Not many of us have the opportunity to give back to our parents the favors and the gifts that they have offered us. I feel honored/grateful/blessed to be able to share the story of how my diagnosis and healing journey has interwoven with my mother’s and how the lessons she taught me as a child, and the graces she gave me when I was sick and struggling shaped my entire life in a way that I believe came full circle and allowed me to help save her life, the way she saved mine.
When I was 5 years old, I started to not feel well and my body hurt all the time. I recall the first time I woke up in pain. For some reason, I couldn’t walk down the stairs any more. I had to sit, and go down one stair at a time. It is baffling as a child, feeling aches and pains throughout your body when you’ve never felt anything like that before. It was strange, I remember feeling confused. I didn’t have reasoning skills yet nor any knowledge or understanding of disease. I was always able to move, then one day, I couldn’t.
My mom took me to the doctors and they thought maybe it was Lyme disease, but were uncertain as tests were coming up negative. I spent 10 days in the hospital that included a lot of blood draws, scans, and painful procedures like a bone marrow biopsy that I woke up in the middle of. All to no avail. My mom, as a single parent, started bringing me to top hospitals trying to find an answer including Boston Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Visits included more medical experts, scans, and bloodwork. They finally determined that I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA).
The medical system treated me as best they knew how, which was with anti-inflammatories and monitoring. Unfortunately these medications had side effects and I began having secondary health issues, which led to me taking even more medication. My mother was concerned because I was so sick. I hadn’t grown in a year. This was when I was in first grade. I remember a time when I could barely stand. I also remember having a jump rope and wishing that I could play with it. My mom tried various things including religious healing, which despite my lack of understanding, did help me. I had about 3 months of relief from the pain and was able to build back some strength. I recall the great feeling of accomplishment when I reached my goal of jumping rope 100 times! But then I became sick again. Well, I was still sick all along…I just had a break from the symptoms.
Then, my mom’s best friend from high school, Carol, told my mom about a naturopathic doctor who she knew and thought might be able to help me. My mom was open-minded and courageous enough to give anything a try. Back in the early 80’s holistic medicine was even more questioned in its validity than today, so this wasn’t a recommended path by any conventional means. My mom didn’t have money at the time and Carol graciously paid for me to see Dr. DeVaux.
It required me choosing to change my diet, take supplements, and to see him every couple of months for a visit. Now, for a 7 year old, a full-on dietary change and adding 28 pills a day to your life might be considered undesirable and impossible. But for me, it was an opportunity to take care of myself and not have to (hopefully) experience more needles. Our deal was that as long as there were no needles, I would give it a try. My mom gave me the choice. She shared this story with me because I didn’t recall it, but when we left my first appointment with Dr. DeVaux I told her I didn’t want to do it. She reminded me that with my condition and the state I was in, it was very possible that I would end up in a wheelchair and continue to be in a lot of pain. She said, “I’m not going to fight with you about what to eat and to take your pills, but if you decide you want to do this, I will support you. I’m not going to make the decision for you, you need to do it yourself.” To which I responded, “I’ll think about it.” Later on I went to her and told her I was willing to give it a try.
When my mom and I chose to commit to the holistic route in 1985, little did we know this would shape and determine the course of both of our lives in a very impactful way. She faced a lot of pushback. The family did not support the decision. My mom’s family thought that she was doing the wrong thing. She had also made the mistake of telling the medical doctors that she was taking me off of my medications, and they told her that if she did that, they would report her to child protective services. They threatened her and told her, “we’ll have her taken away from you if you do that.” What that experience taught her: don’t show all your cards. It didn’t scare her away from the process. She was courageous in moving forward because she saw that what they were doing with me wasn’t working. Thank God that as a child I had the wisdom to commit to healing myself and thank God my mom had the graciousness to give me the opportunity to do so. Most of you know the end of the story. I made a full recovery and I’ve been able to live a healthy life filled with playing sports, exercising, and freedom from physical pain. This of course is what inspired me to pursue an education in holistic health and healing in 2002 and to eventually open my own wellness center in 2011.
Fast forward 34 years to 2019 and my mom found herself facing a diagnosis of stage 4 kidney cancer. I’m not a parent, but I can only imagine the fear and pain associated with watching your child struggle with a degenerative autoimmune disease. When I was witnessing my mom go through her diagnosis, I felt like I was going through the experience with her. She was 61, she was tired, stressed out in her job, had been smoking for 45 years, and although she took many supplements per my recommendations, she was not “healthy”. I recall the process of slowly learning what was going on with her body and why she was experiencing the symptoms she was experiencing.
I recall the moment of diagnosis and the doctor’s reactions and their recommendations for her. They offered no hope. They told her that this disease does not ever go away and that once you have it, it is in your body and it will kill you. Now, when I was young, I was told I needed to be on anti-inflammatories for the rest of my life and that this was a disease I’d have to live with forever. So we had already received the gift of awareness that with choice comes an opportunity. And what I mean by that is, where there is the choice to become empowered and to care for your body, there IS an opportunity to heal and recover. We were also blessed in the sense that it was stage 4, because if it had been stage 1 or 2, it might not have scared her enough to do what she needed to do to become well. Literally facing death and simultaneously opposing the societal norms of not choosing the Western medical path is not easy. Opposing your family’s wishes for you to follow the doctor’s orders is not easy. Opposing the recommendations of the Western medical machine and the American Medical Association is not easy.
Their proposed option was immunotherapy. The doctors informed us that they don’t even do chemotherapy with this type of cancer and that it was not effective. The doctor explained that this was pretty much her only hope for extending her life. Not hope for healing or recovering, only extending her life. And this immunotherapy came with many potential side effects, a lot of them severe, including autoimmune reactions throughout her whole body. She already felt weak. The tumor on her kidney was 12cm, and it’s shocking to think something that large existed inside her body and she didn’t even realize it. To her, she was looking at a death sentence and she knew that she wanted her remaining time to be as productive and “normal” as possible. One of the side effects that they shared with her was that her hands and feet will feel like she’s walking on or touching shards of glass, and the only way to alleviate that is to not move or touch anything.
For any of you who know my mom, she is a very active person and loves to do things. So for her, these side effects were not worth experiencing if it was still only going to lead to the same end. The family was strongly encouraging her to just do what the doctors say. On the side, we were having many conversations on our own about choices and options. Of course because I had owned a wellness center for 8 years at this point, we discussed the holistic option, which was to support her body in becoming healthy and allow her own immune system to clear the dis-ease. The first step the doctors were recommending was surgery to remove the tumor, and although I was apprehensive and concerned that it could potentially spread the cancer and make things worse, she knew in her gut that this was the best option. She had been wavering on the decision and by that time we were already in communication with Hope4Cancer in Cancun, Mexico; an alternative cancer treatment center that uses minimally invasive advanced technologies to help restore the body’s balance and support the immune system in being strong enough to fight cancer with minimal side effects.
This endeavor was not cheap and would require an investment of the full lump sum of her retirement. She struggled with the decision to spend this money as she felt it very well may be a hopeless cause and that she would die anyway. She struggled with the thought that if she chose this option and died, the family would not forgive me for encouraging her to choose this path. But you see, in her mind, there were only two options because she wasn’t going to do the immunotherapy, and the family didn’t really know this. It was going to be either: allow the dis-ease to take over her body and leave that $50,000 for me when she passes, OR to give it a try to heal.
I remember the conversation as if it were yesterday, sitting at the kitchen table in her home. It brings tears to my eyes because she almost didn’t choose to save herself so that she could leave her retirement for me. I said, “mom, I would pay $50,000 to have you one more day, that money means nothing”, and I think she heard me. We had the surgery scheduled. The Hope4Cancer advisors felt this was a good decision and that she would be stronger, and that it would be less for her body to try to overcome. So the plan then became to have the tumor removed, recover for 2-3 weeks, and then fly to Cancun to start treatment. I was so relieved. Despite resistance from family members, we had a meeting and it was made clear, this was her decision and we needed their support, whether they agreed with it or not. Family and friends came together in so many amazing ways to help. And God blessed us with all the tools and all the people that were needed to eventually help her heal.
Just like she gave me the opportunity to choose what course I wanted to take when I was little, I gave her the opportunity as well. I told her, “I will help you with this, but I’m not going to fight with you about taking supplements, changing your diet, or doing protocols. I can’t want this more than you, so you’Il need you to be 100% in and I need you to do everything I recommend, or I can’t help you.” And just like I said to her when I was 7, she told me, “I’ll think about it.” Not long after, she decided she was willing and ready, and the karmic cycle was set into the final phase of its existence.
When we first discovered that there was a tumor, we immediately changed her diet, stopped coffee (which can put a lot of strain on the kidneys), started doing detox foot baths (to take workload off the kidneys), and I told her it’s time to quit smoking. I prayed to God for the right practitioner to help her, because I knew this could make or break things. The most perfect hypnotherapist for my mom came up in a google search when we were in Philadelphia, and he just so happened to have an opening right at the time that we had availability before driving back home. After 2 sessions she never smoked a cigarette again, which is a whole incredible story for a separate blog! She showed up for herself in every way.
We went to Cancun where she spent 3 weeks in treatments doing all of the recommended protocols including the coffee enemas which she REALLY did not want to do (another separate blog!). When she returned home, she went right to Thrive to start all of her follow up care. The team of practitioners at Thrive were the most amazing group of angels that watched over my mom and took care of her. They helped her stay positive and truly heal her body. She was diagnosed in January 2019, and by July of that same year, her scans were showing no signs of cancer by Western medical standards.
Miracles happen every day, but as I said, it’s not often that we get to return the favor to our mothers for what they have given us in our lives. My mom gave me the courage to face dis-ease at a very young age, and to take action to heal my own body. She gave me the courage to know that I can overcome anything if I put my mind to it, no matter what anyone else says. She gave me the space to show up for myself and make my own choices. She helped me persevere in a time when I was suffering from illness and pain, and she helped find the solutions and answers to overcome it all. And I am so grateful that I was able to have the opportunity to do the same thing for her. The experience I had as a child formed who I am today, and really is the reason why Thrive was able to come to life. This gift came back to her 10-fold as this team of amazing and loving people, including the staff at Thrive, family and friends, her amazing oncologist in the states, her team of oncologists in Mexico, and everyone at Hope4Cancer who helped her along the way. I do look at this whole situation and think, if I hadn’t been sick when I was little, if I hadn’t overcome my health challenge through holistic means, would my mom be here today? And I think the answer is no. The doctors told her the longest anyone lives following a diagnosis of kidney cancer with treatment is 7 years. They were giving her a best case scenario of 2 years, most likely, with minimal quality of life. Instead she is now 4 years cancer-free, a non-smoker, and looking at life in a whole new way. Many of the people who were at the clinic when she was in treatment there have since passed. We just learned of another friend who didn’t make it through their dance with cancer. And sometimes you wonder, why? Why do some make it, and some don’t? I will say, no one that we met stuck to things as religiously as my mom. She completely gave up her identity. Which was necessary. To become well, you can no longer be who you were when the dis-ease developed. She went from an avid cigarette loving smoker to a non-smoker. She went from a coffee lover who didn’t skip a day, to a non-coffee drinker. She never missed a day of self treatment, she didn’t skip supplements, she followed the protocols, she showed up for all of her appointments and testing on time, she invested every last dollar she had, she didn’t cheat on her nutritional protocol (literally she had pizza for the first time in 4 years during our last doctors checkup in Cancun). Not many people can do these things, it takes immense self discipline and will power. But the body rewards consistency and dedication and the willingness to allow the old self to die, in order to live.
She was deemed clear of cancer by the Western Medical world in July of 2019, however, the oncologists at Hope 4 Cancer went through the scans and bloodwork with us in detail and showed us where there was still evidence of cancer. My mom kept at it, thoroughly dedicated, and then in March of 2020 Covid hit. This led to the final months of Thrive Wellness Center being in operation, in small town Kingston, Pennsylvania, the exact healing haven she needed at just the perfect time, with all the equipment needed to continue her therapies. By October of 2020, the old Thrive needed to die, for the new one to be born, now Thrive Worldwide Wellness, I get to help people not just in Pennsylvania, but all around the world. The karmic cycle was closed, and my heart was able to rest ok, closing what more or less was my baby. Rather than having children, all of my love and energy went into starting and growing Thrive.
What a blessing, the gifts our mothers give us. And what a blessing for that which we can return to them to the best of our ability. Although in essence they give us life, and for that we can never repay them, only love them with all our hearts. I love you mom. Thank you. Thank you for putting in the hard work EVERY DAY. Thank you for showing up for yourself, for loving yourself enough to not let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do with your body, and thank you for allowing me to be there for you, the way you were there for me.