“ About 10 years ago when I was 27 my best friend died. It was really sudden. I was devastated because we were inseparable since kindergarten and it was a big shock. Within 6 weeks of that happening I found a lump in my breast. I had just split up with someone I thought was the one, dodged a bullet there. Anyway I was on my way to England when I found the lump. I had it checked and was told it was nothing so I sort of forgot all about it and a year later it felt like the size of a tennis ball. After a series of bungled biopsies It was finally diagnosed as breast cancer, grade 3 and really aggressive.
I left London and came back to Melbourne and because of the mishaps in the public health system in London they decided to do it all again so I went through the whole biopsy thing again and it was the same result. I had a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy which was horrific. I just could never go through that again. It was too much. I nearly died from tonsillitis and was in and out of hospital with all sorts of infections.
A year later I was working at Deacon Uni and I went to a conference in the US and I found a book that literally changed my life. I left work, packed up my car and ended up here. That was nearly 10 years ago. I really worked on getting healthy, spent days pouring over articles, walking the beach at Byron. I’ve been doing all I can health wise. The fresh air and availability of good food where is another reason I live here.
I went toThailand to do a detox and noticed all these people drinking a health drink called Kombucha so I came back and started my business, Yogi Beer. That was like my baby for the last 4 years. I just recently sold it because the last 12 months I started feeling unwell, I looked awful and it turns out it’s cancer. It’s back in my lymphatic system.
Initially it was thought that I had lymphoma caused by the chemotherapy I had had ten years ago – an entirely different malignancy to the original cancer. This news strengthened my resolve that I definitely would not go down the conventional treatment path again. That was in October and I’ve just been sort of hanging on the last 6 months, sold my business and I always had in mind that if it came back I would go to one of the holistic clinics in Mexico. The integrative oncology clinics in Mexico and in Germany have an entirely different approach. It’s the complete opposite – They’re all about boosting the struggling immune system so that the body can heal and repair, and they do this with a variety of treatments based on immunotherapy. This is all evidence and science based – it’s just not backed by pharmaceutical corporations and therefore not subsidised by the government. The success rate is about 75% and that’s with Stage 4 cancers.The problem is it’s about $40,000 and a friend suggested Gofundme. I’m a private person and was a bit worried but this is my life so I need to try.”