THE FINAL SCAN & THINGS ALTERNATIVE

June 2012 was the month of tests, leading up to the mother of all scans - the MRI scan.  Facedown for 45 minutes or so,and  inspite of the padding I could feel the metal underneath boring into pressure points in my body.  At the end of the session I came out with a mark on my forehead that literally took all afternoon to wear off. And the noise!  Like a pneumatic drill inside your body, despite earphones.  And then you mustn't move or you'll ruin the image.  Why don't you you try it - as soon as somebody says don't move, what's the first thing you want to do?  Then try doing that in an excrutiatingly uncomfortable position with massive tension in every muscle.  The mantras helped momentarily but I think it would be a challenge for the best Buddhist monk to meditate in such conditions .  A slow kind of torture, but of a different sort to the biopsy, I have to say.  This was great discomfort and prolonged tension, while the biopsy was pain.

Things alternative
June was also the month of everything alternative. I had already started sessions of par biomagnetism and I had already changed my diet from the moment I found out I had the lump.  My immense thanks goes to Lily who treated me for free and who gave me invaluable advice on diet, detoxing, hygiene and alternative therapies.

Amongst other things (!) here are some of the treatments and therapies that I did or still do, and which have helped to boost my immune system and my spirits, reduce the tumour, reduce the side effects and levels of toxicity in my body after chemotherapy, help me emotionally to deal with this experience.  The main ones are explained fully in the section on alternative therapies: Sound therapy sessions (a million thank yous to Montse Hari Avtar), Sat Nam Rasayan, which is healing through meditation (thank you Ambrosio and Elena), quantum feng shui (not what it sounds like - thank you Ton and Annette), Zen therapy (thank you Eva), Reiki, the Yuen method (thank you again Lily), the Reconnection, which deserves a section all to itself (and thank you David, if you only knew the gift you have and if only you would share it with the world).  Thank you to Satyarthi, Michael Mokrus, Rafael, Eva, Roser and Roger and all my fellow participants on the Family Constellations/Somatic Experience course and for the amazing constellation they did for me.

Now, with my yoga background I thought I'd seen or at least heard of most things wild and wacky (I don't mean this perjoratively).  But how wrong I was. How wrong we are about most things in life, in the end. I read everything I could get my hands on and checked out what seemed feasible - for instance, I toyed with orinotherapy, yes, drinking your own urine (I joke not, I know yogis who have done it for other things, and speak wonders of it ) and I even contacted an association  in Madrid that could arrange a personalised vaccine (we have antibodies and antigenes in our urine, our body produces its own cure) from a very reputable clinic in Mexico.  The info never came, seemed it wasn't meant to be, I didn't pursue it. I visited a private oncologist in Granollers, a small town near Barcelona to look into hipertermina, where I also got essential information about diet.

The posh oncologists (meant affecctionately because of their address)
Then there is the private clinic in Barcelona, run by the oncologist Natalia,  who has been and still is absolutely invaluable.  First and foremost thank you for listening and for treating me with such respect, Cristina and Natalia.  I could not have hoped for better- the best of the conventional and the alternative.  Homeopathy, nutrition , supplements, psycho-biology (the emotional causes behind the manifestation of a tumour), invaluable advice on habits (don't do yoga on the day of the chemotherapy or the day after, to not stimulate the circulation, insisting I meditate for longer), recommendations of all sorts beyond the conventional, and the fact that I could talk about any non-conventional treatments freely and easily and they didn't bat an eyelid and they knew them all!  If only I'd known you embrace all things alternative at the beginning, I wouldn't have been so guarded and on the defensive. Thank you to Lily for putting me in touch with them.  So many talented loving people in this world.

Then there's PSYCH-K.  Awesome (Obligatory American accent).  To change the biology of your beliefs.  I knew that everything we think and feel produces chemical substances, and has an effect on the cells in our body.  I knew I had developed breast cancer from the shock of finding out my mother had a tumour last  autumn 2011.  It made perfect sense to me.  But how do you reprogramme your beliefs and the behavioural patterns of a lifetime when time is of the essence?  This was how.  So, thank you to Esther.  ¡Como molas!  You're awesome (American accent again, as is befitting the expression).

And if this is the section for thankyous, then thank you to all my friends and all the people who have offered help, love and shown me kindness throughout this time.  To my yogi friends who have given me such incredible support, who have understood so much of the experience and given such knowledgeable advice without having gone through it themselves, you are generous and wise spirits.  Thank you to my friend Anna, for being there, for letting me stay.  Thank you to my friend Montse for all you have given me, the list is endless. Thank you to my mum and sister for the unconditional love and support and for bailing me out!

Thank you to all the doctors of the Vall d'Hebron hospital.  I'm so sorry I was a difficult, confrontational patient.  Thank you to the nurses there who were and are angels, especially Ariadna, Carol and Edu.  I shall never forget you.