open source cures has given you both the energy and input to fuel your next steps. It is at this stage of your healing that I might have a perspective to offer you. While I do not have brain cancer, I have had non-Hodgkins lymphoma since 1996, and live with cancer as an ongoing condition. Even though I have had two re-occurrences after my initial diagnosis, I also have had three remissions by using a combination of successful strategies, which include Yi Ren Qigong, surgery, raw food and colon cleansing.
Like you, each time I have faced my mortality with an occurrence of cancer, my creativity has also became catalyzed. Because my type of cancer may never be cured, Ive come to define the word cure as anyactivity or experience, which engages and vitalizes me. Ive ceased looking for The Cure and instead rely on daily self-cures. For example, I utilize raw food in my diet, not just because of its nutritional content, but also because its a more aesthetic way to live. The dense, delicious nourishment from massaged raw kale is attractive to my senses, which puts me in a positive feedback to eat more of it. Last weekend, I tromped through old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and bumped into Ganderma Lucidum, or reishi mushroom, while looking for other edible mushrooms. I will cut the reishi into slices and dehydrate them. Over the winter, it will be one of my many daily self-cures as I steep these slices in hot water and reflect on the grand hemlocks from which they emerged. Some might say that when I eat medicinal mushrooms, make sauerkraut or sit Zazen, I am doing self-care, but by directly participating in my healing, whether I am in remission or not, I feel I am doing self-cure. Doing that which makes me feel very, very alive is the only way I want to live.
I wish you every success with your brain surgery and recovery. I encourage you to trust yourself and follow your attractions to providers and therapies.
I am also an acupuncturist and chaplain. Please call on me if I can be of any assistance during this time.
