Savoring Survival ; Author Switches to Macrobiotic Foods to Help Her Body Heal, Grow Stronger.

Portland Press Herald

03-14-07

When Meg Wolff of Cape Elizabeth was diagnosed with advanced invasive breast cancer in 1998, she had already fought cancer once.

Eight years earlier she had a leg amputated after being diagnosed with bone cancer. To fight the breast cancer, she underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. But none, she was told, could be expected to save her life.

So she fought on. She heard that a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle might help. As a mother of two children - then 8 and 12 - she was willing to try anything that might help. Now, nine years later, she's glad she did.

Today, Wolff is 49 and feels that her prognosis is excellent. She decided to write about her experience in the hopes that it might help others. The result is her book "Becoming Whole: The Story of My Complete Recovery From Breast Cancer" (Flow Books, $18.) The book has been praised by several members of the medical community including Dr. Christiane Northrup, a nationally known women's health expert from Maine.

Q: How did you decide to write about something so personal?

A: I didn't realize how personal it would be until I got into the process of writing it. I wanted to write about what was true for me, and in doing so, it couldn't help but be personal. As it turned out, that's what people can relate to.

Q: What was the most difficult part of writing this? Recounting the medical treatments, the operation?

A: I'm a people pleaser - I want people to be happy. So it was hard for me to tell some of the depressing parts of my story. Fortunately, my story gets better, as did my life.

Q: Were there things that surprised you as you wrote them?

A: Not really. I'm a pretty open person. I felt I was doing this for the higher purpose of helping others. I felt morally obligated to share my story in its entirety. I do admit there were some days that I would wake up in the morning feeling uncomfortable about it, but I knew I had to do it, and I had faith that being open and honest was the way to tell it.

Q: When people ask you how you found the strength to persevere after two kinds of cancer, what do you tell them?

A: I had the will to live. I was willing to change my way of eating. I accepted my life on whatever terms I needed to in order to live. My survival instinct was strong. I don't think we have it until we need it. Sometimes fear blocks us from listening to this.

I also had hope. I had read macrobiotic recovery stories, and this gave me something to cling to. I felt if others had healed from advanced cancer that possibly I could do this, too. The way I pictured it, I was sliding down a rocky ledge trying to grasp onto something, trying not to fall. Having hope was like discovering a notch in the rocks that I could grasp onto, that I could hold to keep me from slipping until eventually I got a foothold.

Q: Why do you think the macrobiotic diet worked for you?

A: I think it worked for me because I stopped putting substances into my body such as hormones that proliferate cancer growth and are stored in the fat of animal products and in our body fat. A diet based on whole grains (like brown rice), beans and vegetables is low in fat and chemicals found in our environment called xenoestrogens - which mimic estrogens and send a signal to breast cells to grow unchecked.

I stopped eating animal fat calories. Organic grains, beans and vegetables are plant-based proteins, which have substantially less fat. Eating a plant-based diet also decreased my body fat quickly, which I feel eliminated a lot of the toxins feeding the cancer. Also, I was doing something healthy for my body three times a day - eating whole foods filled with life and energy. That gave my body life and energy. I never felt that way eating processed foods and junk foods.

Q: What would you say to people who think cancer can't be treated by diet?

A: I'm not claiming that this is a "treatment" per se, but it's a way of bringing your body back into balance. Facilitating the body's own immune system in becoming stronger by adding healing foods and decreasing non-nutritive, high-fat and chemicalized foods that we all know aren't life-promoting. But, don't take my word for it. Try it for three months and see how you feel. It's actually very much common sense. Or start reading about the benefits of a plant-based diet. There's been a lot of research on this subject, and there are a lot of books, including the highly acclaimed "The China Study" by Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University. He uses 40 years of government-funded research to show the connection between a plant- based diet and prevention and recovery from cancer, diabetes, heart disease and MS. I think food is a big missing piece of cancer recovery.

Q: What is your prognosis today? Have your doctors cautioned you about a chance of recurrence?

A: I think my prognosis is excellent. And now that I have the food part mastered, I have to be more careful about stress in my life - not overdoing. I found a doctor who supported me in what I was doing. She was surprised that I got healthier each time I returned for my yearly checkup. Her advice is to continue what I'm doing.

Q: What sort of reaction have you had to the book?

A: The most common comment that I have received is that once a reader picks it up, he or she can't put it down. Another is, "Thank you for your beautiful book!" I got a really touching letter from a young mother who has breast cancer that returned to her bones and liver. She wrote to say that my book has given her much hope. She adopted a macrobiotic healing diet in August and now is seeing tumor regression. Letters like hers make what I'm doing seem even more worthwhile.

Q: What are you doing now? Working? Writing more?

A: I'm working on marketing my book, and I'm starting to do lectures. For example, in October - National Breast Cancer Awareness Month - I'm looking forward to being the keynote speaker at the prestigious Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C. I write a cooking column for Inner Tapestry Journal. I've been teaching macrobiotic cooking for the last five years at the Cancer Community Center in South Portland and had to recently take a hiatus while getting fitted for my prosthetic leg. But I hope to be on the go again soon, doing more teaching there. And last but not least, I'm working on a companion book to "Becoming Whole." It's a photography book titled "Breast Cancer Exposed, The Connection Between Food and Survival." The images are by renowned photographer Joyce Tenneson -who also did the cover of my first book - and I wrote the text.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com

"Don't take my word for it. Try it for three months and see how you feel. It's actually very much common sense."

Thank you for posting this.

Yey!

Wow, what an amazing story. In so many ways, it parallels my own, although I can only imagine how hard it must have been to lose her leg.

I also tried the macrobiotic route, but the raw food diet makes more sense to me, and I wasn't all that crazy about the macrobiotic food. Hopefully, this will be enough to help me in my journey back to health.

Those of us who survive would dearly love to believe that achieving that magical five year survival really means something, but all it really means is that we no longer count to the powers that be, and if we die after that anniversary, they aren't responsible for not having cured us.

I recently read about a beautiful young woman who lost the battle. Her name was Soraya. She died six years after diagnosis, so officially, she was successfully cured. Her music was so amazing and inspiring.

(quote) "Soraya died of breast cancer on May 10, 2006, aged 37. She was first diagnosed in 2000, at the age of 31, after finding a lump while conducting a routine self-examination. She was diagnosed at Stage III and had a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction as well as radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Before being diagnosed, she had always eaten right, exercised regularly (trying to run at least 3 miles a day), meditated, and received regular health check-ups." (whatever that means)

I was also told I was unlikely to survive 5 years. Well, it will be five years this coming summer and so far, so good. It would be wonderful if many years from now, I am able to tell people that the raw and living foods lifestyle made a big difference for me!

Thank you for sharing this story. During the months I had to undergo all my cancer treatments, I met so many of the strongest and bravest people I could ever have imagined.

Sapphire:


<<I was also told I was unlikely to survive 5 years. Well, it will be five years this coming summer and so far, so good. It would be wonderful if many years from now, I am able to tell people that the raw and living foods lifestyle made a big difference for me! >>

Of course you will
don't doubt it for even one second
focus on what you wish to achieve
your spirit will take you far

Sapphire,

You are an inspiration. Thanks and keep on keepin on girl. Count yourself among the strong and the brave. You face issues daily that most of us could never imagine. I agree with La, focus on what you wish to achieve. You'll make it.

Bulldog

Thank you so much for your positive thoughts and encouragement, La V, Bulldog, and anyone else who has ever sent those wonderful vibrations in my direction. You have no idea how enormously powerful that can be!

During the most difficult times during my treatments, when I was so sick, and in my deepest state of despair, that was what kept me going. I would think about all the people who loved me, who were praying for me, who wanted so very much for me to get better, and somehow, it got me through.

Cancer sounds like such a scary thing, and people would often marvel at how brave I was, but you know, you really don't feel brave when you are the one going throught it. You just have to deal with it, you don't get the choice to say no. Kind of like childbirth, once those contractions start, you don't get to say "oops, don't think I'm ready for this!". You're done, no turning back! (smile)

So many people I know are worse off than me. A young teacher with ALS, my sister in law, with multiple sclerosis, people I know with serious addictions, even one of my sisters who has been in the most miserable marriage (no kids) imaginable for the past 14 years, yet refuses to leave. (at least I had lots of people on my side, she must feel so alone!). What do you do, we all have stuff to deal with.

So we all gotta keep on keepin on - and once in a while, we might get a little glimmer of just how great we are really doing. Like yesterday, when I caught my daughter boasting to her friend about how proud she was of me - WOW, that was unexpected!

Sapphire

>I also tried the macrobiotic route, but the raw food diet makes more >sense to me, and I wasn't all that crazy about the macrobiotic food. >Hopefully, this will be enough to help me in my journey back to health.

I'd do raw, not macrobiotic. There's much more good evidence for raw fighting cancer, in particular raw leaves.

Kushi's wife and I think 2 of his daughters died of cancer. Their diets were not enough to protect them.

I think you can do better, and I will be wishing you the best.

I lost my mother to a highly invasive breast cancer about 21 years ago. She was my age when she had her radical mastectomy. She ate garbage, though, before and during her illness. I think raw would have helped. How much, I can't say, but I think it would have helped.

Arugula - I am so very sorry to hear that you lost your mom when you were such a young woman yourself. What a hard thing that must have been for you. She must have been so proud to have such a smart and articulate daughter as you, so sad that your time together was cut short like that,

I hope you have good health all your life,
Sapphire



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2007 04:13PM by Sapphire.

Sapphire--It does just make so much sense that we do everything we can to keep our bodies strong through radical raw nutrition, whether to heal or too keep from becoming sick. Thanks for your inspiration.

sometimes cancer patients die on the raw food diet and then the raw food diet gets blamed, excuse me , who had Cancer???