Sheryl Malin has a disarmingly simple metaphor that explains her passion over the last four years to promote the type of medical treatment she received in Mexico — a turtle bowl.
The two-year Ajijic resident says she recently bought two turtles and a small bowl with a plastic palm tree.
“The pet store clerk gave me a lesson on how to take care of turtles and told me they’d only live five months. I went home and did some research and saw that the small bowls are called ‘death bowls.’ So I got a larger aquarium with healthier food and a filter. This way, I can keep them around for a long time with a quality of life.”
Her experience with cancer was similar to this turtle bowl revelation.
“We go to the doctor and he tells us what to do,” Malin explains, “and, without researching, we go along with it because others do and the insurance only pays for what he says.”
So, since Malin recovered from cancer using unconventional or “functional oncology” treatments —T-cells, stem cells, oxygen, hyperthermia and vitamins and minerals — which she found by doing research, she began a petition campaign, wrote a book, set up a webpage and blog and was interviewed by CBS.
Her goal is education, she says, and her motto, “knowledge is power.”
“I was amazed to learn that cancer treatment has not changed that much since the late 19th and early 20th century. And in most cases the cancer came back in another organ.”
As for the petition campaign, her aim is to collect 100,000 signatures and eventually direct it to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other officials in the U.S., Mexican and Canadian governments. So far, the campaign has garnered 441 signatures.
“The idea is to get insurance companies to cover the treatments I got and, for that to happen, they have to be FDA approved. I know many people want these treatments and they’d get them if they didn’t have to pay the whole thing out of pocket.”
In her educational materials, Malin explains that she was born near Tampa, Florida, and worked in the medical field there until 2010, when, at the age of 52, x-rays, ultrasounds, MRIs and biopsies revealed the bad news.
Her intention to pursue the regimen her doctors mapped out quickly turned to dismay, so she began research that led her to consider Germany for treatments that were neither easily available nor covered by insurance in the United States. However, she soon located a similar program at a large, modern, private hospital in Tijuana, and decided to go there for a three-week, in-patient stay in January 2011.
“The program at Hospital Angeles Tijuana was new when I went. There are 28 hospitals in the Angeles group throughout Mexico, all specializing in something different. After I talked on the phone for an hour and a half with Dr. Ariel Perez there and realized the program had modern treatments and technology, I was sold.” (The upscale Hospital Angeles del Carmen, long a favored choice for foreign residents of Guadalajara, is also part of the group and specializes in cardiac care, Malin pointed out.)
“I didn’t have surgery, radiation or chemo, as my Florida doctors wanted, except for one small surgery to put in a port, which is how I received my treatments.”
Malin noted that she did not experience any negative side effects, except an hour of flu-like symptoms after the T-cell treatment, which involves taking these cells from the patient, growing more, and then putting them in the patient’s body.
Subsequent exams and lab work done back in Florida showed the cancer was gone, Malin said. “The tumors slowly shrank and went away.”
She says that her regimen at Hospital Angeles Tijuana cost between US$30,000 and US$35,000. At first glance, she says, that seems as expensive as conventional treatment in the United States.
“But U.S. insurance doesn’t cover what comes after chemo and radiation. And often the cancer comes back anyway. I think the price at Hospital Angeles was cheaper in the long haul.” Since Malin’s father, sister, brother and mother-in-law all died of cancer, she knew the ropes of conventional treatment.
In fact, her decision to pursue unconventional treatment was made easier by her relatives’ bad experiences. “I decided that, if I didn’t make it, I wanted it to be on my own terms.”
Of course Malin was happy about the outcome in her case, but not entirely relieved.
“Cancer will always be part of my world,” she says, noting that she follows a strict prevention program laid out by her doctors in Tijuana, who followed up her treatment with three years of phone calls and periodic tests, such as one for cancer marker CA 15-3 every few months.
“I follow the program to the T,” she said adding that she eats only organic vegetables and grass-fed meat, avoids gluten and dairy except for goat products, exercises and does meditation.
In addition to these constant reminders of cancer that she lives with, Malin’s research made her aware of how many people have not achieved the positive results she has.
“Every seven minutes, a woman is diagnosed with gynecological cancer. You see why I’m tossing and turning and can’t get to sleep — the cancer is gone, but I’m heartbroken to see the percentage of people suffering and dying of this illness when it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Petition campaign: www.thepetitionsite.com/552/608/740/stand-up-to-cancer; website: www.thejourneytogoodhealth.com; Book: “My Journey to Completion: Body, Heart and Soul.”