Continued from Page 1

I decided to approach cancer by "building up." This took courage, because it is daunting to go against the course recommended by one's doctor. But because of the books I write and my understanding of the hormonal connection to health, I had a lot of information. I understood that hormonal balance is key to health and vitality. My decision to go against the standard of care was probably easier for me than it would be for other women not armed with the same information. I approached my cancer through balanced bioidentical hormone replacement and complemented this replacement with Iscador, an anthroposophic medicine whose function is to strengthen and build up the immune system so that disease cannot attack and invade.

I believe this was the best decision of my life. Aside from the discomfort of injecting myself with Iscador every other day for these five years, my health has never been better. I have not had so much as a cold during this time; upon my last checkup, my immune system was so high that my doctor was ecstatic. He said he had never seen an immune system this strong in any of his adult patients. That information was able to put all my fears to rest. How could a life-threatening illness get past an immune system this strong? Great. I had done it. I beat it. I did it my way, with my body almost intact.

So you can imagine my surprise (five years and one month after my initial diagnosis) when my gynecologist told me that I had a pre-precancerous condition (not cancer, not even precancer) growing in my uterus and that in order to prevent possible severe problems down the road, I would need to have my uterus removed.

Why was the sleeping giant trying to rear its ugly head again? Luckily we caught this before it became cancer, yet it was serious enough to force the removal of an organ. I do not take the removal of any body part lightly. What was wrong? I have thought about this a lot. As a teenage mother, I was given my first major chemical, a shot to dry up my milk, and was encouraged to feed my baby Similac formula. In chapter 5 I will discuss at length the protective aspects of breast-feeding and prolactin production. Second, at age eighteen I was put on the early high-dose birth control pills and stayed on them for twenty-two years. Unknowingly, like so many women of my generation, these chemicals put me into a false menopause. All those years of chemicalization were dangerous to my health. Add to this scenario stress and environmental assault and a brutal childhood and you have a recipe for disaster.

The ninth year of bioidentical hormone replacement, things started going wonky (this is my term--don't expect your doctors to use it!). I had breakthrough bleeding, and then after a while I was bleeding continuously. Something was wrong, obviously. You must understand that because bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) is such a new science, all the medical professionals working in this arena are learning as fast as they can, but with each year we all learn more. At this point in my BHRT, I had not heard of "rhythmic cycling," which I will explain in great detail later.

In the way I was taking hormones on a static dose, my estrogen was not rising and falling as it once did in nature, and my progesterone was not rising and falling as it did when I was making a full complement of hormones in my youth. (See the diagram.) Because of this, my receptor sites were not opening to receive the progesterone, so the estrogen lining in my uterus kept building and building. Over time, like a motor on "rev," this thinkening caused excessive bleeding and sent an alarm to my brain that "all was not well," that this human being was no longer able to reproduce (which is why, according to nature, we exist).