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Inspiring Stories
Paul's Story - Waterfalls
In 2008, Paul Haines was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer. Married with a two year old daughter, the young Melbourne writer was devastated by the news. After reading You Can Conquer Cancer, he participated in the 12 week cancer, healing and wellbeing program at Footscray and followed up with the ten day Life and Living Program in September, 2008. Three weeks after completing the program, he wrote about how he implemented what he learnt at The Gawler Foundation into his life and the positive effects it is having on his health and wellbeing.
Routine. Routine. Routine. This is what I need to turn my life into to be able to manage the lifestyle changes I’m making in order to beat cancer. And I hate routine. I hate plans. I like to drift along with the waves of whatever is carrying me. It’s sometimes nice to pop my head up and take a gander at what’s coming in case I need to change direction before I’m dashed ragged on rocks, but most of the time I’m happy to cruise because the plummet over the waterfall is a long way off.
But now I don’t have that liberty.
When I first got back from my time out at The Gawler Foundation, Jules was openly (and unaware that she was) hostile towards almost everything I said. She thought we’d been making great changes to our lives and here I was telling her she was wrong, that we hadn’t done enough, what she was doing was no good etc. Which was not the case. Without her I would never have got to where we were, but now I was taking us over the edge of that waterfall, unprepared and screaming.
The two major lifestyle changes I brought back with me from the course were about meditation and diet. There was a huge reluctance to leave the Foundation, as the safety net of the wholefood plant based diet kitchen and the meditation sanctuary exists and folds around you, snug and tight. It’s so much easier to adhere to the rules when you live amongst it and don’t have to think about preparing any of it. You just eat and sit, eat and sit. The big challenge is taking those things back with you and making it work. Let me tell you it is bloody hard.
Especially with chemo throwing in its heavy arm to mess with anything resembling time and wellbeing. Without chemo, it would still be hard. My first meditation without the group mind and leader within the confines of the sanctuary felt like I was learning to walk again. The mind wandered hopelessly and the body wanted to leave before my thirty minutes of allocated time was up.
But it got easier, I just had to concentrate harder to get back to somewhere in the same vicinity as where I was before. I’m managing to meditate 2-3 times every day. My morning session lasts anywhere between 20 - 50 minutes, depending on when Isla rises and the noise commences. She takes great delight in sneaking into my study to watch me meditate, and when I open an eye to cast a ‘what are you doing in here?’ glance, she grins, runs over and throws an arm around my neck. She loves the Black Dragon meditation stool too. Perfect height for her, or so she thinks.
In the afternoons, around 2pm or so, I take a Deep Relaxation session on the floor of the lounge (or in my study if we have guests) with headphones on listening to a self-hypnosis healing CD. I find myself easily hovering between that state of sleep and consciousness for most of the 40 minutes, though I don’t know if this is where I’m supposed to be, but I like it. I haven’t managed to reattain that euphoric feeling on rising between the layers towards total awareness, but I’m still in a nice place when I do this. My last session is either from 5:30-6:00pm or 6:00-6:30pm, depending on how chaotic the crazy hour before dinner happens to be. The combination of Daddy-no-help, Jules preparing a meal she is unfamiliar with for all of us, and Isla wanting to ‘help’ can sometimes cause more than a little stress. Jules would rather I meditated after dinner so I could help out more, but I’m sticking to my selfish guns and doing it before dinner. It’s easier to meditate on an empty stomach as the body and the mind don’t spend half the time digesting. Meditating is also bloody hard anyway, and if I had to do it on a full stomach and later at night, it just wouldn’t happen.
I’m sticking to the wholefood plant based diet diet, though it’s a little more strict than just wholefood plant based diet. No salt, no sugar, no cooking with oils, no alcohol, no caffeine and watching all the food additives in everything we purchase. Breakfast, once a meal I never ate, is now my favourite meal of the day — it is also the meal that hasn’t really changed. Jules, so far, has looked after the dinners, trying recipes out of the Gawler cookbooks and doing a great job (she’s impressed too). I look after my breakfast, lunch and juicing, in order to take as much pressure off her as possible. (She won’t like me saying that, she’d rather I had no pressure on me at all, but it’s just too much for her to do, as well as manage the bundle of joy that is Isla).
I still miss meat. I still miss red wine. I have the occasional piece of dark chocolate as my treat. (It’s not the sugar content that is a problem here, just the saturated fat, but there’s trade-offs with antioxidants and pleasure receptors.) The hardest part of the lifestyle change is the juices. I’m on a healing diet and this means I should be doing about seven 200ml juices per day. I’m managing three-five 250ml juices instead. There just does not seem to be enough time in the day to even do the juicing I’m managing to do. Our fridge spills with silverbeet, spinach, lettuce, celery, capsicums, beetroot, cucumbers, zucchinis, knobs of ginger, and carrots - kilos and kilos of carrots.
We’re going through at least $50 per week on just these ingredients and I’m drinking them, not eating them. Eating vegetables has a different cost again, and we’re talking cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and the vegetables already mentioned. My morning routine starts at around 7:30am and finishes two hours later. This would include two juices, breakfast, and a dandelion coffee infused with my secret sea cucumber magic bullet, and while waiting for different ingredients to settle and digest in my stomach, I can prepare Isla’s breakfast and feed it to her.
So I need to keep at this intensity for at least 2 more months and 1 more week, then I will have completed three months of the healing diet. I can then think about reducing the 7 juices to maybe 3-5 a day, oh hold on, that’s all I’m managing anyway, and knock the meditation down to 1-2 times a day. Easy, eh?
I hate routine, but now I am convincing myself that I am embracing it. Where is that waterfall? There must be another one coming up…
By Paul Haines