Tera Warner

How a Cancer Survivor Kicked My Self-Righteous Butt

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surviving cancerHow a Cancer Survivor Kicked My Self-Righteous Butt

by Tera Warner

I’m not proud of it, but there was a time when I honestly believed most of the world’s problems could be solved with food and diet changes. “If people would just drink more green juice and green smoothies, the bulk of their health and wellness problems would resolve! If people would just stop overeating, they’d be able to process and confront their emotions and life would get easier for them.”I lived with this narrow-minded perspective for about 15 years.

Then I met a man named Noe, who shattered my staunch and self-righteous viewpoints about food in a single afternoon.

A Man Way Bigger Than His Problems

Noe was a businessman and single father of two. I can’t remember the reasons for his being a solo-parent, but he definitely was a very busy, very productive person with many lives who depended on him. His story started when he decided to have a persistent leg pain checked out.

Prognosis: Cancer.

It was everywhere, in his chest, lungs and heart. Upon observation, the doctors stated their shock and disbelief at the fact he was even still alive and gave him no more than 10 days to survive.

His reaction, “I don’t have time to be sick.”

With more than your average human’s sense of self-determination, he faced the situation head on by accepting to be part of an experimental study. He took the private route for medical care (very expensive!) which helped him avoid the lengthy delays and unnecessary bureaucracy associated with Quebec’s health care services.

He had to undergo extensive testing to be able to participate in the study along with 27  other people who all had very similar conditions of end stage cancer. Noe’s was definitely among the “worst” of conditions in the group.

An Insatiable Appetite to Survive

Nearly immediately upon diagnosis, Noe started to recall moments in his past and more specifically meals in his past. He became ravenously hungry and told me, “It was as if my body knew it was going to need some fuel to get through what was coming.”

He ate 3 and 4 huge meals a day and went to whatever restaurant he felt like going to. Memories popped up and he packed up in his car and made his way to wherever he had been “called.” Ate like a King. Not a raw food king. A carnivorous king. He ate huge amounts of meat, potatoes and classic, nourishing delights of the cooked variety from every ethnic corner of the globe.

He ate and ate and ate. Whatever he wanted. As much as he wanted.

Within the first few days of chemotherapy, 10 of the participants of the study dropped off like flies. “It was tough,” he said to me. And I could see in his eyes, he meant it.

But Noe’s will to live was greater than anything that would try to knock him down. Throughout the intense chemotherapy and rigorous testing to which he was continuously subjected, the guy never missed a day on the job of life.

He still picked up his kids every day from school, drove them home and tucked them in bed.

On two separate occasions, because of the extreme stress on his body, his heart just stopped. TWICE he “died” and was “brought back” to life. On one occasion, a Rabi was brought into the room, to read him his last “whatever it is a Rabi reads or says as a person makes their transition to death”.

Noe piped up and said graciously, “Stop that! I’m not going anywhere.”

And he didn’t.

When I met Noe, it was already two and a half years after his original diagnosis. He was still kicking up dust, had not missed a single day of work and was making five times the amount of money he’d been making before the incident happened.

Noe said he “gets” what life is about now. He took pain medication to handle the side effects of chemotherapy. But he’s prescribed 8 pills a day and took 2. He worked so much, he told me, that he just didn’t put his attention on the pain during the day.

The Secret to a Happy Life10 day detox, positive thinking,

I remember going home the day I met Noe, feeling as though my entire world view had crumbled. Years of my self-righteous dietary diatribes were now silenced. After years of “knowing it all”, I was brought to a place of sincere humility. Clearly, I didn’t have all the information if, when his body was most under pressure, massive amounts of cooked food, including meat, was largely responsible for getting him through it.

We’re all given 24 hours in a day, and while the individual circumstances and conditions we’re in change, there’s always a choice in how you respond. You make life happen, or you don’t. And even when the day comes that you’re slapped with your final sentence, you can still choose, like Noe did, to refuse to go down without kicking.

My father-in-law summed it all up rather beautifully in his coming of age speech to my husband as he was leaving home to embark on his own adventures in life.

“So Dad? Any final words of advice before I head out on my own?”

Life is what you make of it, Son. Not much more to it than that, really.”

Choose Your News Wisely

If life is what you make of it, then start to choose your thoughts, your friends, the news you pay attention to a little more carefully. These are responsible for creating the emotional climate in which you keep yourself and have a big influence on how alive and engaged you feel.

Take a break from scandalous reports on the dangers of plastics or pesticides. No need to watch more footage of terrorist attacks, political scandals and other disconcerting affairs that cause you to question the safety and beauty of your world

If the newspapers wrote stories about lives like Noe, the pharmaceutical companies that pay for full page ads about anxiety medications wouldn’t make very much money anymore.

After meeting Noe, I could no longer spout off with my self-righteous diatribe. I wouldn’t dare look at this man and tell him he should eat more raw food and green juice!  He listened to himself and two and a half years after the study ended, all the other participants but one died or were strapped to IVs and lifeless.

Noe never missed a day in action taking his life head on.

[tweet_box design=”box_12_at” pic_url=”https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2555858562/hdjdic8en18c0js3qxvl_400x400.jpeg” author=”Tera Warner”]Don’t be so afraid of dying that you forget to live![/tweet_box]

Build an empire on dreams and hopes, and defy what the merchants of chaos sell in their headlines and trashy magazines. Buy another reusable plastic drinking bottle before you even consider laying down a nickel for Time Magazine, or another year’s subscription to satellite TV.

Thoughts, more than things, make the world a better place to be. You are more capable than you realize, more, much more than they ever thought possible.

And until they believe it for themselves, I hope for them to encounter people like Noe, who live it and remind us of what is possible.

Merci, Noe!

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