by Olivia Kolenda
On a humid Friday night late in June, I came home to find my mother sitting outside on the deck, which was surrounded by colorful flowers she had planted, keeping my father company, as he grilled dinner. I joined them to talk to my mom about how well my riding lesson had gone that day, something we always did. This was the woman who’d introduced me to riding, after all. This night seemed like no other, and yet it would change our lives forever.
At the beginning of summer 2018, when I was 20 years old, my mother, Jenny, dreaded telling me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My father was the only one who knew. Her oldest child, I was excited to go on vacation with my family the following week to Northern Michigan. This was something we did together every year to visit our distant family members.
This year would be much different, as my mother knew.
I have two younger siblings, who my mother did not want to tell for the fear of upsetting them.
I could tell that something was wrong. My mother’s beautiful blue eyes started to water, and I noticed that she seemed to be having difficulty swallowing. I remember the sun starting to set, her glossy, brown hair shining, and her rosy cheeks were quivering.
“Are you okay?”, I asked.
My father sat down between us.
“I noticed a lump in my breast and I went to the doctor, my mother said.
I was quiet, as it then became hard for me to swallow, too. I didn’t know what to say or do. I just wanted it to all be a bad dream.
“There’s a ninety-percent chance that it’s cancerous, but I don’t know. It’s the size of a golf ball.”
“How long has it been like that?” Tears started to run down my cheek.
“I noticed it around Christmas time. I thought it was just a fibrocystic mass. I have another appointment on Monday, and I’ll find out the results. I don’t know what they’re going to say, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to go to Michigan.”
We were to leave the next week for our annual trip to visit family, but the thought of our vacation being cancelled was the least of my concerns. I made a Facebook post that night asking friends if they could send prayers to my family. I don’t pray to God much, but I knew He would help my family get out of this heartbreaking situation. That night as I lay in my bed, I could hear my mother talking on the phone with my grandma, who we were supposed to see the following week. I could hear the shaking in her voice as I tried my best to cry in silence. I didn’t know why this was happening to us. I didn’t know why this was happening to my mom. But I did know that God could hear me through all of our pain.
My mother found out her results days later: she had breast cancer. That night, and for many nights afterward, I cried my eyes out night after night, gradually losing sleep. I felt like a walking zombie, and I could only imagine how my mom felt. Family friends set up a prayer group the night my mother got the results, so we could all get together and pray over her. My father stayed home with my two younger siblings and made them dinner. He told them that we were just going over to see some friends. My mother and I walked over to our friend’s house; she lived just a couple of houses down the street. The sun was beginning to set, and it was very humid out. Once we arrived, we all talked for a little bit about the results and all the tests my mom was going to have to go through now. We began to pray. I cried, of course. Everyone was grieving. I felt like we were already in hell.
The following week, despite the diagnosis, we departed for our trip to Michigan. We didn’t know what the future would hold, and we wanted to see everyone before my mom decided on treatment options. Our entire family got together and did the usual fun things we did every summer: bonfires; boating on Eagle River; setting off fireworks. It was nice to slightly take our minds off the serious matter of my mother’s illness. But at the end of the trip, before we left, reality sank back in. My aunts and my mother walked up the big, open field my grandparents owned, just having just some girl time before the trip back home. I could tell by the looks on their faces what they were talking about. My grandma started to cry as we said our goodbyes, as she always did because of the distance between us, but this time it was different. She hugged me tightly, and whispered in my ear. “You take care of your momma, okay?” My dad packed the last few things into our car and we drove away, honking the horn three times, like always.
On the drive back home, my mom started to feel depressed, because we were going back home, and she could only focus on her health. She needed to decide what she was going to do to fight this illness. My father tried to keep her calm by telling her how we were going to go about tackling this together, as he is usually pretty good at doing.
Now, from first-hand experience, I can say that the only “solution” we heard was chemotherapy and radiation. Yet we wanted to look at alternatives. A January 2002 study by Carney published in The New England Journal of Medicine, reported “New combinations of chemotherapy are not likely to make substantial improvements in survival.” Carney claims, “It is clear that new approaches are required.” Patients often hear that chemo, chemo, chemo, and more chemo is the only way to combat cancer. But my parents wondered: what if there was a better way, a way that didn’t leave cancer patients, like my mother feeling so hopeless. We watched a friend die of colon cancer, just months after starting chemo, and the pain she felt from the treatment was unbelievable.
Chemotherapy is a poison derived from mustard gas, and has been found to be effective in targeting cancer cells. However, according to the American Cancer Society, there are many side effects to chemotherapy which damage other non-cancerous cells such as hair follicles, cells found in the mouth, reproductive system, digestive tract and blood-forming cells in bone marrow. While chemotherapy may be effective in some cancers, there is no guarantee that cancer cells won’t eventually grow back.
Chemotherapy is often paired with radiation in treatment. An article from January 1982 by Meistrich and his team inCancer Researchstates, “The cytogenetic effects of anticancer drugs (issued through chemotherapy) can also have serious consequences.” A study on the stem cells of mice found that chemotherapeutic drugs resulted in genetic toxicity. An article from 1957 by Duffy in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolismdescribed a positive correlation between radiation and thyroid cancer. From this, it has been suggested that, “a small dose of x-radiation may act as the initiating factor of and that the subsequent “normal” growth development of the thyroid from infancy to puberty may be the promoting factor in the production of thyroid cancer in childhood.” In other words, it states that treatment with exposure to radiation, via x-rays, is likely to develop thyroid cancer in children who undergo this treatment.
We all know someone with cancer; it’s not a matter of if, but when. Not a single person is immune to getting cancer. The American Cancer Society provides a statistical analysis that one in every three people will get cancer in their lifetime. This is an ongoing battle, and it doesn’t seem to have an end.
Or does it?
How did we get to this point? My mother did research and discovered a doctor online who does all-natural essential oils; the claim is that everything stems from the gut, meaning it has an effect on different systems in the body, such as the nervous system. Gut health is extremely vital for your well-being. Yet almost every food you buy has pesticides or contains genetically modified ingredients. It’s much cheaper for companies to process and such products, rather than organically produced foods. Yet our bodies are not made to digest all of this junk.
Even the products we use to maintain good hygiene contain many chemicals, some of which aren’t even listed on the products. For example: parabens are groups of compounds which serve as a preservative and gives these products a longer shelf life. Parabens are known to cause cancer. One example of these products is deodorant, which also contains these compounds and is applied near our mammary glands. This is most certainly a link to many of the breast cancers we are experiencing today. A January 2002 study by Byford and his team published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biologyproved that there was a correlation between parabens and human breast cancer cells, as they were discovered were within these cells. According to the study’s findings, “Parabens have been recently reported to have oestrogenic activity in yeast cells and animal models.” The claim is the link between oestrogenic activity and cancer cells is parabens.
My family believes that research is important to anyone diagnosed with cancer. Modern doctors made our family feel safe and like they had everything under control. For the longest time, we believed the only way to rid people of this horrific disease was to go through these harsh treatments. A family friend was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2017. She fought long and hard, going through treatment after treatment of chemotherapy. She had two beautiful little girls who were full of life, but you could slowly see that start to fade, as they saw that their mother — a sweet, down-to-earth, beautiful soul — in so much pain. She was maybe one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. About a month and a half ago, I was out with my mom running errands. I can still remember this moment so vividly. It felt so unreal. We pulled up to the bank, so my mom could deposit a check, when she said abruptly, “Shelby passed away.” It must have been on her mind for a while, for her to tell me at that moment. I was in shock. My mom started to tear up. “Those little girls have to live their life without their mom now. I’m going to fight my hardest, and I won’t give up. Shelby didn’t have to go that way. She was way too young.”
When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she felt hopeless, and that her life was in the hands of the doctors. However, this past weekend, she told me, “Most of cancer is in your head. If you believe you’re going to die, you will. But I will get through this. I want to be there for my kids and watch them grow to be the beautiful people I know that they are.”
This shift in my mother’s thinking came about in a variety of ways.
She got really involved with Young Living Essential Oils last year. Its motto is “Seed to Seal.” They guarantee that their product is one-hundred percent perfect, meaning all organic. Everything they sell is completely all-natural and their plants are grown in all organic soils. These oils changed our lives, and I have to wonder if they would help other people who want to try an all-natural route for healing themselves of illness.
Young Living was founded by a physician, Donald Gary Young (hence Young Living). He believed that essential oils would be a phenomenal alternative to modern medicine due to all the chemicals involved in medicine today. Likewise, today we receive many antibiotics. Antibiotics are responsible for killing the bad bacteria when we are sick, as well as the good. It’s possible that we could counteract modern medicine and use all-natural products instead. Young Living makes many products ranging from all-natural vitamins- to supplements, which it believes sustain good health.
Instead of the traditional chemotherapy route, my mom has adopted an alternative path, taking vitamins, immune health support supplements, NingXia Red drinks, frankincense oil, thieves oil, and many others.
My mother did her research and found that many people all over the world were curing themselves naturally from cancer. From talking with other cancer patients who she came close with through her diagnosis, she found that cancer cannot be sustained in environments with noise, high temperatures (cancer patients have very low body temperatures), or infrared light, along with many other things. After my mom reached out to holistic doctors and friends, she made a new friend, Pam. Pam had breast cancer and went through chemotherapy. A few years later, she had seven cancerous lesions on her liver. She did natural treatments such as using an infrared light, sitting in a sauna to raise her body temperature, committing to an all-organic and clean diet, and many other things. Now, five of those seven cancerous lesions are completely gone.
From my mom listening to podcasts other cancer patients have made, she found that this is not the first time someone has cured themselves naturally. If you truly look, you will find that there are people all over the world who have done it. Sunridge Medical in Arizona, which bills itself as an “alternative medicine treatment center and immune recovery facility,” hason the homepage of the website, the story of a woman named Robbie tried chemotherapy, which she claims only made her feel very sick. After doing natural treatments through Sunridge, she claims she would not be here without them and has cured herself from this vicious illness. I believe the cure is right in front of us. Why do we never hear of this in the news? I believe that chemotherapy is a money-making business.
Now, my mother has adopted the same treatments and an all-organic, clean, vegan diet. She goes in to get vitamin-C treatments three times a week; unfortunately, insurance does not cover this, and it is extremely expensive. The doctor treating her with vitamin-C told my mother that chemotherapy is an inhumane way to treat cancer. “We will look back,” he said, “and wonder how we could do this to our people.”
From watching my mother battle cancer, I have learned never to take my health for granted. And I have learned that someone is always in worse shape than I am. I find it both beautiful and moving that my mother saw the challenge and accepted it. The treatment path she has chosen is difficult. It takes a lot of self-control, commitment, and balance to do what she does. I’ve never seen a woman quite as strong as her in my lifetime. Now I like to imagine a life where we went all natural. I like to imagine a life with no more diseases, no more hurt. I like to imagine a life with no more cancer, where children didn’t lose their parents to this vicious disease. How beautiful would that be?