Going Gerson on the Norfolk Coast

When I was first diagnosed with nodular melanoma nine months ago, I immediately saw it as a death sentence. From the very beginning, I had googled obsessively and developed symptoms I’d read about soon after: everything from painful or possibly swollen lymph nodes to new irregular black patches on my skin. Of course, I knew some or all of these symptoms might be psychosomatic or benign, but I utterly convinced myself I was already either stage 3 (nodal involvement) or stage 4 (distant skin metastasis) and likely to die soon.

A month later, a melanoma surgeon in Davao took a large swathe of skin away from my shoulder and biopsied two other black patches and a lump (all confirmed as benign) and told me I was only stage 2A and everything would probably be okay - 95% sure he said - and I should just stay out of the sun (or use loads of sunscreen) and hope for the best.  Out of extreme caution, he recommended a PET scan but nothing else (he was unable to do a sentinel lymph node biopsy). I had already been preparing my wife and son for the worst by telling them I might only have a few months left, but I took his word for it and tried to live again under a thicker layer of expensive Australian sunscreen than ever before. 

Sadly, two months later, a new, highly suspicious, multi-coloured lesion developed on my back, which even the Surigao dermatologist looked very worried about. She said I knew the drill and it’d need to be biopsied. She recommended that I return to UK to consult with melanoma skin experts which she definitely wasn’t. I think that was the moment I realised this wasn’t just going away, so I started to research natural approaches to healing and stumbled upon impressive results for melanoma patients following Gerson Therapy. What really blew me away was the 100% 5-year survival statistics for a fairly small group of patients in Mexico with stage 2 melanoma compared with 70-80% survival statistics reported elsewhere for regular patients. 

Fast forward a few months - now seemingly grounded in England for an indefinite period - I felt more sure than ever that Gerson was the way forward if I ever wanted any semblance of life back. The alternative to embarking on a natural therapy program was sitting around doing nothing and begging the NHS to check my skin every three months and give me immunotherapy if internal or distant spread became apparent in due time. I’m not that kind of person (despising big pharma’s corrupt solutions), so melanoma drove me into the arms of the naturopaths for the first time. I’ve always been interested in healthy living and not taking medication to plaster over problems, so I guess it was the natural path for me to embark on. 

Going Gerson requires a lot of preparation and money, and I had a lot to do ahead of October 1st, the day I had planned to begin the regime. First of all, I contacted the only Gerson practitioner in England and had an online appointment with him in early September, where he explained the therapy in detail, discussed my recent blood tests and recommended supplement and equipment suppliers. Second, I bought a super expensive medical grade steel Angel Juicer. Third, I read Charlotte Gerson’s “Healing the Gerson Way”, Beata Bishop’s “A Time to Heal” and heaps of online material. Finally, I ordered everything I needed to begin the therapy from a variety of sources - things like medical coffee, a coffee enema kit, myriad supplements and vitamins and a weekly subscription to a range of organic vegetables and fruits, especially carrots and apples. 

And so it all began on one innocuous day in October: flushing my body with coffee five times a day, drinking 13 freshly prepared juices, swallowing heaps of capsules filled with niacin, liver, B12, pancreatin and CoQ10, and eating a strict vegan diet made up primarily of oatmeal, potatoes, carrots, apples, greens like Romaine, and other fruits and vegetables. Yes, I was going Gerson on the Norfolk Coast. I was doing something to live again.

After a few days, I felt a surge of energy from the coffee enemas and a renewed sense of optimism that God would use nature to heal me forever and take my family and I back to Siargao Island, where we’d build our farmland house and live together in the rolling hills of Magsaysay. I knew we couldn’t stay at my brother’s house forever, and the thought of moving in land to my mother’s house was just too depressing to contemplate at the time. I just wanted my dignity back - to live in my own house again and not impose on others - and I was convinced God would deliver it. Perhaps I had needed such a fright to get me back on track. Maybe it was time to think about others a lot more than my Instagram account. But it wasn’t time to say goodbye or anything. God would help me overcome it soon. That was the predominant voice in my mind as the carrots, apples and coffee flowed through my veins in the opening week of going Gerson.