Category : Healthcare

[This is the First Part of my Series on black salve. All I can say is, there will be others.]

Black salve has been one of my cancer treatments of choice for the past 12 years since my melanoma diagnosis in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in 2001.

I found it first at herbhealers.com, thanks to some generous souls online whose healthcare nightmares mirrored my own. Days after my diagnosis, I visited their website and saw this: 100% Money Back Guarantee.

I was certainly in brand new territory, so I bought a small container of the stuff, which, upon arrival, looked and smelled like electronic licorice and was about the same color. It was thick, pungent and deep – and I got the feeling that when I was looking at it, it was looking straight back at me (cue theme from The Twilight Zone).

Following the instructions opened up my eyes to a brand new world: one where cancer treatments were both highly effective and inexpensive (in the case of my little tub of black salve, just under $25). This was my first step to freedom from the ineffectual circle jerk of pills, surgeries and doctors who never bothered getting to the root of the issue and solving it, but collected nonetheless.

After trying black salve out on a couple melanomas, I was sold. I said “shove it” to the gettajob-to-pay-for-pharma-based-healthcare half-life. I’d been on that downward spiral long enough, and there was nothing like a Big C diagnosis as a lead-in to going entrepreneurial and constructing my own path to healing. It really opened my eyes to the way much of society is actually run – and I discovered along the way that The Giant Sucking Sound wasn’t coming from me.

The first melanoma on which I used the salve was one I’d nicknamed Half’n’Half: a half-pink, half-brown, all-weird creature living on my skin with a black spot right in the middle where the two halves met in a perfectly straight line. It looked like something I’d encounter in Stephen King’s short, The Mist – or perhaps in a museum of modern art.

That just wasn’t right. Biopsies told me as much.

I put a fingertipful of the salve on Half’n’Half, and almost immediately, the sensation described in the lit that came with the Salve became reality: that of a rubber band snapping against my skin.

This continued for almost a day as the salve had its way with the mole, which later became like a solar eclipse, featuring a large black spot with a white halo around it, surrounded by another slightly pink halo of inflammation as this cancerous mole-monster was successfully treated. Eventually, the lesion became a dried-out scab as the skin below pushed the whole mess out of my body. Good riddance!

A couple weeks in, it fell off, leaving a slight indentation that filled back in over time and left a slightly scarred area that was a hair lighter than my normal skin tone. Looking at the fallen scab, I saw two black helical tendrils floating down from the pitch-dark mass in its middle. This got me thinking that I was staring at something that very possibly could have killed me if I hadn’t intervened.

In the years following, I’ve treated dozens of skin lesions, including several on my face as well as a breast nipple lesion that first appeared in late 2011 and became a real problem in 2012 (do check that one out – it’s a real doozy!). All using the same small container of black salve I’d bought in 2001, the same one I’d shared with friends, skeptics and willing-to-try-it-types. All were amazed at the results and often came back to me with questions on where to get it.

What works…works.

This was also the same container I’ve brought with me to various doctor’s offices, attempting to inform my white-coated compatriots about how well the salve worked. On many such occasions, I got the denial routine, after which I got up and left, telling the front office staff not to bother sending me a bill. I guess if your livelihood depends on a system that must outlaw or deny its far less expensive, but highly effective competition within what is heavily marketed to us as a “free market” system, that speaks for itself. Suffice it to say: science corrupted by money is not science at all.

Over time, black salve has proven itself a very effective tumor debulking agent that costs a tiny fraction of all the surgeries I’d have needed, if I’d chosen the surgical route.

A few black salve resources:

• The Black Salve Page on Facebook
• Search on the term “Black Salve” on YouTube

Yours in Good Health,

Alison

On to Part 2 in this Series: My Big Black Salve Boob Job

[Contents of this post are for educational purposes only and all that jazz.]

It was very fitting how I learned of Breaking Bad. A friend and fellow cancer fighter, whose own battle started with melanoma – and later, stage 4 prostate cancer and then some – told me about this cool new show he’d been watching. It featured a very smart, but very broke school teacher working two jobs…and he had lung cancer on top of it all. In other words, someone who’d had enough.

Ding.

He’d had it to the point where he’d started making and selling meth to pay medical bills and provide for his family…and to make up for the deficits he saw in his own existence.

Ding.

The main character of the show, one Walter Hartwell White, played to perfection by Bryan Cranston, had also felt the sting of the Big Fuck You Over Money via two former business partners, who’d become billionaires on the back of Walter’s chemistry genius after he left the company. He went near-broke, barely eking out a living as a schoolteacher moonlighting at the local car wash. And now, he wanted his cut of the Big Pie. However he could get it.

Ding! Ding, ding, ding-ding-ding-ding-diiiing!

As the description came out of my friend’s mouth, I was immediately hooked. One cancer survivor who’d been screwed over telling another about a show featuring yet another. There was a love triangle in there somewhere.

As I started to watch back episodes to catch myself up, I saw in Walter White shades of yours truly.

Firstly, cancer. The day of my diagnosis was a game changer. I was never the same. Never looked at things the same way again. Did some things I’m not proud of.

Most of the past years since my diagnosis, I’ve not had access to “the system.” Sometimes I had health insurance, sometimes not. Seeing as I prefer holistic healthcare and treatments other than those offered by Big Pharma-racketed US Sick’n’Pay, I think that was in many ways for the best. For me, it was a good thing not to have access to too many pharma drugs. All they ever did was crash my immune system, making me sicker with each pass. But not so good when I needed a decent and timely diagnostic. Or necessary surgery and dental care.

Secondly, career frustration. Majorly. Won VH1’s Song of the Year, twice. Sold over 100,000 units of my tunes, largely soundtrack and overseas indies. Still no big, life-changing deal, and way too many questions…but I sure found out what “several layers of record label accounting” really means.

Thirdly, financial devastation. Even working through the Big C for the Big Dream. Flashback to 2004. Three jobs. Made Bush proud! Lesson: ‘work hard and you’ll make it in America’ is a great soundbite, but don’t ask me to believe it after all I’ve seen and experienced. Proof in the form of a million-dollar music publishing deal would be far more convincing and practical.

LOL! Don’t laugh – that was my original goal in entering The Biz. That, and access to decent medical. Such was life in these United States.

But now, like Walter White’s ever-increasing monetary goals, mine, too, have grown. Because as anyone who’s experienced the Big Fuck You Over Money can tell you, it puts a fire under your ass. Because life should be more than chasing illnesses, mere survival and the constant mind-chatter of rotating what ifs.

The reason for Breaking Bad’s success is that it touched those same raw nerves in so many millions of others. We all want to Break Big. And some are willing to Break Bad to do it. I can certainly relate.

Which brings me to this point: Breaking Bad was damn close to perfect. So damn close to perfect. Vince Gilligan of X-Files fame made it perfect in every way, except for one little, BIG thing.

I think back to the episode where Walt’s doctor is discussing alternative treatments for cancer – and the off-the-main-drag-but-still-Pharma-biased doctor’s canned response came in like a rainstorm on a parade when he mentioned his uncertainty about the efficacy of such treatments.

So, yes, Hollywood manages to mention alternative treatments. But then there’s the suited Dr. Deus ex Machina, telling us all about a lack of efficacy associated with them.

Hmmmmm.

Anyone else smell the Big Pharma bucks behind that?

Because honestly, that hasn’t been my experience. In fact, just the opposite. Pharma drugs were what created my Big Mess in the first place. Treatments outside of those pushed on us by Big Pharma have largely gotten me back to some semblance of health. But I certainly am still chasing things down, given that FDA-approved drugs almost deep-sixed my skinny ass.

Thus my request to Hollywood: Why not come up with a show that follows a cancer-fighting character, preferably someone who, in “real life,” has or had the disease – WE need the money. And please, make the protagonist someone using alternative, holistic medicine – if alternative even applies to treatments existing thousands of years B.C., aka Before Chemo. Make it a story about someone for whom the system has failed, who realizes the only way out is to Break Brave and follow his or her gut instincts. Kinda like I – and a lot of others – had to.

When – IF – Hollywood Breaks Brave (and decides to go truly free market where cancer treatments are concerned), I’ll be all-in. A 100% FAN! Behind-the-scenes experience tells me that many celebs use alternative, holistic healthcare, but still do and say whatever their corporate paymasters order them to do and say for a paycheck.

Tragic. And certainly not role model material.

When both Hollywood and doctors serve as guides, not gods – and no longer serve Big Pharma to the exclusion of all else over money – that will be the day. And if the day comes when I see universal, single-payer, sliding-scale healthcare featuring a full set of choices for cancer treatments in America, I’ll be first in line.

Yours in Great Health,

Alison