Hi, my name is Denise. I’d dropped twenty-three pounds in four weeks and felt like there was something crawling under my skin. I experienced diarrhea, intense pain behind my eyes, and I craved clay. Yet no doctor could tell me what was wrong!
It was May 1988 as I began my journey to live a better life. At that time, I’d worked for the past ten years in a local hospital, testing other people’s blood to help determine the causes of their illnesses.
Yet when I tested my own blood, I could find nothing wrong. Despite following my doctors’ orders, I continued to lose weight quickly and felt nauseous all the time. The terrible cravings continued and, when my teeth felt loose one day in June, I knew I was becoming malnourished because my system was not absorbing any nutrients.
And still every one of my blood tests, X-rays, CT scans and other diagnostic tests came back normal--no abnormality, yet my symptoms persisted. Why was I so sick and continuing to fail? Why couldn’t the medical professionals find the answers to my problem?
I began to question traditional medical practices and the work I was doing as a professional in the medical field. I questioned the fact that when I tested the blood of patients diagnosed with fourth stage liver cancer, the tests showed liver enzymes within normal limits. Something is wrong with this methodology, I thought.
I had the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, even possibly ulcerative colitis, but these diagnostic tests all came back negative. That just didn't make sense to me.
Finally, my search led me to a prevention medicine doctor in New York City. Desperate, I felt it was my last resort, and I made the appointment with high hopes. Within three weeks of following his recommended dietary changes, adding supplements and understanding what nutritional therapy was about, I felt better and my symptoms calmed down.
As I was feeling better I began to seek out books on nutrition and medicine. One in particular, “What Your Doctor Didn't Learn in Medical School,” covered much of what this new doctor had taught me. More books on nutrition opened my eyes further: extra Vitamin A for this, zinc helps that, essential fats, B-complex, minerals--they are all good for something, but the key is to keep them all in proper balance.
As I continued to learn many dietary theories, I came across the work of Dr. Robert O. Young at the ph Miracle Center in San Diego. His research about the importance of an alkaline lifestyle and balance to achieve better health fascinated me…let's see...the world is in balance: night/day, up/down, in/out, warm/cold, sick/health, acid/alkaline…I needed to investigate!
The friend who’d enlightened me about Dr. Young's work told me, “His work had turned leukemia around in seventy-two hours.” Of course, I didn’t believe it. If it was true, why wasn't it headline news, and why don't we all know about it?
Only The Beginning
It’s here that my real story begins. The more I read Dr. Young’s work, the more I sought answers. I decided to enroll in his class about live cell microscopy. With a background in blood testing, I knew this was going to be interesting...
Ten days before I was all set to travel across the country to California, my mother was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML.) In AML, the bone marrow releases immature white blood cells called blasts. Blasts should normally develop into white blood cells that fight infection. In a diagnosed leukemia patient, they have not developed enough and are now in the blood prematurely. However,when blasts are found in a leukemia profile, something has to be done quickly because time is of the essence. The bone marrow may also make abnormal red blood cells and platelets. The number of abnormal cells (or leukemia cells) grows quickly. These cells will crowd out normal red cell production, healthy white blood cells and platelets that the body needs.
I discovered this news in the local laboratory where I worked. How odd was that? I’d been told that Dr. Young had cured someone’s leukemia within seventy-two hours, and now my mom is diagnosed with the same disease! Why did my friend specifically say “leukemia,” and not some kind of cancer? It seemed so unreal to me.
I knew from a conventional stand point that her blood was fifty percent leukemic, and if I didn't get her into the hospital and under the care of a doctor, she only had a few days to live. I rushed home and called the ph Miracle center. Amazingly, Dr. Young was passing by when the phone rang and answered my call.
After a brief discussion of my mother’s situation, Dr. Young proceeded to educate me about how to change the way we look at this disease. He told me, “Your mother is an undiagnosed celiac and not making any blood, so now her body has to send white blood cells out into circulation, and that is what they call leukemia. The medical doctors only know how to poison the cells to kill them, and that will also kill her. She needs to start making her own red blood cells again and her white blood cell count will come down.”
Frightened, I was unsure if I should follow the advice of this nutrition scientist, researcher and naturopath who I hadn’t even heard of until three months ago. I really didn’t know much about him and his theories, and he was literally across the country from me and my mother.
I immediately ordered the products and supplements designed to reduce acid and help get her back into an alkaline state of health. They arrived overnight. The following evening, after taking these nutritional products, my mother did not have her night sweats, nor did she have that hacking cough she’d developed over the past two to three weeks.
She even felt better the next morning. So, I thought, something must be right here.
But, still I was fearful and didn't want to upset her, and if something happened, I would never forgive myself for not getting some professional help at hand.
So, she went into the hospital, by her decision, to be treated conventionally. The treatment for AML at the time consisted of chemotherapy infusion constantly for a week. I asked the doctor if I could help her through this by treating her from a nutritional standpoint. He had no problem with it. I began by using aloe vera, and gave her alkaline water all day long. I supplied her with supplements that I understood to be helpful, and pureed food, because I wanted her to get the most benefit from them to heal and save her energy in order to overcome this terrible "blood cancer."
Then, I read in the book “Sick & Tired” by Dr. Young that leukemia is not cancer at all; it’s the body's inability to make red blood cells. He says the reality is that that the physical body is sending out immature white blood cells from the bone marrow to compensate for not making any red blood cells.
So what does conventional medicine do? They kill these white blood cells with chemo, along with killing everything else. Now, I know, not a good idea to help someone diagnosed with this condition. She needed to balance herself in order to make healthy red blood cells, so that her bone marrow stopped producing the immature white blood cells. In other words, get with the cause and stop treating the symptoms.
She went through the chemotherapy; I threw away her hospital food, and traveled back and forth to the hospital, pureeing her food because the villi of her small intestinal tract were impaired and not absorbing nutrients. Therefore, she could not make red blood cells. She lived on green soups, healing soups, smoothies, and only took her meds with alkaline water.
An infection control specialist came in and wondered why she didn’t have any fevers, no open sores, no chills, no spleen enlargement, not the typical case of AML for a woman of her age. Little did they know I was working very hard with non-conventional modalities: energy medicine techniques; Ayurveda, EFT; Reiki, a mycodetox supplement; prayer, and A Course in Miracles, to name a few - it was the least I could do
At one point, her oncologist asked me what I was giving her. I told him some supplements and aloe vera. He looked perplexed. I was afraid to say I know something he didn’t know, and was listening to the research of alkaline balanced health. This was my mother, my best friend, and I wanted her to live!
She’d made it through the initial treatment and came home to be treated on an outpatient basis. “How bittersweet” I overheard the doctor say to his nurse on our way out. I was glad to be out of the hospital environment.
After three months, mom was stable enough for me to head out to the ph Miracle center and work with the class I’d intended to take before her diagnosis. When I returned home, I told my mom that now I really knew what to do for her, and for myself, to provide better health going forward.
A short time later, she was erroneously administered a flu shot. Immuno-compromised, her body didn’t need another thing to fight, and she succumbed to its effects and passed shortly thereafter.
I look back at this time in my life as my “ah-ha” moment. I know now, it all happened for a greater purpose. I’d been given the tools to understand health and healing in a new light, and I know that you can’t heal something unless you consider the cause.
I knew this was my wake-up call; consciousness is right at our fingertips, but we’re not paying attention. I learned the importance of energy balance, consciousness, transitioning and alternative therapies do work…one of the last things my mother said to me was “nobody ever had what we had…” I now know what that means. She understood I had more than just a daughter’s interest in helping her because much later, I found out from friends and family that she said, “I know the only one who can really help me is my daughter...”
Both our illnesses were a wake-up call for action. I searched to find answers to make a difference in her treatment because I knew what would happen to her when treated conventionally, yet and in the process, I learned to live in balance, seek and trust a higher truth, pay attention to those “ah-ha” moments and answer that wake-up call when it shows up. Now, I use this to help others along the way… No one has all the answers, but it helps when you pay attention to the resources that present themselves to you.