Martha Hoff, MFCC
Professional Page

When Anne Frahm was diagnosed with breast cancer, it was found that tumors were covering her skull, shoulder, ribs, pelvic bone, and spine. The cancer had actually eaten a stress fracture into her backbone and she was told that she would be dead within two years. Because the cancer was so aggressive, the treatment was aggressive. She underwent a mastectomy, was treated with a Hickman catheter (which led chemotherapy treatments directly to her heart), had radiation, hormonal therapy, and a bone marrow transplant. The treatment was so debilitating that she came down with pneumonia, and her kidneys began to fail. The results of all these treatments did not give her a remission. Yet, she recovered.This book can give hope to people who have felt their situation is hopeless.

Ann Frahm is a women who was determined to find a way to live and basically left no reasonable stone unturned. These are the lessons that she learned in winning over cancer:

1. Know your enemy. She read work from Dr. Otto Warburg (Nobel Prize Winner)who said that cancerous cells have lost all of their genetically programmed instructions, no longer know how to contribute properly to the body of which they’re a part and retain only the useless property of growth. They no longer metabolize oxygen as normal cells do, but feed on the fermentation of glucose.

She also read all about the different elements that can cause cancer and discovered that cancer is not "a thunderbolt of fate striking at random with no cure or cause". When doctors tried to give this misinformation to her, she felt that they had done her a disservice, "for when I believed that the onset of my cancer was something over which I had no control or responsibility, I also believed that there was nothing I could do to help my body reverse it." When she found out otherwise she went to work.

2. Cut off enemy supply lines. She felt that there was evidence that both meat and dairy products increase cancer causing agents in the body, and because of having low fiber stay in the system longer. Ms. Frahm details exactly how she cut off the supply lines.

3. Rebuild your natural defense system. Ms. Frahm became a vegetarian, ate as many "live foods" as possible, discovered and omitted foods she was allergic to, learned how to eat the right combination of foods for better digestion, ate mostly foods that kept an alkaline balance in her body, lowered dietary fat, and began an exercise program. At no time was this a half hearted project.

4. Bring in reinforcements. She included important vitamin and mineral supplements in her diet (she named a number of important ones).

5. Maintain morale. "Only those who have determined in their mind to fight have any chance to win." She insists that cancer survivors refuse to play victim, practice thankfulness and find humor in life.