Showing posts with label chain emails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chain emails. Show all posts

Sunday, 6 September 2009

The Budwig Protocol

My friend Marius recommends that I check out the Budwig Protocol.

Marius has recently come crawling back from a two-week Crystal Meth binge so obviously he is my oracle for all things pertaining to good health and well-being.

I google ‘Budwig Protocol’. Oh dear, here we go again. Amongst people who put together alternative cancer therapy websites there seems to be a conspiracy to make the information as dizzyingly convoluted and difficult to read as is possible. I am willing to give them a try. I am wanting to give them a try. But honestly, I find it difficult to ascribe scientific credibility to theories expounded on a website, the authors of which can neither spell nor punctuate.

Anyway, the idea behind the Budwig Protocol, and please correct me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, is to increase the ability of one’s cells to uptake oxygen by eating Omega-3 acids that have been bound to sulphurated amino acids. What that means to the likes of you and me is that we have to get cold-pressed flaxseed oil and whizz it up with quark. No, not the tiny sub-atomic particle but the German yoghurty-cheese stuff. A Large Hadron Collider is not required, you can use a hand-held blender. Cottage cheese will suffice if you can’t get hold of quark. This is to be eaten three times a day. Of course this protocol flies in the face of previous alternative cancer cures that I have been half-heartedly experimenting with. Those expressly forbid dairy products because of all the added hormones. I wonder about the possibility of getting hold of organic goat’s milk quark, but that seems likely to be an alternative step too far.

I foresee that in a short space of time this cure could make one enormously fat but apart from that it seems harmless enough. I am quite skinny at the moment so I’ve resolved to give it a try. Marius already outlined the basics to me so I have bought some flaxseed oil and cottage cheese (cow’s milk, not organic) on the way home. It seems simple enough to add an inoffensive mayonnaisey dressing to my meals.

I delve further into the website. Things to avoid whilst on the Budwig Protocol: sugar (that’s a given on all these regimes); hydrogenated fats (margarine etc. – no problem); animal fats (what, including fish?); white flour (universally shunned); preservatives; chemicals (which ones?); processed foods; supplements (should I bin the vast array of expensive capsules currently sitting in jars on my windowsill?); stress; painkillers; drugs and medications; electromagnetic fields and ‘elctrosmog’ (mobile phones, computers, mobile phone masts etc. - one can only assume that the writer of the website is uploading it via carrier pigeon); chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

I’m not sure that I am yet convinced enough of the efficacy of this cure to abort the chemo halfway through and go all out on the quark.

Finally, I read that the protocol must be followed for a minimum of five years, otherwise the tumours may return and grow more vigorously than before. Suddenly it feels like one of those chain emails where one reads that great good fortune is about to come one’s way but if one doesn’t forward the email to twelve of one's closest friends within five minutes a dire misfortune awaits. One then has to immediately decide between losing twelve of one’s closest friends and being struck down with some hideous affliction, probably cancer.

Obviously, I never did forward those emails.

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Let's Hope There is Smoke Without Fire


A well-meaning friend sends me a chain email. “Subject: Fwd: Passing the purple hat on to you.” After scrolling through a gazillion other people's email addresses I learn that this imparts the dying pearls of wisdom of a somewhat schmaltzy American woman, listing all the things she would or wouldn’t do if she had her life to live over again. For example: “I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage” and “I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.” Well I would never own a candle or a hairdo like either of those.

I was born contemptuous by nature and I generally despise chain emails. Yet at the same time I’m touched by the thoughtfulness of the person who sent it. It would seem churlish not to send it on to five other women, as requested. Let the hard-hearted amongst them admonish me if they will.

Within minutes I receive a reply.

From: Iris

Subject: Re: Fwd: Passing the purple hat on to you.

Oh Christ!


May calls. “I’m sitting in my car and there’s a man parked next to me. I think his car is on fire. There’s lots of black smoke coming out from under the front wheels. Do you think I should tell him?”

“Hmm, yes I do.”

“He’s so good looking. I don’t want to ruin his day. I don’t think I’ll tell him.”

“Don’t you think it will ruin his day when he drives off and his car bursts into flames?”

“Yes but it won’t be my fault.”

An attitude of gratitude is not my normal style. But I’m so grateful that May is not a doctor. I’m so grateful for so many things these days. If I allow it, this cancer ordeal is really showing me what there is to love in my life. Today I am free of nausea. The sky is blue and it’s a glorious 26º. Everyone is out, lounging on the corners, sauntering without purpose. I don’t have to work. I don’t have to do anything. I am totally free to enjoy living right now in this moment.

“Where are you? I’ll come and meet you.”

The weather is so warm and lovely. I want to feel the sun on my skin. I consider wearing a halter-neck dress for the first time since my surgery. The scars would be almost totally covered by the dress, yet I still feel too exposed. Maybe next week.

As I saunter without purpose I nod to the street-sweeper. The flower-shop man pops out to say hello. A crowd of jolly Moroccan idlers spill out from the café, drinking mint tea, smoking and laughing loudly. Teenagers happily obstruct the footpath with their bicycles as they snack on chips and kebabs outside George’s Fish Bar and throw the polystyrene boxes about with gay abandon. Everything is as it should be.

On Golborne Road I find May sitting in her car. She is wearing a pair of fluorescent yellow sandals. “Do you think these are tacky” she asks. “No May. I think they’re the most fabulous sandals I’ve ever seen.”

It seems that, despite my worst intentions, I have passed along the purple hat.


p.s. If you would like your own copy of the chain email "Passing the purple hat on to you" please email me and I will happily forward it.