Stories

BCCT asked integrative oncology navigator and breast cancer survivor Lindsay McDonell to explain chemosensitivity testing for fellow cancer survivors. 

Research associate for BCCT, Kozo Hattori, wrote this story to share the winding path towards wholeness that a cancer diagnosis catalyzed. 

Leda Dederich, who has a connection to the Commonweal cancer community, published this story about her response to metastatic breast cancer and the COVID-19 pandemic on MarketWatch.

A longtime friend described Herb as “a force.” As his friend explained, Herb defied all odds to shape his life, his career, and later his journey with metastatic kidney cancer.

“. . . the doctors say I have, at best, six months to live. Now is the time for me to put my resources into starting a Cancer Help Program on the East Coast.”

After being diagnosed with cancer of the liver, the author was advised by oncologists that his chances of survival were slim. He went to ayahuasca for a second opinion.

BCCT advisor Ralph Moss, PhD, founder and director of The Moss Reports and the leading chronicler of integrative cancer treatments, has recently written about his own journey with prostate cancer in the Townsend Letter.

Integrative medicine physician Janet Spitzer recounts her journey with breast cancer: intuiting that she had cancer, deciding on surgery, using complementary therapies, and receiving love and support.

My diagnosis of stage IV cancer was met in typical human fashion: shock, disbelief, victimhood, what caused this, why me? And it quickly evolved into a new life of profound uncertainty. Every test, every CT scan, every consult with my oncologist could provide more information but could not lessen the uncertainty. As humans we strive for certainty every day, every hour, yet now I must learn how to be with uncertainty, every day.

If someone had told me I would have a profound spiritual healing, something that felt both completely real and utterly unexplainable, I would have said they were crazy. It’s not that I didn’t believe in the metaphysical world, or the possibility of divine intervention. I just thought those things were for other people. Folks more deserving of the universe’s attention.