Well, my 3 months of waiting for test results is over. This time, it was genetic testing to ascertain whether the familial thread between me, my ancestry, relations and consequently present and future descendants includes an errant cancer gene. Necessary, I’m told, in light of when and with what I was diagnosed. Although I was …
Blog Posts
Why They Call It Dodging A Bullet
It doesn’t get any easier. Going to a cancer hospital to have a yearly mammogram. Waiting for results. Speaking to an oncologist. Talk of further testing. It’s funny how past memories and feelings of fear and trepidation come flooding back, invading every cell of your body so that part of you is part of the …
Why Go Organic?
Eating healthy isn’t just about choosing vegetables over fried food, or fresh fruit over processed sugar. It also involves considering the best options in the range of food we consume. For me, that’s where the issue of organics comes into play. Progress is fickle. On the one hand, it’s championed with the advances in human …
Why A Diet Based on Plants?
The relationship between diet and health never figured in any conversations I had with my doctors, surgeons and oncologists pre, during or post my experience with cancer. And yet, the more I’ve looked into making and keeping myself well, the more I’ve realised the absolute importance of everything I feed my body. Central to this …
Celebrating Milestones
July 2010 This time, 7 years ago, my roller-coaster ride with cancer began – tumour found, biopsied, condemned. Living the norm of what was my life one day; a world inexorably off-kilter the next. The surreal nature of this experience is a memory I will never forget. A life-changing moment that made everything before it …
TAKING STOCK – A Reminder to Listen to What Your Body is Telling You
Don’t ignore that quiet voice inside you the one that cautions you to rest hydrate eat well and take time to savour la jouissance of life or it will grow into more than just a whisper perhaps become a nagging discomfort or a knowing a dis-ease unable to side-step your awareness Let it heckle your …
Rebounding for Health
Who would have thought that jumping on a mini trampoline could do so much good, especially post-cancer? It’s an activity associated with children, wild abandon and fun; not the sobering reality of disease. And yet, its impact on the immune system and general health is in fact quite extraordinary. To understand why, we turn our …
Why We Need to Re-Think Our Diet of Sugar
As someone whose Mauritian island heritage harks back to the sugar cane industry, you would think that sugar would hold a soft spot for me. Actually it does. Or it did until I learnt how closely aligned it was to cancer. In earlier posts (Oxygen and Cancer, So What is Cancer?) I touched on the …
Waking Up to the Immune System
It took 4 years after I had contracted, dealt with and moved beyond cancer for something to go horribly wrong in my body. Acute pneumonia. There I was together with three hundred odd people at a weekend conference in Malaysia and I’m the one who ends up fighting for my life in ICU 2 days …
Am I Just My Gene Pool?
As offspring, we know that we are the products of our parents but where does their direct genetic influence end and our own expressions of biological self kick in? In my family of 8 (Mum, Dad and 6 kids) I was an anomaly – the first to manifest cancer. Furthermore, according to my family history, …