Wednesday evening, January 5, 2022 at around 5:30 pm, my mom lost her battle with cancer. She was a brave warrior. Diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer in 2012. Late stage, combined with her age, the doctors were not optimistic. But being the warrior that she was, she shocked everyone and kicked cancer’s ass. She was cancer free for 7 years, and then at the end of 2019 we found out that it was back. She began her battle bravely, but then COVID hit and the world came to a screeching halt. My mom, who was a social butterfly, lost all her activities (daily trips to the gym, bowling twice a week, church and senior group activities), and with that the fire she previously had to fight the cancer started to go out.
Mom did fight, but this time it was different. It’s hard to explain, but it just was different. She went through the chemo, which didn’t do much at all this time around. They did genetic testing on the biopsy and discovered she was a candidate for targeted drug therapy, so they started her on that – 3 pills in the morning and 3 pills at night. At one point her liver function was too low so she had to pause the medication. Imaging showed a bit of slowing on one area, but growth on another, so she did a round of radiation. All this time she was getting weaker and weaker. She took a few nasty falls. In mid-July 2021 she landed in the hospital. Imaging showed the tumor on her pelvis had grown and she did another week of radiation. Mid-August, a week after her second round of radiation ended, I found her on the floor in her bedroom and she spent another week in the hospital. This time we were told there was nothing more to do, and she was placed under hospice care and we were told she had 2-4 weeks to live. My sister had hospice set up in her house, so mom could be surrounded by family and we wouldn’t be bound by COVID restrictions. We were blessed to find a home health aide who was an angel and took great care of mom. And once again she proved medical experts wrong by living another 5 months, 4 months longer than they predicted.
Losing someone you love is never easy, especially your mom. But watching a cancer take them gradually over time, well it just sucks. And the last few months–especially the last 2 weeks–of mom’s life were gut wrenching. She lost not only her ability to walk, but also her independence and her dignity. Little by little the cancer took pieces of mom away. That last week she completely lost her ability to communicate with us. She died peacefully, with her daughters by her side, and she’s now in a better place.
When mom was first diagnosed back in 2012, that was when my interest in our food system first started. In looking for ways to help mom I stumbled upon a website, https://www.chrisbeatcancer.com/ I was fascinated by Chris’ story. I subscribed to his newsletter, bought my first water filter per his recommendation, and I began to question processed food labels. And then my mom was better and in turn my ardent following of Chris Wark subsided. However my belief that our food system is killing us did not, and I began reading books and following other folks who are passionate about this as well. Many of us don’t connect the dots, but think about it – if you are 40 or above, when you were a kid can you recall food allergies being front and center when you were in elementary school? I’m a child of the 70s and 80s. And I never heard of peanut allergies until I was in my late 20s. And it was a very rare occasion (I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times this happened) that one of my four kids was in a class that WAS NOT a peanut free room. It’s not just peanuts, it’s dairy, soy, gluten…..so many food allergies that just weren’t around a few decades ago. I don’t have stats now, but this is something I’ll be diving into later on in my quest. For now, I’m just sharing my observations. On top of allergies you have the increase in rates of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and all these auto-immune diseases. Again, to those of you 40 and above, did you ever hear of gluten-free when you were a kid? Or crohn’s disease or celiac or colitis? How about leaky gut? And look at our kids – autism, ADHD, depression. So many things. All are increasing as rapidly as our consumption of convenient, processed food is increasing. Yes, there can be environmental factors, but I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our food is killing us. Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma – they are all working together and benefit from one another. And then they have our politicians in their pocket. Another thing I will be trying to understand is the money trail from the Big 3 (Food, Ag, Pharma) to lobbyists to politicians.
Getting back to mom…..a week into her hospice care I remember promising my daughter that I would never put her or her brothers through what me and my sister were going through. I wasn’t blaming mom. At all. I just knew what watching her suffering was doing to me, and I never want to do that to my children. Fast forward to the last two weeks of mom’s life, and what I watched happen to her body and her mind and her spirit.. I want to spare anyone I love and care about from going through that. It was the worst thing in the world. And I don’t ever want my kids to watch either of their parents suffer like that either.
So mom’s battle lit a fire in me. I’m on a quest to heal my family with food. This blog started out dedicated to issues with our food system, but I only posted a handful of times. Now I am recommissioning this blog to share my journey and what I learn along the way and the observations I see with my family. I am dedicating this to mom, who never would have believed the brands she loved so much (Lean Cuisine, Stouffers, Kelloggs, General Mills, etc.) would have done anything to harm her. Yes, she was the queen of processed food and certainly not known for her cooking skills (sorry mom).
Stick around, and hopefully I can share some insight into what is really in our food and what that is really doing to our health.