The Cancer Culture
By: Duke Kell
The Cancer Culture, By Duke Kell
Copyright © 2016 by Two Ton Productions.
.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Freedom Files
Class 1
University of California, Berkeley, 2191
I walked into my first class excited and a little nervous. It was the hardest class to get into at Berkley because the professor was Olga Verduzco, the architect of the revolution and first democratically elected president of the United States of America in 145 years. Included in the syllabus were five books that the resistance used to help people understand how the united corporations of the world gained power and why we needed a change. I could smell the old wood and dust in the auditorium. The school had been shut down for all of the corporate years and it was an absolute miracle that some of the buildings survived including the old Wheeler auditorium.
I sat in the first row just left of the center, in between two young men. I was forty five years old on that day and my gray hair made me feel out of place as the sea of young people filled the remaining seats.
A door opened behind the podium and the air was sucked out of the room as we all fell silent. Everyone stood, and as President Verduzco stepped into the room, it exploded with applause, and I saw more than a dozen people weeping with joy. Never in my life could I have imagined the sensation that washed over me. I wasn’t sure if any of the other students had lived during the corporate times, but they all understood how far we had come, our shared path back to freedom.
“Good morning,” She said, leaning down to the mic. “Please be seated.”
We sat and silence washed over us.
She gave us a few seconds, then began, “Over the next three months we will explore three units. The first unit includes the five books we used in the resistance and we will discuss the second Continental Congress and our justifications for the changes to the original constitution. The second unit will be on the Reconstruction period and the third will be on our path forward. I suspect you all have the syllabus and hope you have purchased the books as well. Please raise your hand if you didn’t pick a syllabus up at the door on the way in.”
A hand full of people shot their hands up.
She nodded to someone in the back who quickly made it to each row and passed out the syllabi.
“Ok, now that we all have one, let’s get started.” She went over the percentages of the midterm, final and papers she expected, followed by a brief synopsis of each book before she cut class short and told us to have the Cancer Culture read by the next class.
I went straight home after class and began reading book I: The Cancer Culture.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 1
Denver, 2008
The smell of maple syrup and bacon floated into her dreams and awakened her, the day was Oct 2, 2008, A young teenager sat up, swinging her legs to the side and placing her feet on the floor. She took a deep breath and reluctantly pushed herself out of bed. A knock on the door reminded her of the gravity of the situation. She stood up, hung her head, took a deep breath, and slipped her fluffy pink slippers onto her feet as she exited the room.
She ran into her older brother in the hall as he came out of the bathroom. “Here already?”
“Rene,” he shook his head, “It’s 11:30, Dad’s appointment is in 30 minutes.”
Her jaw dropped, “What, thirty minutes? Why didn’t you guys wake me?”
“Mom said your game ran late last night and you needed to sleep.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is there any breakfast left?”
“Yeah, but you better hurry.”
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 2
Denver, 2008
Ten minutes later the fourteen year old came barreling into the kitchen. Her tall, thin body was draped with a sweat suit.
“Hi, mom.” Rene said.
Her mom looked at her clothes and reached out to push back some hair. “You gonna dry your hair at least?”
Michel cut in, “We only have forty minutes.”
Her mother looked down at her wrist watch. “Only twenty five minutes until we walk out the door.”
“What about food?” Rene asked.
“I made you a plate. It’s in the oven.” Her mother said, as she pointed to the oven.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 3
Denver, 2008
Rene, Michael, and their parents, Lori and David sat quietly in the waiting room of Dr. Capital, the oncologist Rene’s father was referred to when his general physician found a growth in his stomach area. Six years prior he was in a life-threatening motorcycle accident and nearly lost both his legs, so being in a doctor’s office was not a new thing for this family.
The receptionist called out, “Mr. de Garcia.” The whole family stood up and followed him into the cold bright hallway that smelled of chemicals and death. Rene held her brother’s hand tightly. At fourteen, she desperately wanted to be an adult, but today her rock, her role model, looked defeated, and she felt like a child, helpless and frightened.
Her father was a tower of a man and she had never seen him so shaken. As a professor of history at the University of Denver and a well-known talk show host on a local conservative radio station, he was accustomed to high pressure situations. Seeing him with fear in his eyes was a shock and Rene could hardly hold back her tears.
The receptionist stopped, waved them into a second waiting room, and said, “A nurse will be in here in a few minutes to escort you to the doctor.”
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 4
Denver, 2008
David thought back to a radio show he did that led him here today. Three years ago a guest on his show argued that the American health care system was broken and needed to follow other developed nations into a single payer system. David’s listeners tore the man apart and accused him of being everything from a Muslim to a communist. The man was not deterred and challenged David and his listeners to ask for routine screening tests done in nearly every other industrialized countries in the world. David reluctantly agreed and was shocked to find that his insurance denied his request for a simple blood test that would measure the genetic likelihood for a number of cancers that affect men. At the time he wasn’t ready to admit defeat, so he swept it under the table and forgot about it. Six months later a sharp pain in his stomach landed him back at his doctor’s office to run a battery of tests. X-rays were ordered and showed nothing, so they decided to give the problem a few weeks to see if it would run its course. Two months later he was back at the emergency room, doubled over in pain and begging for reprieve.
The doctors eased the pain and diagnosed him with diverticulitis. His doctor joked as he wrote him a prescription for a stomach medicine. “You know, you’re probably going to be pretty upset if this turns out to be cancer.”
“Why is that?” David asked.
“The x-rays we’ve done don’t do a great job of showing soft tissue problems. An MRI is really the only way to see but…” he paused, “according to the protocol we need to try all other avenues first.”
“Great.” David rolled his eyes.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 5
Denver, 2008
David and Lori had met in the ninth grade at Lincoln High School and had been inseparable for nearly forty years. Two days after high s
chool graduation, David proposed to his high school sweetheart. Lori and David married in her parents’ back yard in 1974. They both attended the University of Laverne in southern California for four years before moving back to Denver to start a family. Two years later their first child, Michael, was born at Saint Anthony’s hospital in Denver. Like most young couples, they struggled to make ends meet, but never let it affect their marriage. David held down a part time job as a board operator at the local radio station in the morning and attended Denver University as a grad student the first couple of years after Michael was born.
Four years of hard work and sacrifice paid off, and they moved to an upscale suburb just outside of Denver called Broomfield. David became the morning talk show host at KVLT and a full time professor in 1982. Rene was born six months later. The successful family spent the next fourteen years in the same quaint little town.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 6
Denver, 2008
The nurse came to the door in the waiting room and called, “David de Gracia.” I looked over at my dad and he didn’t move. No one moved. We all sat staring back at her wishing she had someone else’s name. She repeated, “David de Garcia.”
Mom leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He closed his eyes, sighed then looked over at Michael and me. The look in his eyes ripped through me. This man, my rock, my father, had never wavered, never showed weakness. Today was different; today in my father’s eyes was fear.
I was six when he first taught me to conquer my own fear. We spent a great deal of time water skiing when I was young and my dad was an amazing skier. At six I was not able to swim and was scared to death of the water. He sat me down and said, “Rene, honey, I know you’re scared. We’ve all been there, but, I want to tell you that fear can be a positive if you learn to use it.”
Confused I asked, “How can that be?”
“Fear is a natural response to a perceived danger. Learn how to channel the response and you’ll be able to tap into the fear juice.”
“The what?” I asked.
“The fear juice,” he smiled, “or adrenalin, is a powerful substance your brain makes and can give you super powers.”
“Like Wonder Woman?”
He chuckled, “Sort of like Wonder Woman.”
“Ok, let’s do it then,” I said staring into his big blue eyes. We were sitting in an eighteen foot day cruiser with my uncle Gary at the helm. Sloan Lake is a small man-made lake on the western side of Denver and was a favorite spot for our large family parties. There were more than 25 people on the shore when my dad stood up and said, “boat wreck.” He grabbed me by my life jacket and tossed me into the dark cold water as the boat sped off. Fear gripped my lungs I bobbed in and out of the wake left by the boat. My muscles began to tense and water filled my mouth as I flailed wildly. Suddenly I felt something touch my leg and I froze.
My dad popped up out of the water and didn’t say a word. He looked in my eyes, held up his pointer finger to his lips, and breathed out, “Shhh.” He flipped around, lying on his back to float. My fear disappeared with his smile and I hugged him.
Now, ten years later I saw the fear in his eyes, so I leaned across and touched him on his shoulder. He looked over at me and I held up my finger to my lips. He smiled, stood up, and turned to the nurse. “Is it ok if my family comes with?”
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 7
Denver, 2008
We took a seat in front of the doctor’s desk. He looked up through his reading glasses, and asked, “David, are you sure you wouldn’t like to discuss this alone?”
I felt a shiver through my spine. Something in the way his eyes sagged sent a dagger into my heart and I knew.
“You have Layomayosarcoma, a rare form of inoperable cancer.”
The world came to a halt, in ten seconds. It seemed as if the rug I called my life had just been pulled out from underneath me. My father’s head dropped and my mom began to weep.
My brother Michael dove in, doing what journalists do; he asked a question, “What are his options?”
“He can try chemotherapy and radiation, but this kind of cancer has never responded to that,” the doctor responded.
“Is there anything else he can do?”
“No. Let me show you something.” He swirled around and flipped a switch on a film viewer. Behind him a skeleton with bright orange spots all over it lit up like a Christmas tree. He looked back at my brother and said, “Each spot here in orange is where the cancer is.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. The cancer was everywhere.
“How long does he have?” Michael asked.
“Six months tops,” He shrugged his shoulder. “I have someone I would like you to meet.” He pressed a button on his phone and instructed someone to come in. A psychologist spoke to us, but to be honest, after the doctor said six months I stopped hearing. I could see their mouths move and later my brother explained how they were setting us up with hospice. He also said the doctor encouraged us to do some research of our own into cancer and see us back in a few days.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 8
Denver, 2008
The next two days my brother and I spent hours combing through the mountains of information we could find on the Internet about cancer. Western medicine had never cured a case of leomyosarcoma, and in most cases chemo and radiation accelerated the cancer, killing the patient. This was obviously not the route dad wanted to take. So we typed in “alternatives to traditional cancer treatment.” We were overwhelmed by the amount of information. One thing became clear, our whole family was not only misinformed, we were completely ignorant about cancer, the causes, the treatments, and the toll it can take on a family and their financial situation.
First we looked for causes as we figured we needed to change whatever it was that may have caused his cancer. Dad wasn’t a smoker, ate fairly healthy and was in great shape for a fifty year old.
“Ok, Dad doesn’t smoke so we can cut that out.”
“And he eats healthy,” Michael added.
“Hold up, not so fast. Look at this.” I held up a list I printed out with the top 10 cancer causing elements hiding in your food. Here they are:
Barbequed meat
BPA leaching in plastic water bottles
Teflon nonstick pan residue
Artificial sweeteners
Canned meats and foods
Hormones added to meat poultry and dairy
Food colorings
Food preservatives
Processed food especially meets like hot dogs, sausages
Sugar
“Let me see that.” My brother said, as he ripped it out of my hands. He stared at it and just started to shake his head. “I thought he ate right, I thought we all ate right.” He shook his head, “So what the hell can we eat?”
We attacked mom and dad’s kitchen throwing away 90% of the food mom had in the pantry, all their pans and more than half their food in the refrigerator. Mom was incensed and couldn’t understand why we would throw away good food. Even after we explained how bad it all was, she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Then we confiscated all the plastic water bottles lying around the house. Dad was known to reuse old milk jugs for weeks trying to stay hydrated at the remote broadcasts he did for work.
After food we started looking at other possible causes. The top of the list for dad was prolonged exposure to low voltage radio signals. His profession in radio broadcasting often had him working on remote where he would be in close proximity to a satellite relay. We didn’t find anything pointing to this, but since cell phone radio signal has been shown to cause cancer is based on a much smaller version of a remote broadcast satellite, we figured it was a high priority to avoid.
Another possible cause of Dad’s cancer was stress. Stress places the body in a state of imbalance which can lead to cancer and a host of other
diseases. Having worked two jobs for the past fifteen years trying to make ends meet, Dad was a stress bomb waiting to explode. Luckily, both of our first two problems on the list could be avoided by quitting his job at the radio station.
The last cause we examined was genetics something none of us can change. As we found out quickly genetics only plays a small role in the actual growth of the cancer. In fact, all of us are born with cancer cells that lay dormant until environmental factors spur on their growth. Most cancers can be avoided with preventive measures taken to minimize an acidic environment in the body.
We had no Idea what this acid/basic measure was. None of us despite years of education in multiple subjects had ever heard of a PH test being used on the body. Just like in a hot tub or swimming pool, if the ph is off it will likely cause it to produce undesired growth of bacteria, or in the case of the body, cancer. Studies across the globe have found a body with even a slight acidic PH is more than twenty times more likely to spur on cancer growth. There are also promising studies that show a reduction and in some cases complete remission of cancer when the body is in a slightly basic state.
What does this mean? Certain foods help reduce our acidic levels while others increase it. By eating the right foods and limiting negative environmental exposes the cancer causing chemicals the human body can prevent and even cure cancer. Why hadn’t we heard this before? And how could all this be true? Cancer is the number two killer in the US, killing five hundred thousand people per year. The numbers are increasing despite many of the alternatives being used to prevent and cure cancer for the last hundred years. Why then is cancer so prevalent and still killing people? What we found rocked the foundations of our world and changed the way we viewed our country and its medical system.
The Cancer Culture
Chapter 9
Denver, 2008
We walked into the follow-up appointment armed with information about alternative and hundreds of questions.
“Hello.” The doctor said in a very cold way. “Please be seated.” He smiled, “We should probably try to set up some appointments for chemo and radiation starting next week. Do you have any questions?”