One thing we knew for sure when my mother was diagnosed with cancer is that we had to come together as a family and make some changes immediately.
We thought that we were relatively healthy family. But cancer has a way of showing you all of the things you should be doing to protect your health.
I personally had a nearly pack-a-day cigarette habit that I had inherited from both of my parents. And after I got that call from my mom, I realized I was up to nearly 2 ½ packs a day to handle the stress.
May 24th, 2006 is the day I smoked the last cigarette of my life. My parents had both quit 2 weeks before.
I went to work every day, trying not to think about my mother, and every night when I got home, I was up till midnight reading, scouring the internet top to bottom trying to learn everything I could about breast cancer.
You see, Breast Cancer isn't just one disease. There are many different types, and my mom had the most common type called IDC.
Now there are even more treatment variations for breast cancer than there are types. And which treatment is going to work for which type is part science, part educated guess, and part luck. That's what scared the hell out of me.
My mother could receive the perfect treatment based on the cancer's type, growth, formation, cell structure and a thousand other variables and it still might not work! (I'm definitely not trying to knock medical science here. They literally saved my mother's life. But the point is, there is a lot of research to still be done into this disease. And I was scared.)
The one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that diet and general health during treatment was a huge factor in the final outcome.
There were so many articles online about switching to a low-fat, no-meat diet in order to aide recovery, that I literally couldn't read them all...
Turns out that not only do certain proteins and anti-oxidants in fruits and vegetables help slow the growth of cancer cells, but some meat proteins have actually been found to speed the growth of cancer!
When my dad heard that, he literally took all the meat out of his house and threw it in the garbage in under ten minutes. Overnight, my Mom, Dad, Brother, and my Wife and I were all trying our best to stick to a strictly vegetarian lifestyle. Not only to help support Mom, but to start safeguarding our own health as a family.
I say trying, because a vegetarian diet can definitely take some getting used to...Leafy greens, citrus fruits, Soy proteins, and a handful of nuts a day can take an adjustment from a lifetime American meat eater.
And really, that's what brings us to where we are now...
Over time, we were able to find and create recipes for our family to use that tasted like the delicious foods that we were used to but could be made with all-natural low fat vegetable substitutions instead of the fatty meat dishes we used to eat.
My mother went so far as to start making her bi-weekly pot of spaghetti with ground tofurky and soyrizo and wheat flour pasta instead of all-beef Italian sausage.
As we learned more and tried new things in the kitchen, we were eventually able to sustain a completely vegetarian diet without feeling like we were missing a thing.
Slowly but surely, the combination of hormone treatments and healthy living turned the tide against my mother's cancer.
On February 22nd, 2007 my mother called me to let me know that her tests showed that her cancer was in remission. To this day, that is the happiest memory in my life.
My mother has been completely CANCER FREE since September of 2007 and the tests have kept coming back negative every 120 days since.
Looking back, I thank God for how lucky we were, not only that my mom never became one of the over 80,000 women who died from Breast Cancer since her diagnosis. But also that between her health insurance, and income, the cost of treatment didn't bankrupt my family.
There are too many brave women and families in the world that go through what we went through and don't come out the other side.
So my mom and I decided that to honor the 2 year anniversary of her diagnosis as a day that literally saved her life, we were going to do something special to help give back to the people who battle this disease every day.
So I sat down with her and compiled just a handful of our family's most loved recipes from the last 2 years and create what we call the “Cookbook for The CURE”
Now this isn't going to be whole life makeover. And buying a cookbook on the internet definitely isn't going to make breast cancer go away tomorrow.
But what it can be is an easy choice that we all can make to do just one thing today to start moving in the right direction.
Replacing just one meal a day in the average family's diet with a vegetarian alternative can add a much needed infusion of vitamins and anti-oxidants for you, your children, or your parents.
What we decided to do is offer the book to everyone in two forms:
?The first is a standard .pdf with the recipes listed in an easy-to-follow order, all very straightforward and ready to print out and put into action.
?We also decided to offer an audio option, where I have read each an every recipe out in a separate mp3 file. (I don't know about you, but sometimes I have trouble following written directions) So each recipe can be downloaded and put on a CD or mp3 player for you to listen and follow along in the kitchen.
We priced the cookbook at $7 for both the book and audios. We wanted a price that could get everyone involved and raise awareness in the biggest possible number of people.
So for $7 everyone gets not only the audios and the cookbook, but they get to give their support to a worthwhile cause; The United Breast Cancer Research Fund.
Now $7 doesn't seem like a lot of money, because it's not. But it is a price that most people can afford. And with the power of the internet, we plan to reach as many people as possible and multiply that $7 as many times as possible.
And by combining your contribution with everyone else's across the country and the world, we can all band together and raise an amount of money that can create real change.
The bottom line is that without further research, we have no hope of curing this disease once and for all. And in the world we're in, that research takes money.
It's crazy to think that looking back 20 years from now, the choices we make today could put an end to this disease forever. And our children could live in a world where no one dies from Breast Cancer. No more mothers, sisters, wives, or daughters taken to soon, their lives cut short before they could experience all life had to offer them.
I hope you chose to join us today...
We thought that we were relatively healthy family. But cancer has a way of showing you all of the things you should be doing to protect your health.
I personally had a nearly pack-a-day cigarette habit that I had inherited from both of my parents. And after I got that call from my mom, I realized I was up to nearly 2 ½ packs a day to handle the stress.
May 24th, 2006 is the day I smoked the last cigarette of my life. My parents had both quit 2 weeks before.
I went to work every day, trying not to think about my mother, and every night when I got home, I was up till midnight reading, scouring the internet top to bottom trying to learn everything I could about breast cancer.
You see, Breast Cancer isn't just one disease. There are many different types, and my mom had the most common type called IDC.
Now there are even more treatment variations for breast cancer than there are types. And which treatment is going to work for which type is part science, part educated guess, and part luck. That's what scared the hell out of me.
My mother could receive the perfect treatment based on the cancer's type, growth, formation, cell structure and a thousand other variables and it still might not work! (I'm definitely not trying to knock medical science here. They literally saved my mother's life. But the point is, there is a lot of research to still be done into this disease. And I was scared.)
The one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that diet and general health during treatment was a huge factor in the final outcome.
There were so many articles online about switching to a low-fat, no-meat diet in order to aide recovery, that I literally couldn't read them all...
Turns out that not only do certain proteins and anti-oxidants in fruits and vegetables help slow the growth of cancer cells, but some meat proteins have actually been found to speed the growth of cancer!
When my dad heard that, he literally took all the meat out of his house and threw it in the garbage in under ten minutes. Overnight, my Mom, Dad, Brother, and my Wife and I were all trying our best to stick to a strictly vegetarian lifestyle. Not only to help support Mom, but to start safeguarding our own health as a family.
I say trying, because a vegetarian diet can definitely take some getting used to...Leafy greens, citrus fruits, Soy proteins, and a handful of nuts a day can take an adjustment from a lifetime American meat eater.
And really, that's what brings us to where we are now...
Over time, we were able to find and create recipes for our family to use that tasted like the delicious foods that we were used to but could be made with all-natural low fat vegetable substitutions instead of the fatty meat dishes we used to eat.
My mother went so far as to start making her bi-weekly pot of spaghetti with ground tofurky and soyrizo and wheat flour pasta instead of all-beef Italian sausage.
As we learned more and tried new things in the kitchen, we were eventually able to sustain a completely vegetarian diet without feeling like we were missing a thing.
Slowly but surely, the combination of hormone treatments and healthy living turned the tide against my mother's cancer.
On February 22nd, 2007 my mother called me to let me know that her tests showed that her cancer was in remission. To this day, that is the happiest memory in my life.
My mother has been completely CANCER FREE since September of 2007 and the tests have kept coming back negative every 120 days since.
Looking back, I thank God for how lucky we were, not only that my mom never became one of the over 80,000 women who died from Breast Cancer since her diagnosis. But also that between her health insurance, and income, the cost of treatment didn't bankrupt my family.
There are too many brave women and families in the world that go through what we went through and don't come out the other side.
So my mom and I decided that to honor the 2 year anniversary of her diagnosis as a day that literally saved her life, we were going to do something special to help give back to the people who battle this disease every day.
So I sat down with her and compiled just a handful of our family's most loved recipes from the last 2 years and create what we call the “Cookbook for The CURE”
Now this isn't going to be whole life makeover. And buying a cookbook on the internet definitely isn't going to make breast cancer go away tomorrow.
But what it can be is an easy choice that we all can make to do just one thing today to start moving in the right direction.
Replacing just one meal a day in the average family's diet with a vegetarian alternative can add a much needed infusion of vitamins and anti-oxidants for you, your children, or your parents.
What we decided to do is offer the book to everyone in two forms:
?The first is a standard .pdf with the recipes listed in an easy-to-follow order, all very straightforward and ready to print out and put into action.
?We also decided to offer an audio option, where I have read each an every recipe out in a separate mp3 file. (I don't know about you, but sometimes I have trouble following written directions) So each recipe can be downloaded and put on a CD or mp3 player for you to listen and follow along in the kitchen.
We priced the cookbook at $7 for both the book and audios. We wanted a price that could get everyone involved and raise awareness in the biggest possible number of people.
So for $7 everyone gets not only the audios and the cookbook, but they get to give their support to a worthwhile cause; The United Breast Cancer Research Fund.
Now $7 doesn't seem like a lot of money, because it's not. But it is a price that most people can afford. And with the power of the internet, we plan to reach as many people as possible and multiply that $7 as many times as possible.
And by combining your contribution with everyone else's across the country and the world, we can all band together and raise an amount of money that can create real change.
The bottom line is that without further research, we have no hope of curing this disease once and for all. And in the world we're in, that research takes money.
It's crazy to think that looking back 20 years from now, the choices we make today could put an end to this disease forever. And our children could live in a world where no one dies from Breast Cancer. No more mothers, sisters, wives, or daughters taken to soon, their lives cut short before they could experience all life had to offer them.
I hope you chose to join us today...