Resources for Cancer Patients

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Your Inner Healer

Tap into your body’s own ability to heal by way of your imagination and Inner Healer. This tool will help guide you into a relaxing state of hypnosis to find your Inner Healer and help your healing process. Regardless of whether you are dealing with physical and/or emotional challenges, you will ultimately define the nature of your Inner Healer, and what you need from them to help your healing process. This is a seventeen-minute guided journey.

Staying Calm - Waiting for Results

Learning to relax deeply with the uncertainty of events and the future means that life in the moment can become more manageable and comfortable. Waiting for test results that may impact your future is incredibly stressful because we really do not like not knowing – uncertainty makes us feel unsafe. Left unleashed, uncertainty and anxiety can make up all kinds of negative stories to create a feeling of “certainty,” stories that might not necessarily be true.

You may recall the old saying, “I’ll cross that bridge if and when I get to it.” Not assuming anything, and not projecting into the future beyond anything already known, is something you can learn to do. During this hypnotic relaxation, your mind will have the opportunity to keep focused on relaxing in the weeks, days, hours, and even moments before receiving any test results, to help you maintain a calm, meditative patience.

Making the Most of Your Chemotherapy Treatment

Mindfully employing thoughtful mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain. In this way, the brain is subtly, but purposefully, being prepared and trained for whatever actual performance is asked of it, in this case, supporting the body to accept and maximize the benefits of chemotherapy.

I hope you enjoy and receive the best possible benefit from this 22-minute guided hypnotic relaxation. 

Making the Most of Your Radiation Treatment

This 13-minute guided hypnotic relaxation session employs the same use of thoughtful, intentional mental imagery as the previous resource geared towards chemotherapy, to compassionately prepare your mind and heart to open to, accept, and harness the power of your radiation treatment to maximize its benefits, and reduce associated stress and trauma.

Recommended Reading

Click the titles to find out more about each book.

Personal Account

Cancer Vixen

by Marisa Acocella Marchetto

Cancer survivor and The New Yorker cartoonist, Marisa Acocella Marchetto is something of a hero for figuring out a successful approach to lending much needed comic relief to a sad subject. Her best-selling graphic novel chronicles her 11-month battle with breast cancer and coming out the other side (vixen, rather than victim).

Memoir of a Debulked Woman

by Susan Gubar

This is feminist writer and English professor, Susan Gubar’s brutally honest and graphic account of suffering through, and ultimately surviving, ovarian cancer—part of the grueling treatment involves the awful debulking operation that lent her memoir its title. It’s unapologetically emotional and can be difficult to read at times, but absolutely worth the tears.

Strength & Support

Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds

Book by Kelly A. Turner

In her New York Times bestseller, Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, Dr. Kelly A. Turner, founder of the Radical Remission Project, uncovers nine factors that can lead to a spontaneous remission from cancer—even after conventional medicine has failed.

Anticancer: A New Way of Life 

by David Servan-Schreiber

Anticancer's synthesis of science and personal experience marks a transformation in the way we understand and confront cancer. A long-running bestseller that has changed the lives of millions around the world, Anticancer remains a pioneering and peerless resource, an inspirational and revolutionary guide to ''a new way of life.''

How To Be a Friend to a Friend Who’s Sick

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Trying to say the right thing, actually being helpful, and generally providing support in the face of a serious diagnosis can be a fumbling and awkward mess for even the most well-intentioned friends. Letty Cottin Pogrebin wrote this comprehensive guide after getting through her own bout with breast cancer—the collective wisdom is gleaned from her own experience and those of her fellow patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Her frank (and often humorous) writing style is enormously comforting.

Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor’s Soul

by  Beverly Kirkhart, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Aubery 

Chicken Soup for the Soul was on the forefront of the modern spirituality and self-help genre, and it still looms large today, more than twenty years later. The Cancer Survivor’s edition assembled stories from hundreds of cancer survivors—it may seem like a trite title these days, but there’s nothing like this original to restore your faith in the goodness of those around you.

Cancer: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was First Diagnosed: Tips And Advice From a Survivor

by Michele Ryan

Michele Ryan has lived through a nightmare: after surviving breast cancer herself, she nursed her late husband through terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her incredibly helpful book reads like a how-to for handling the practical issues associated with a diagnosis, from understanding your health insurance to telling your children and family.

Diet & Nutrition

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What to Eat if You Have Cancer (revised): Healing Foods that Boost Your Immune System 

by Maureen Keane, Daniella Chace  

Cancer and cancer treatment take a toll on your body, but you can help make cancer treatment more effective and reduce its unpleasant side effects with good nutrition. What to Eat if You Have Cancer presents the best foods to fight cancer and suggests ways to keep your body strong--knowledge you need to take control of your health. A vital resource for cancer patients, this revised edition contains new recipes, new menus, and the latest research on cancer and nutrition.

The Gerson Therapy: The Proven Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses

by Charlotte Gerson and Morton Walker

Charlotte Gerson’s guide walks patients through the healing therapy she and her father developed over decades—the famed diet is organic and vegetarian, anchored by a healthy dose of raw juice and other natural supplements. With the support of a doctor, The Gerson Therapy can be implemented alongside conventional treatments like radiation therapy and chemotherapy.

The Metabolic Approach to Cancer: Integrating Deep Nutrition, the Ketogenic Diet and Nontoxic Bio-Individualized Therapies

by Dr. Nasha Winters ND FABNO L.Ac Dipl.OM , Jess Higgins Kelley MNT , Kelly Turner (Forward)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, cancer rates have increased exponentially―now affecting almost 50 percent of the American population. Conventional treatment continues to rely on chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to attack cancer cells. Yet research has repeatedly shown that 95 percent of cancer cases are directly linked to diet and lifestyle. The Metabolic Approach to Cancer is the book we have been waiting for―it offers an innovative, metabolic-focused nutrition protocol that actually works. Naturopathic, integrative oncologist and cancer survivor Dr. Nasha Winters and nutrition therapist Jess Higgins Kelley have identified the ten key elements of a person’s “terrain” (think of it as a topographical map of our body) that are crucial to preventing and managing cancer. Each of the terrain ten elements―including epigenetics, the microbiome, the immune system, toxin exposures, and blood sugar balance―is illuminated as it relates to the cancer process, then given a heavily researched and tested, non-toxic and metabolic, focused nutrition prescription.

Living in a Healthier, Cleaner Environment

The Organically Clean Home: 150 Everyday Organic Cleaning Products You can Make Yourself- The Natural Chemical –Free Way

by Becky Rapinchuk

Forget about chemical cleaners and pricey "green" products--all you need are a few simple kitchen staples to make your whole house sparkle! The Organically Clean Home features 150 easy-to-make recipes for cleaning products filled with all-natural ingredients you can trust (and actually pronounce!). From dishwasher detergent to antibacterial wipes, America's favorite cleaning blogger Becky Rapinchuk guides you through the steps needed to make these everyday necessities--without spending a fortune.