me vs "the man" of food & medicine.

its been interesting being sick. everyone has a cure. an opinion. medical doctors go around and around and i get drugs. new treatments. and have been on a roller coaster with all this for about 4 years. its funny how after reading alot lately, learning about nutrition and getting more educated- i grow more and more fearful of medicine and more frustrated with food and the lack of truth in what we are taught. in alot of studies, results say that 70% of people with cancer who get chemotherapy and radiation, whether cured or not, die within a 5 year time period. that's scary. maybe bc I'm on 5 years soon. maybe bc i have a tube shooting poison into my belly every 3weeks and take pills that dose it as well. i know the chemo is poison and a carcinogen. it seems basic but strange that to cure my cancer i get blasted with harsh drugs and more cancer...chemo. some days i think cancer treatment makes my cancer come back. maybe im being a radical. or a cynic. but isn't it funny that medicine is supposed to be right. and most of us dont question. we dont question our doctors. we don't question alot. i have never questioned any of it, i just do what im told. as do alot of us.

i never think about nutrition much. if it were so important, than why wouldn't it be part of medical training? why do hospitals serve fried chicken and jello? why don't we get nutritious food in our schools? when im sick i go to my doctors and get a pill, not advice on lifestyle changes with nutrition. it MUST not be important if its not important in society or to doctors. its not a focus in your upbringing, society, marketing, how & where we shop, with our doctors...almost anywhere. so why should it be important? wow. i feel like i have gone through life with blinders on.

what you put into your body is the most important factor on how you feel, your health, your liveliehood. it is everything and the most controllable variable in all of it.

why when i am 37, do i start to realize that you are what you eat. that organic and healthy food isnt for hippies. that our food is altered by science and chemicals. that light, diet or healthy packaged food is just marketing and usually NOT good for you. i am now terrified of food. maybe i am being reactionary but if vitamins and nutrients from food can cure diseases, keep you healthy and have kept nations like china more cancer free than America, then why don't we eat more good, natural, pure food that we grow? i mindlessly eat food that i have NO idea where it comes from. i grew up loving hot dogs, mac and cheese and soda. why? because it tasted good to me and was what was in commercials. at my school. and the norm, what i found in my store. there was no organic section or vegetarian section. vegetables taste bad to me compared to bbq chips and cooked fatty foods. of course it will. but the more i eat good foods that i may not love the taste, the more i love how i feel and then like the food more.

don't get me wrong, i don't think all food is bad but i all of a sudden feel like i understand why im here. 8 years ago i had gastric bypass surgery which did make me lose 200lbs and give me a new life, but i didnt learn to eat. nor was i taught to. i ate better but i still ate light and diet foods. i substituted bad foods for more bad foods, or what i thought was better bc it was light, low sodium, diet, natural or etc. however, i still ate processed food. and my stomach was stapled smaller, re-routed so i would not digest or take in all my food. its kind of a fucked up surgery when i look at it. i was surgically altered to be malnourished. i dont absord my vitamins and nutrients like normal folks. i took a temporary fix to become "healthy" or what i thought was. and 7-8 years later, i still eat processed foods, cook them all, barely eat veggies. i think that this is a factor in why im sick. ive been taking processed vitamins to get nutrients and eating for taste. when i need to to eat for nutrients.

3 weeks of reading, research and really learning has left me horrified. i am pretty much convinced that the lack of nutrients, real food and bad eating, in addition, to gastric bypass surgery has made me sick. genetics just feels like a bs excuse to why i have issues. my body is telling me its broken. I've filled it with bad food, alcohol and tons of medicine and poisons through 4 years of cancer treatments. I'm kinda fed up and about done. i started to do alot of real research and have been going mostly raw, cutting processed foods, eating high fiber and grains, cutting most meat and dairy and bulking up on vitamin c and other veggies and herbs will cure me. i have been eating fruits, veggies and herbs and raw/ organic and fresh for a few weeks and already my blood work is drastically changing already. can it really be that easy? could i really have saved $100,000 and years by just eating the right foods? can it really be that easy. probably not, but it seems like a big part of it.

I'm about to sound like my gramma who spouts conspiracy theory left and right, but for real- nutrition is not even taught in modern medicine to level it should. i shouldn't have my doctor and my nutritionist and my alt medicine docs all on different pages. they should all be working together. they should all have the same goal and steps to get there that incorporate all 3. but they don't. when I'm in the hospital i get food my nutritionist wont let me eat. its crazy. the system is so broken and i feel down right angry that between the drug companies, insurance and the financial monster that comes from medicine, that every things is treated with drugs and expensive treatments. I've spent about $100,000 and lived on borderline poverty for 5 years and guess what- I'm still sick. and then i move onto nutrition and making drastic natural but simple changes, which is easily accessible here in California and sf, but its not everywhere else. schools, commerce, advertising, whats accessible everywhere in food and nutrition freaks me out. i am drastically making changes and more every day. and i am officially switched now. something has gone off and flipped. the blinders are off and i want to do everything as healthy as possible so i can not only beat this and get better, but see how fucked up the system is. i think there are good sides to medicine and education, don't get me wrong, but i feel like how we eat, how we treat disease, how we get nutrients- is all warped by money, govt, commerce, technology and goes so far deep that there isn't an end to it.

i know i usually write funny stories about cancer and where i am at but there are some serious sides. i am tired and sick and i want to be better. i don't want to look at numbers that say i have a 70% chance of being dead soon. I've been getting chemo and radiation on and off for years. i feel like a walking ball of poison and am pretty convinced my unbelievably positive attitude and submerging myself in my own happiness, diy and making things, as well as making an impact to people here in sf- has kept me alive.

the reality and sadness aside of all that, i want to change how i eat and care for myself even more. i have changed so much in such a short time and have stuck to it. i think that the time, money and energy im putting into eating right via organic, unprocessed, partially raw foods heavy in veggies, herbs and fruit will change things for me. i also think cutting down on drugs, pain killers and un-natural medicine and switching to weed, herbs and vitamins is helping. i have a long battle ahead of me and some days like today im fed up and pissed bc i feel like if i had better options, more education and the systems were better- i might not be here, but i will own it and know that i made choices to go with the grain and eat burger king over home cooked food. or diet cokes over green tea. or wonder bread over some sprouted wheat bread. i know that everything is marketing sell....eco, healthy, lean, etc. terms like these sell products. but eating locally grown, organic non treated food is how our ancestors ate. and 100 years ago cancer rates weren't even close to what they are now. it gets worse all the time. and what we eat directly impacts this.

i don't think i am going to turn my disease around and end it all with good food in a week, but i want to look back 6 months from now and see what these changes do. i don't want to be lazy anymore. i don't want to make bad choices anymore. i don't want to put everyone else needs, my emails, and everything else as a priority anymore. its too easy to not focus on yourself and your own world. or to fart around on facebook all day. my mom is sick and also in the hospital. my mom mom just passed. my family is laiden with diabetes and heart disease. i apparently have a 30% chance of being here. i am the prime example of an extremely busy person and from a busy family who has made choices, not all bad but not all good, and alot of mainstream choices based on what were told and whats in front of us or within what resources we had. its not working anymore though. i want to prove for myself, the livliehood of my fmaily and everyone else out there, that i can break the statistics and change this all with good food foremost before medicine and anything else. quality food from plants. exercise. cutting stress and being around only positive, creative and fun people is my new medicine.

most days of this battle are ok. but some aren't. some are lonely. some days you realize how many people are absent that are supposed to be friends. and you realize despite all the support and voices, you re in this alone. and its up to you to fix it, which ps is like an expensive unpaid full time job of sorting through a million opinions and advice to figure out what will work or fix you. no one is on the same page and its up to you to figure it out and trust the system. trust medicine. but i cant because its not working for me. for my family. i have to do everything i possibly can and fight this disease through every method i can. i have had nothing but health on my mind lately, maybe bc I'm afraid I've worked this hard and wont be able to be here to enjoy it all. and more so because my mom is sick and in the same boat, only because of her heart. i feel so much regret and frustration that I've made everything and everyone else a priority over learning to take care of myself. so i just want to do this for myself and my mom. Ive been able to achieve every goal in front of me. every one. and this one wont be different i hope.