One of the most challenging aspects of the Gerson Therapy is adjusting to the very rigid and demanding schedule. Keeping pace can be incredibly challenging for patients and caregivers. Fortunately, since this time we’ve learned a few tricks…it DOES get better!
At some point you stop asking why. What we have done differently—or more or less or better—eventually becomes unimportant. It IS. It just is.
A friend who knows that we’ve been raw foodists for 4 years asked me:
“What was going on in your lives two years ago at this time? Studies have shown that cancer can be traced back to stress from 2 years before the diagnosis.”
This afternoon I made my 3rd solo drive to town—something that took a new form of courage.
The muddy roads to town are steep and twisting, and at many points, the thick tropical grasses lining the edges make it impossible for more than one vehicle to pass at a time. There are several turns that are so sharp that it requires honking the horn first to warn oncoming drivers. In this short time I’ve learned to simultaneously brake, downshift, and honk while peering through the dirty windshield.
Only once in the three times I’ve driven to town did I need to stop for a public bus, which requires slamming on the brakes and throwing the car into reverse to create room for the bus to pass. When the bus drivers are kind, they wait. When they’re late, they drive two feet in front of the car as we back up. Eventually a dirt driveway appears and we pull into the nook for safety while the bus passes.
The first time I drove alone, I cried the entire way. Not because I don’t love to drive or because I thought that I couldn’t do it, but because I felt her absence so deeply. I mentally checked this off as another reason to work on living in the present.
Today as I barreled down the road, I blasted Janis Joplin’s greatest hits and sang in my loudest American voice. As I passed through the small village of Bomfin, a group of teenagers playing the guitar turned to look. NOS-sa! they called.
On the way back, just below the rural school, the public bus stopped and a young neighbor stepped out. He’s about 10, a boy with sparkling eyes and a sweet disposition. He often comments on our fruit trees when he passes our farm, and I invite him to pick peaches or mangoes when they’re ripe.
He waves for me to stop the car. “Could you give me a ride to the top of the hill?” he asks.
“Com certeza!” I motion for him to join me. I’m surprised because he usually walks up the steep hill like the rest of us, but I’m happy for the company.
At the next bus stop, he asks me to stop the car. He gets out, and I see a frail, elderly woman slowly stepping out of the bus. He takes her arm and looks in the window of the car. “Can we take my grandmother, too?”
I smile, understanding the plan. It means that I will need to drive farther up the road, to the fields above our home. The roads there are full of rocks, muddy and impossibly steep. Although Leonardo assures me that it will be fine, I’m certain it will be a serious challenge to find a good place to turn around. I will need to find a way back down.
Without a doubt, one of the most difficult aspects of the Gerson Therapy is the detoxification process. When we went raw 4 years ago, we passed through some of the more obvious aspects of detox: breakouts, intestinal upset, congestion, food cravings, insomnia, fatigue, irritability, mood swings, and more. We stuck with it because it only lasted 2 weeks, and it resulted in 4 years of glowing skin, happy tummies, few cravings, deep, peaceful sleep, and a state of what I love to call “unreasonable happiness.”
What we didn’t anticipate is that the Gerson Therapy would bring Helena’s body to a whole new level of detox. 13 juices and 5 enemas a day turned her body into a purification machine. It’s like putting your system on spin cycle 16 hours a day.
She is a beautiful little preá, a wild guinea pig, presented on the front mat with pride. I shriek and banish Mina to the utility room while I attend to the scene.
The preá is still warm, her eyes open and unseeing. I gently move her, heartbroken that this will be my first encounter with a neighbor who has been living so quietly alongside us, unseen all this time. As I collect her, I remember the many such ceremonies I tended to over the years: Rosie the white mouse, Twinkle Toes and Wiggles—also guinea pigs—countless grasshoppers, butterflies and sparrows. I suffered the losses of Old Yeller and Charlotte as though they’d been my own.
Admit it. The first time you read COFFEE ENEMA, you thought, “Have they lost their minds?!” I mean, the words “coffee” and “enema” aren’t two words that you’d usually want to put in the same sentence.
Go ahead and make the jokes. We make them too: “You want cream or sugar with that?” “Make it a double,” and “I’ll have a cappuccino, please” are some favorites.
Once a week, I like to check the list of search terms used to find my blog. “What to say when someone is sick” has suddenly gained popularity. That feels good.
So are the terms “raw food psychic,” “leigh hopkins psychic,” “finding bliss,” and “learning to live in the present,” which is also cool.
“Snuggle room immagini,” while indecipherable, is rather cute.
“Having low expectations makes you happier” totally missed the point.
Then there’s “whack your wife,” “brazilians naked” and “guys posting naked,” which makes me wonder if at some point over the past 2 years, I invited a guest blogger and just forgot about it.
Anyone who knows us knows that we’re never on time. Anyone who loves us puts up with it…mostly.
We knew that the rigid schedule of the Gerson Therapy was going to be one of the biggest challenges for us, so we decided to give ourselves a week to adjust. It turns out that we would need another month.
As a reminder, the two main goals of the Gerson Therapy are to:
The juices and supplements will super boost Helena’s Helena’s immune system and the FIVE COFFEE ENEMAS a day help her body to rapidly detox any unwanted substances so that it can focus on healing the cancer. The TIMING of the juices and supplements are critical, because there are very specific biochemical reasons that support specific reactions for everything included in the program.
“You cannot do this 100%, you must do it 110%!”
My friends who have gone through labor and delivery tell me that if you actually remembered what it felt like to give birth, you’d never have sex again. I’m starting to think that the Gerson Therapy is a bit like that. That’s fine with me, as long as I get a healthy baby at the end.
When we started the Gerson Therapy on January 1, we were wildly optimistic and ready to take on the challenge. The funny thing is that we were starting on the 4-year anniversary of beginning a raw food diet, so we knew what needed to be done: attack the kitchen and remove any “offensive items.”
The following is an excerpt from a post written by our new friend Claude, who has been using the Gerson Therapy for almost 9 months. He’s an inspiration to us and to others who are choosing this path:
