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My Story (Part 3)

[You have made it to Part 3 of my story…]

Treating at home for cancer was both a new adventure and a real education. More surgery? No. More pharma? Nope – considering the damage pharma drugs had already done, I felt they would do me in for sure, probably painfully, and certainly not cheaply (though I was gonna be a big, A-List songwriter, right?).

First thing, I had to find a cancer killer. A tumor debulking agent in the form of topical black salve came recommended from listservs and other sources on the internet, where I was never short of company to talk about healthcare ordeals and nightmares, many of which mirrored my own – sick as I never cared to be and wanting out of the pharma-and-money circle jerk. Another answer turned out to be an herb called graviola, which carried with it multiple studies proving its effectiveness against cancer, even multiple-drug resistant cancers. And it was inexpensive as well. Fantastic! I took a graviola tincture for 18 months along with using black salve topically on one or two suspicious skin lesions at a time. Both of these treatments were found at a site called herbhealers.com.

Second thing, I had to ascertain the underliers, namely the root causes of cancer specific to my case. Over time, I saw that cancer was systemic, but played itself out in weaker areas of the body (in me, the skin, digestive and endocrine systems for the most part).

As the little prizes from my entries in the Billboard and John Lennon songwriting contests started to trickle in, I realized that most of what I’d been taught about cancer had been inaccurate. It wasn’t a boogeyman disease that attacked certain organs or did so because I was a bad person, too good a person or any of it. It was not some monster that had come in from the outside – yes, there were externalities, such as pollutants – but it was in me. Meaning so were the solutions. Give my body-mind what it needed and healing could happen.

In my case, cancer had its foundations in toxicity and malnutrition, especially demineralization. My teeth seemed always with cavity, thus the many mercury amalgam fillings that were still doing me in without my fully realizing it. I had the genes for melanoma (meaning I could cheerfully blame my parents!). On top of that, I had a fast metabolism and was a sensitive. Yes, hang me out with the windsocks at the airport and I’ll tell you what’s coming, from which direction, how much and how fast.

Compounding this demineralization was my yet-to-be-discovered tendency to hold onto the wrong minerals in place of the good ones – a genetic propensity from what I’ve been reading about APOE genotypes. As I worked further on honing my musical craft, I discovered that I might just truly be a heavy metal babe at the deepest levels (and therefore surely major label material). It became part of my overall plan to eventually obtain sound genetic testing to see what was what.

Diet became uber-important, and finding the exact right thing was often cyclical or elusive, bodily transitions being what they are. So much so I visited paleo and even some weight loss circles, pissing off a few dieters who took one look at me and asked what the hell I was doing there. One morbidly overweight woman (who I thought would surely kick my ass out the door and down the street) glared at me one time and asked me how I stayed so skinny. “Just get cancer,” I said. “It’ll take the weight right off!” A long pause, then she laughed until she nearly cried, saying, “the grass isn’t always greener, is it? You’ve got real guts coming here.”

Shortly after signing a film and TV placement deal for my tunes with NOMA Music in 2003, I was handed a Rolling Stone magazine with Lisa Marie Presley on the front cover. In the article were shades of yours truly (sans the King’s silly money). I read as she detailed her experiences with mercury toxicity and stress and how she’d been reduced down to eating chicken and broccoli via the same mess of food intolerances I’d been dealing with, so similar to what I’d experienced before and still do at times. It seemed as though my body went through phases where things came and went, including cancer, including toxicity, including all of it. The pendulum was always swinging, so now it was up to me to find my own balance, and keep finding it, given how often bodies change and circumstances shift. Thankfully I’d caught the cancer early – score one big one for being bitchy enough to insist on a biopsy!

Next, I set about removing the mercury amalgam fillings from my teeth. They were buggy and loosening, with recs coming in from most alternative/integrative practitioners to get this stuff out of my mouth (only one saying “best to let sleeping dogs lie,” with which I could not agree). Money- and/or healthwise, I couldn’t do it all at once, but even doing half ended up in a massive re-exposure to mercury and all the symptomatic goodies that came with it.

In 2004, I moved to California, desperately seeking an escape after being accused of stealing $400,000 from my father’s business by his bookkeeper. Hmmmmm. I looked for the money in my account, but (awww, shucks) didn’t see it, so I called the cops. On my own skinny ass! I thought I’d get to the Big House, and finally the single-payer healthcare I’d heard was available in the joint, but the presence of authority figures put a sudden end to all the bizarro accusations (and caused me to suspect said bookkeeper). I decided that fighting the cancer and the family dynamic was a bit too much and applied the geographic solution (only to be told by a holistic doctor in 2014 that cancer was the family dynamic and to change that, if at all possible, considering the hefty challenge it was).

On my way out of Pennsylvania, I sealed an overseas indie deal for my tune Something About You, which had won VH1’s Song of the Year. Things were looking up music-wise, and alongside that I’d ventured into things entrepreneurial, most of them IT-related. Interesting the similarities of the startup and music industry wannabe cultures – nerve-wracking, every so often satisfying and feast or famine financially – but altogether far better than the 9-to-5 climate that sucked the life out of many.

Just when things seemed to be settling a bit with my move, two things happened in May of 2005 that changed forever my outlook on just about everything – and my own chances of success along with it. The cancer and music industries in America turn out to be disturbingly similar, i.e., rigged.

Pursuit of happiness? Equal opportunity? I’m still waiting on those…

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