From cancer to wellness
How one woman overcame terminal cancer
Can natural, holistic methods help fight cancer? One reader shares her inspirational story.
When Queensland woman Kristine Matheson was diagnosed with advanced skin cancer and was effectively given a 12-month sentence, she decided there had to be a natural, holistic solution. She tells Amber Wilson her story.
Kristine’s story
Kristine Matheson was fit, healthy, a ballroom dancer, and at the height of her career in 2001 when she first had a melanoma – a skin cancer – removed from her back. At the time, her doctor didn’t tell her the cancer had progressed to stage 4, meaning it had already spread to different organs in her body.
In 2005, she started suffering what she thought was chronic fatigue syndrome from her frequent bouts of glandular fever. By Easter that year, she was given a diagnosis that she had several cancerous tumours growing in her body. She had a large tumour behind her heart, two lumps in her neck, and a growth on her lungs in her back. She knew she had to make some dramatic life choices, and leave her highly stressful career in the building industry.
“I was also getting very breathless going upstairs, and that was probably the one behind my heart and my lungs making that happen,” Kristine says. “I was a dancer, so I was very fit. So, to get breathless going upstairs was very unusual. I was given a death sentence. I was told to get my affairs in order.”
She knew her body was telling her something was wrong.
“I had to totally let go of the company, which had been going for 44 years,” she says. “I had to let it all go. I had to concentrate on what was more important here – my life.”
In the same year, her husband suffered a heart attack, which he also attributed to his stressful career.
“My husband’s really fit, we’re talking a really fit man here,” Kristine says. “Heart conditions aren’t always created through cholesterol, they’re also created through stress. I think these conditions came about through stress, and not handling our stress very well. We used to run a meditation centre, and you would think that we would have been able to rely on that, but I think sometimes it’s difficult when you’re surrounded by stressful situations.”
An alternative path
Kristine believes using natural methods helped her recover from cancer.
“Healing came about for me by using the right dietary protocols, the right nutritional supplement protocols, the right mind/body protocols, and your body has to stay alkaline,” she says.
Kristine suggests cleaning out the digestive tract, which is the centre of our immune system. Her new book, From Cancer to Wellness, details a complete juicing cleanse to help refresh and revitalise the digestive system.
“I did things like colonics, I cleaned my system out totally,” she says. “The juicing program’s really good because when your body doesn’t have to digest, and you’re absorbing all these wonderful nutrients, your body doesn’t have to spend energy on digesting.”
Kristine also focused on bringing her body back to an alkaline state, which meant ditching alcohol, meat, dairy and sugar. In fact, she says alkalising the body is the cornerstone of her anti-cancer program.
“My book has a lot of recipes in it, and they’re all interesting recipes, and most of them are made from raw food,” she says. “They keep your body alkaline, and they don’t have to be boring. I think that’s really important – if you’re not alkaline, you’ll get sick. If you’re alkaline, you’ll get well.”
She says her recovery was quick.
“The great part of when I had cancer was I had these lumps in my neck that were like a barometer,” she says. “Within 10 days of starting my anti-cancer program, I started feeling the lumps in my neck getting smaller and smaller until you couldn’t see them. They basically disappeared.”
