Strong To The Finish 'Cuz I Eat My Spinach

I guess I can be glad I had my teenage years and twenties to binge on gluten. After all that time it took you to accept the gluten-free life, I can only imagine how hard it was to be restricted even further. I'm surprised you didn't have a Burger King No Whopper Freakout.

Heather

I think there's a whole lot to be said about alternative medicines, but there's also a huge huge place for modern medicine, treating symptoms isn't a bad thing, but it's not preventative. Breaking a leg, or having cancer is a symptom that needs to be treated, albeit a comprehensive system to prevent re-occurrence.

An interesting example is that in Tibet, just like China and many parts of Asia, herbal medicine was highly developed, there were elements of science, philosophy and mind, but now in modern times, with motorbikes and car accidents there are things that can't be treated in the same way, compound fractures, concussions and so forth.

I think there are a huge number of environmental factors to look at, as the allergy to peanuts for example is a lot more widespread than before (or diagnosed better?), but obviously something makes us vulnerable to certain foods, like the pigeon in the mine, not just the food themselves...that's what i'm most curious about.

I know what you mean about the traditional health care system, but we have to remember that hospitals and doctors treat entire communities, cities, trauma cases you name it - while they should care, they're probably too overwhelmed to do so. When i lived in a small town of 30,000 growing up, i grew up knowing my family doctor, he'd spend lots of time just chatting and asking how we've been, it was a different experience. Coming to the big city of vancouver, clinics have been a far cry from that experience...but occasionally i'd meet some doctors that are friends, and naturally you get better care. I think as "patients" we can get to know our doctor a bit better, instead of just expecting them to care...that in turn creates a relationship that is more conducive to compassionate health-care!

p.s. so do you have to firmly and absolutely give up everything on the list, or is it something you can strive for?

On that note, I think and I hope you will find a different world of foods that unexplored before, personally i'm really trying to give up some things like fried foods, eating less meat...

Oh, Heather...part of me is feeling so sorry for what you've been through. The other part is happy that you found your answers.

I am not a big fan of the American health care system either. I am prone to skin cancer. My last dermatologist who removed three tumors from my back told me that it will recur all throughout my lifetime. They say that it's genetic. A lot of my aunts on my father's mother's side died of skin cancer. We just recently buried my grandfather who died of skin cancer. It seems it skipped my father's generation and went straight to me. I think my brother may be susceptible to it, as well.

I noticed some symptoms and signs when I was in Puerto Rico on vacation and went through the denial phase for several months. When I started getting sick, I knew it was in reaction to the skin cancer. So I knew that I had no choice, but to go to the doctor. I went to a new dermatologist that had access to a hospital. She had one hand on the clipboard and one hand on the doorknob. She basically refused to have more than a 3-minute conversation with me. When I tried to stop her and ask her what was wrong with me, she said that she refused to treat me until she saw my past medical records since I was susceptible to skin cancer. She said that I did indeed have skin cancer cells on my back, but she was refusing to remove them until she saw my file.

In this day and age...and this is America...why can't they enter all this information into a medical database which is shared and only accessible to other doctors in the health care system? If I was dying and needed emergency care, wouldn't it be good to be able to pull up my past medical history in a national computer system to make sure they don't mess up??? Instead of asking me who my past doctor was, etc.

The way I look at it...I'm in their office. I'm paying them to treat me. I know what the treatment is, so they need to do exactly what I'm paying them to do, instead of running out the door.

I still have those cancer cells on my back. I've decided to heal my own body and go the natural route. They say the raw food diet/veganism is one of the surest natural cures to healing your own body. Seems like nature is the cure.

The way I remember my last episode with my bout with skin cancer, I was in stage four. Had I not had those tumors removed, I would have died. After leaving that second dermatologist, I realized they are not about preventive care. They are about reactive care. They only want to treat you when you are almost dead.