Into The Machine Part 2

Into The Machine Part 2

“The power of forgiveness and letting go is not always easy, but each step brings new life to your healing experience. Keep forgiving, keep healing. It’s a journey worth taking with a promising outcome.” - Chris Wark

After a fairly quiet day at work on a Friday, I received a call from my surgeon’s nurse telling me that the mass in my right lung lit up brightly from the contrast. Which was devastating news. I tried to ask what this could mean since no tissue samples had been processed, but she couldn’t give me an answer and said it was most likely cancer. She asked me to try and have a good weekend. They will be in touch with the next steps for surgery. I was in disbelief and anger. This nurse had waited until the very end of their work day to call me with these results and to let myself stew with this knowledge all weekend. It felt intentional, so I would be unable to call any doctors until the following weekday. It felt rude to be given news in that manner. So I began calling my parents and friends to alert them to the news I had just received. I don’t remember what I did that weekend, to be honest. I’m sure it was spent mostly in solitude due to COVID and late-night walks/prayers alone at a park near my loft. I needed hope, but I also knew that I needed to keep choosing life for myself. Negative and depressing thoughts were only going to distract me from that goal, and I knew that I needed to kick things into a higher gear. 

I do recall getting almost the entire way through the “Chris Beats Cancer” audiobook around June 2020. If this mass was indeed cancer, I knew I needed to give my body the best chance at survival, and I tried to adopt every method I could. In addition to cleaning up my diet and eating mainly vegetables and nuts, I was gifted a juicer by a dear friend from Oregon who had experienced their own health battles for several years. I was so blessed and excited to start juicing regularly and see what the benefits might be for my body. I first noticed that my energy levels increased, my metabolism went up, and I started shedding fat very quickly. I believe my body was very happy with these changes. Chris' book also sheds light on the corruption of the medical industry and how cancer patients are generally taken advantage of due to their situation. Big Pharma and lobbyists skew testing in their favor to make their products seem more successful. Oncologists are pressured and even rewarded for prescribing the newest drugs to cancer patients despite finding the best option for them. The cancer industry is worth billions, and most individual patients are worth an average of $300,000 a year to the hospital. Astounding numbers. There are physiological methods that oncologists use to push their methods on people who are most likely dealing with the biggest decisions of their lives. Like a predator. Isn’t the word “care” in the name Healthcare? I came up with the phrase Health-Care-Less Industry. I didn't want to play their games or be in this machine anymore, but I wasn't sure what to do other than wait. I would get follow-up calls from the surgeon's nurse, but eventually, I stopped answering because I didn't want to make a choice out of anxiety. I was already annoyed with them anyway. 

I started diving deeper into cancer research in hopes of finding out what people had done to fully heal from cancer. It turns out, they do exist. You won’t see their books on large media sources, and they hardly get support from the modern medical community. Their methods are largely scrutinized, so they can be difficult to find. Big Pharma even has the power and funds to suppress these stories in online searches. (This is partly why I would encourage my readers to share this story.) I found a little comfort in knowing that there were people in this world giving hope to patients who were dealing with immense hopelessness and doubt. I wasn’t confident that I was making all the right choices, but beating the odds was my main goal. I had read stories of people healing tumors completely just by tuning their diet around and getting the proper amount of nutrition in their bodies. All natural healings. I started sharing these stories with a select group of friends to get their insight. A lot of the stories have miraculous outcomes, which isn’t common for the majority of cancer patients. So I thought, Why not me? Couldn’t I have a similar outcome? 

I felt caught between these two medical worlds, and I desperately wanted to make informed decisions before agreeing to surgery. Despite how I felt, doctors were treating me. Reluctantly, I agreed to a lower lobectomy, (lung surgery) on July 23rd, 2023. I knew that surgery was risky despite all my health changes over the past two months. I could tell my body health was improving, and I continued to pray for a miracle. I wanted the mass to disappear. I was chasing after peace and was relying heavily on my community and the stories of those who had ultimately beat cancer. I was proud of the progress I had made, but I had another lesson to learn that was going to affect the outcome of my healing. It wasn’t a form of exercise or superfood I could take. It was an act of forgiveness.