Thursday, October 20, 2016

Willing to Try

This morning a text came in from Bev:
“Are you home?”
My heart leapt. “Yes! Are you here?”

I always hope she’s come out to visit her mom and I’ll get to see her. We have been friends since high school in Margo. You may remember that some years ago her doctor diagnosed her with breast cancer and recommended an immediate mastectomy. Instead Bev went the alternative-treatment route in spite of the naysaying of many of her acquaintances, who insisted she would die if she didn’t follow her doctor’s orders. A p.e.t. scan later proved that no cancer remained. It was a success story that a lot of people find difficult to believe; the only explanation that seems logical to them is that the original diagnosis was wrong. (Read Bev's account HERE.)

Bev isn’t in the area, alas, but was texting from her home in southern Saskatchewan to share some good news. We got onto the telephone. She’d been out to Wadena over the Thanksgiving weekend, she said, and had called here but not gotten an answer. As it turned out she wouldn’t have had time to drop in anyway as she was busy helping a friend who’d flown in from Montana. The friend, Jan, had just been diagnosed with cancer throughout her body, bones and all, "everywhere," and all the doctor could offer her was palliative care. Basically she’d been sent home to die.

Bev convinced her to fly up to Saskatchewan and come out to see one of our local healers, who had helped Bev.

“What have you got to lose?” she said to Jan. “Either you’re dying now, or you try this.” 
Later Jan said that Bev had “ripped her a new asshole” when she felt like giving up because there seemed to be no options left.

When Jan came off the plane in Regina she was in a wheelchair. Bev was shocked at the sight of her, her legs so thin the skin seemed to hang from the bone. “She looked like hell,” Bev said. “I just about cried.”

They drove out here and Jan spent several hours being treated with a laser at the home of the healer, who told her the cancer was caused by formaldehyde that had leaked into her body from various dental work. The impact of the laser was felt immediately; Jan's nose ran, and so on. By the end of the session she was told the cancer was gone. She’s gone home to Montana now, feeling good, to rest and try to put some weight back on.

“I wish I could’ve seen her sister’s face when Jan walked off the plane in Montana by herself!” Bev said.

After a few hours of lasering, Jan automatically lifted up her foot and crossed it over the other knee, something she hadn't been able to do for months.