To all who may read this message, this is a message of hope for all of those who are fighting cancer. This fight is the greatest fight you may ever face, and you're not alone in it!
My wife Alyssa Brewer is a two time cancer survivor, when she was 19 she survived Thyroid cancer and is currently beating pancreatic cancer.
Our journey fighting pancreatic cancer began on a beautiful December day; Dec 16th 2007 my wife Alyssa and our daughter Emily had gone Christmas shopping…Emily noticed her mother’s eyes were yellow….our day ended in The Reedsburg Area Medical Centers ER.
Alyssa was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic head on December 23rd; she was 37 years old, mother of 7 and a gifted music teacher. We were told it was inoperable Dec 27th …the tumor was quite large at 5.5cm x 6cm, there were suspicious spots in her liver, lymph node involvement as well as having vascular complications, as the tumor had grown around the hepatic artery and portal vein. She was not a candidate for the Whipple…
Her first oncologist told me “why don’t we just give her enough morphine to make her comfortable with the time she has left” when I asked about treatment options to beat this monster. We never saw him again.
The prognosis was bleak. I was told she had 3 months to live, that she would be dead by Easter…that I had better get our affairs in order. Alyssa looked me in the eye and said, “I am going to beat this, don’t you ever let me quit!” She made me promise.
I searched for answers; I found studies that indicated that by cutting salt, increasing potassium intake and getting your ph. level between 7.2 and 7.6 by eating a more alkaline based diet would help your body fight cancer. So I implemented a diet regimen, and life style changes that helped her to not only survive, but to live and to eventually beat this cancer…this beast.
I put Alyssa on a high alkaline Mediterranean style diet and had her take 800-1000 mg of curcumin/turmeric and querciten daily to start.
Throughout her treatments we were showing a steady reduction in tumor size of 1 - 1.5cm every four months...the doctors had no data on these kinds of results with standard treatments (radiation/chemo) alone.
Alyssa did almost die twice in the fourth week of radiation with chemo, the radiation and chemo were beating her up and she continued to teach! She was fighting to stay in her life, in our lives. At one point, after being revived the second time in a week, she didn't feel she could go on…she was sobbing, I almost broke my promise, she was in so much pain I told her if she could tell our youngest she didn't want to be his mommy anymore she could quit…she couldn’t tell him, Isaac was 5 then, the youngest of our 7 children.
I am so grateful she couldn’t say those words.
Near the end of the fourth week of radiation I had her start taking cannabis, as an anti-nausea aide in an effort to keep her alive, after having a conversation with a doctor discussing the available prescription nausea meds where he said “marijuana works”…
She so desperately needed to keep food down and gain some strength…she was wasting away, she was dying, I felt so helpless. I was giving her doses in everything she ate or drank …about a month later I found this report concerning Cannabinoids Inducing Apoptosis in Pancreatic Tumor Cells and increased the amount she was using.
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/66/13/6748
Then I added acai juice in Oct ’08, after finding this report.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080326/red-wine-antioxidant-fights-cancer
Resveratrol causes apoptosis in cancer cells as well.
I had lost my source of employment a few weeks prior to Alyssa’s diagnosis and we did our best to keep our children in their lives and ours; it has been a long road emotionally and financially but we have managed to embrace and share joy along the way.
Long story short, Alyssa is cancer free and has been since November 5th 2008 (the day our grandson Dylan was born) when they couldn’t find any discreet mass at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. When we returned to Dean Health care in Baraboo Wisconsin they were confused about what the scan results could really mean. We ended up at the UW’s Carbone Cancer Center, they were amazed to see a pancreatic cancer patient 13 months after diagnosis, let alone one who was cancer FREE…they reran all tests and ran some not normally done for pancreatic cancer patients to confirm Alyssa’s tumors were dead, zero uptake activity…ZERO.
They asked what we had done differently, as they don’t normally see pc patients 13 months after diagnosis they said. I gave them our diet regimen.
Dr. Sharon Weber told us she thought she could do the Whipple…I told her we didn’t need it, my wife is cancer free and we have been told the whole time that pancreatic cancer care is really only palliative at best and these tumors don’t shrink etc…I said she would have to prove to us that my wife needed this surgery that we were told couldn’t be done.
Not long after that conversation, Alyssa’s stent became clogged, it was the Chinese puzzle type that can’t be easily removed, Alyssa went into liver failure and they had to operate…11.5 hours of surgery, Dr. Weber basically did a Whipple and also removed all necrotic and radiation damaged tissues.
The regimen worked incredibly well, Alyssa’s health was just amazing…yes, part of that regimen was and is illegal and yes I did give her marijuana without her knowing…it kept her in this life. I spoke at the State House on DEC 15th 2009 in support of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act.
After the surgery Alyssa’s dietary needs changed, she had also developed NASH, cirrhosis diagnosed in 2009, she was diagnosed with esophageal varices in Oct 2010 just days before the opening day of a Musical we had auditioned for and made it into. She was having trouble processing long chain fatty acids and would develop extreme chylous ascites and had to be drained every two to three weeks. I started searching for ways to prepare protein/fatty acid chains so she could process them without developing ascites.
Another long story shortened, her chylous ascites and esophageal varices seemed to be under control, she has gained back 25 pounds, she is 5’ 8” @ 135lbs. We performed in the Musical Broadway In Love, we have attended various cancer fundraising events to help raise awareness and funds for research. The UW used us in their ’09 annual report and they also made a video about us. I used it in this campaigns presentation…as well as the video of her 40th birthday…a birthday I wasn’t sure we would ever celebrate. I also went back to school along with our oldest daughter Elizabeth to become EMT’s as our city needed more volunteer EMT B’S for our EMS service.
Things seemed to be going along nicely, and then in early June two days before school let out for summer break Alyssa was in the ER bleeding. I had been gone for a few days chaperoning a fifth grade camping trip, when I came home I noticed she had had bloody stools, we made an appointment, tests were run, Alyssa’s hemoglobin was under 5. We were sent to the ER at St. Mary’s in Madison, WI. It was 45 minutes away. I was driving her, three miles out of town she threw up close to 700cc of blood. I called for an EMS intercept and after checking her airway and pulses I drove to meet them. When Alyssa arrived at the ER her hemoglobin was 4.1, she was barely alive. She bled for 21 days, and after many tests we were told yet again that there wasn’t anything they could do…then Dr. Weber told us a colleague of hers reviewed Alyssa’s scans and thinks he can do something. Another risky surgery that took 7 hours…Alyssa spent a total of 30 days in the hospital over summer, she is back teaching and doing well…our journey continues.
From the beginning we decided to embrace hope and seek joy, even in those darkest of hours we sought to share our joy with others…to share our journey, to share the hope of our story, to share how we are beating this cancer and we have done so without asking for any financial aid, either from those we have reached out to or to our state or federal governments…. yes we lost our home...just haven't figured out a way to pay our mortgage and a few of our other bills including other medical bills from my back surgery during Alyssa’s second round of chemo and keep fighting this cancer on a single income, so fighting cancer is the number one priority! Our credit rating is in shambles, but we really thought at some point down the road we would be able to catch back up, to rebuild what we had lost.
A friend exclaimed “I just can’t imagine going through what you have…you have lost everything, to which I replied “No, not everything, I still have Alyssa, my family, my friends’ and a great supportive community…what a great country we live in.
We had and we have hope, we seek joy and every glorious sunrise, we seek to share our journey daily in the hopes that we can help others have hope, to seek joy...
We sought to share our journey and along the way, others have made such dramatic impact in our lives by sharing their journey with us. Ben Affleck is one man in particular that I would like to thank personally someday…when he chose to interact with my oldest son Sean while he was attending an event at the Boston Children’s Museum with his daughter during Spring Break 2008 he became part of our journey by sharing his joy and appreciation…I was supposed to have chaperoned that trip, he approached Sean after the concert and told him he had a wonderful voice, a gift… he had no idea the emotions that were tearing Sean apart as he sang his solo…his birth mother having died when he was young and now his step mother had been given a terminal diagnosis…Mr. Affleck most likely has now idea how his words helped keep my son in this life. If you know Mr. Affleck on a personal level, give him a hug from me. From one father to another, Thank You Ben.
Try as we might to make it on our own financially we find ourselves in need, we just can’t make it on our own.
We need help, we need your help. We are still more than 53,000.00 in debt from the last 4 + years not counting our foreclosure and some other bills and now we are facing yet another onslaught of bills we fear we will never get out from under, we are still a single income family, I have yet to find suitable employment aside from being a volunteer EMT and our journey is by no means over.
If you can help us by donating please do so it would be greatly appreciated.
One of the perks I have listed is a book I have been writing about our journey, my plans are to self-publish on Amazon and hopefully at some point have it “published”, the book is titled, One More Concert and comprises the fullness of our journey. There is also a web site onemoreconcert.com that is in the works, it will be a place where you can find our diet regimen and recipes’ that we used as well as links to cancer studies, pictures and videos of our journey…it will be a place for people to join our journey and share theirs. I would love to be able to offer a digital copy of the musical we were in but I am not sure about who owns the copy rights to Broadway In Love.
The music cd, a selection of joyful or hopeful pieces performed by members of our family, her brother Dan is a very gifted cellist and her Father is a master T-Bone and Low brass musician, her mother, a violist par excellence.
I am considering a perk at 1000, a signed hand bound copy of One More Concert...a pre-published limited run of 10-15 copies. I need to look into the binding process more and evaluate if I can allocate the time required for such an endeavor...it would be a Platinum level as the speaking engagements, which are primarily intended for Hospitals, medical systems and corporations in conus and abroad are double platinum.
Please share this message with everyone you know, and ask them to share it with everyone they know…whether they have cancer or not, I am sure someone they know has it or knows someone who does and it could help them live with hope and have joy.
*** The regimen in simple form ***
- Get on a High Alkaline diet and monitor ph. level.
- Remove as much Salt and "REFINED SUGARS" of any kind...including corn sweeteners from your diet.
- Increase intake of complex carbs, eat as much fresh fruit and dark green and vibrant colored vegies...vibrant colors do wonders.
- Add antioxidants, RESVERATROL (ACAI juice), CURCUMIN (Tummeric), Quercetin. Resveratrol and Curcumin being the most important I feel.
- Cannabinoids, cannabis...not just for nausea...KILLS cancer, really important for multiple reasons, we need to legalize it in WI and the rest of the country.
- Nutrients Lycopene and the OMEGA'S, GLA and ALA (omega 6 and omega 3's).
- Stay Hydrated.
**Resveratrol Is THE BIG DOG in the anti-oxidant world...the highest concentrations of Resveratrol are found in ACAI berries (20-30% higher concentration than red grapes). …I mean we were beating the cancer before we added it, but then the rate at which the cancer died was accelerated dramatically and her color came back, her energy…you have to feed your body the right things in order for it to become strong enough to live! I gave Alyssa 8-10 onces of Mona-Vie/day 1-2 onces at a time.
**Curcumin, antioxidant found in turmeric appears to slow down the proliferation of pancreatic cancer cells Cancer cells in general. It is also an anti-inflammatory.
Curcumin was the first thing I put in our regimen. ** A supplement is needed as you couldn't eat enough tumeric i.e. curry to make a difference. I gave Alyyssa 800mg-1000mg daily.
Quercitin is another antioxidant that has been found to help the body fight cancer… yet another anti-oxidant...kind of a theme huh! Onions, grapefruit, and apples have the highest concentrations of quercitin and we keep grapefruit and apples stocked...
Lycopene is an Essential nutrient to help fight cancer. Lycopene is found in tomatoes and needs to be bonded to an oil for your body to fully process it, I bond it to coconut or red palm oil...simmering for 20min below 225*.
GLA (gamma-linoleic acid) is one nutrient that has been shown to have an effect on cancer (including pancreatic) once it occurs. This is the fatty acid found in: Hempseed oil, and Flaxseed oil.
GLA is an omega-6 essential fatty acid. Omega-6 are just as important as the better-known omega-3's in controlling inflammation, they also slow circulation down and may stop the growth of blood vessels to tumors and thereby keep them from becoming malignant.
ALA (alpha-linoleic acid) is an Omega 3 fatty acid found in fish oils, it is also found in Hemp seeds they promote circulation.
The body needs omega-3 fatty acids like those found in fish oil to avoid tissue loss. Omega-3 don't act as directly on cancer cells as omega-6 fatty acids. They help by helping keep your body healthy enough to fight the cancer. The amount of supplemental protein and omega-3 fatty acids needed is really quite small, getting just about 1 ounce (28-32 grams) of protein a day with 2 EPA from fish oil can stop both muscle wasting and loss of fat under the skin.
The body needs carbohydrates and protein at the same time to rebuild muscle tissue, organ tissue, and immune cells.
Eat small quantities of both at the same time...I made shakes for Alyssa :).
High Alkaline shake @200 calories, 14grams protein, 170% vitamin C, 100% vitamin E:
Use 1cup (8oz) of OJ (I use simply orange...fresh, not concentrated and no sugar), add 1/2 medium banana, 1 1/2 scoops of Genisoy soy protein powder and blend until smooth.
Moderate Alkaline shake (Lunch & dinner) @310 calories, 15 grams protein, 150% Vitamin E, 25% Vitamin D:
Use 1 cups (8oz) Blue Diamond Natural Chocolate Almond Breeze; Almond milk isn’t high alkaline…although almonds themselves are? You can substitute coconut milk it’s awesome! add 1/2 medium banana, 1 scoop of soy dream ice cream (chocolate or mocha are Alyssa's favorite) 1 1/2 scoops of Genisoy soy protein powder and blend until smooth.
During radiation and Chemo Alyssa had six or more of these shakes a day, was trying to have her consume 2000 calories a day...sometimes I could only get her to take a few ounces every 1 to 2 hours...I didn't sleep much during those times...still don't but....
CLA's, Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a mixture of positional and geometric isomers of linoleic acid, which is found preferentially in dairy products and meat.
Preliminary studies indicate that CLA is a powerful anticancer, a study done at the UW showed that grazed cows had 500% more CLA’S in their milk than silage fed.
Some things we use to get these nutrients:
Use natural RAW HONEY to sweeten...get rid of refined sugar and corn sweetners!
SMART BALANCE buttery spread with FLAX Oil (add flax seed to a blue berry muffin mix and spread on the smart balance).
Silk soymilk Plus, OMEGA-3 DHA; if you have breast cancer, or a genetic risk of breast cancer you should avoid soy products due to increased levels of estrogen associated with soy consumption.
Flax Plus organic multi-bran cereal, GLA'S
Nature's Path Organic HEMP PLUS Granola, ALA'S
Nature's Path Organic FLAX PLUS Granola, ALA'S
Regenie's thin cut crunchy pita chips (multi grain, whole grain + Flaxseed and Linseed), GLA's. Alyssa has them with hummis, legumes are powerful cancer fighters too.
Sobe Life Water, Gogi Melon and Yuzu black currant are Alyssa's favorites, 2-3 20oz bottles a day. I know, there is sugar in it...but it's a small amount, and Alyssa will drink it :).
Dasani strawberry kiwi essence (no sugar), Alyssa has been favoring these as of late. This is her current drink of choice.
Tilapia-great little fish! High in the OMEGA'S...try to eat it twice a week (or Orange roughy cause Alyssa likes it best)....steamed broccoli, green beans, spinach cooked in coconut oil...nutrients need to bond to the fat to be absorbed etc...
Chunky guacamole, high alkaline treat, Avocados, Tomatoes, Onions...eat it often :)...great on a bed of DARK GREENS, with a BOCA burger, lemon seared chicken breast or poached/baked fish.
Grass fed beef cheese burgers, high in CLA's...Alyssa had them for lunch after she made it through radiation and chemo...
Bananas, bananas, bananas :). Almost the perfect food :).
Oranges, Mandarin Oranges, apples, apricots (yuck, I hate the furry little devils), grapefruit, kiwis, strawberries, red grapes.
Alyssa eats an active yogurt 10-20 minutes before she eats, she eats 4 meals and has fruit when hungry..
Alyssa eats a small bowl of oat meal, peaches. Fresh pineapple and a banana-snack
Boca burger, three mushrooms, half avocado, half tomato...or she has half chicken breast instead of the Boca.
Chicken salad, lemon seared cubed chicken, walnuts, red grapes just a little of the smart balance mayo and lemon juice.
Poached or baked fish and as a side, sometimes has hummus with baked whole grain pita chips….legumes are a good thing!
A great little pizza loaded with cancer fighters...simple pizza made with FLATOUT flatbread Multi Grain with FLAX (excellent source of ALA), fresh tomato sauce from organic tomatoes and spiced how you like (I start my sauce by cooking the tomatoes first in a little coconut oil so the lycopene will bond to it), tomato slices on the pizza as well, grilled chicken pieces, CAR VALLEY CHEESE CO. MOBAY Cheese (goat & sheep milk), organic spinach and fresh pineapple chunks.
Alyssa loves French Toast and Waffles, I make bread and the waffle mix with spelt, falx and hemp seed...and use coconut milk, then I oild the griddle or press with coconut oil, top with fresh fruit or almond butter.
Cooking with Papaya...I have been using a pressure cooker to break down pork, chicken, venison and buffalo...I cube up the meat and papaya, add some orange juice, maybe a little lemon/lime juice...add seasonings...cumin, cilantro etc....I like adding pablano peppers to mine while cooking...served it by wrapping it in a lettuce...maybe a little sheep cheese...wow, it was so much better than I thought it would be after cutting open the first papaya I had ever cut...it smelled putrid, but boy did it work, Alyssa has been able to eat pork and not develop any chylous ascites...the first time I left the seeds in, didn’t realize they would be so hard, but they do add more enzyme punch if you first run them through a food processor and make a sauce out of them with some orange juice to reduce.
Also, curly kale, get a bag of curly kale, preheat oven to 350, spread kale on cookie sheet, drizzle with coconut oil then gently toss to ensure some oil is on most pieces, season with cumin or mrs dash…bake at 350 for 8-10…have to watch it or it will scorch and burn fast.
I will post more on onemoreconcert.com soon, right now the web site is bare...it's a work in progress...we saved the domain name almost a year ago and haven't had the time to build it.
**Cannabinoids (cannabis), great for nausea and fight cancer at a cellular level KILLING IT! I cooked with it, I made a ghee first. I used 1/4 ounce ground finely to one pound of coconut oil, simmered at 225 for 20 min, pour into mason jar and let cool. Then used it as you would butter, I even put a teaspoon in hot tea.
If you can help us by donating please do so it would be greatly appreciated. If you are so inclined...it is the right time of year to donate tax wise.
My hope is that everyone who reads this will stay strong and have hope! There is always hope.
A future goal, to start a non-profit that helps pancreatic cancer patients and their immediate families with expenses not covered by insurance.
Embrace Hope; Seek Joy and Every Glorious Sunrise! Man is that he might have joy, share your joy with others.
Please share our story with as many people as you can.
Thank you,
Matthew Brewer