Ron’s Story: Do It Yourself Cancer Recovery

Ron was a lieutenant in the Vietnam War.  He drove a truck, transporting war materiel.  He was never injured, but was often sprayed by Agent Orange.  He finished his tour and returned to Minnesota, opening a small repair shop on W. College Drive in Marshall.  I owned a Toyota at the time, and Ron was my best Toyota mechanic.  He was a happy guy, and folks could hear his cheery voice a block away.  In early July 1991, I came for service, but the shop was quiet.  The foreman met me,  “Ron’s in the hospital with cancer!”  I didn’t know anything about medicine in those days, so left a few self help books for him. I heard nothing more until mid November, when he called one evening.

“Hi, this is Ron!  I bet you’d like to know what happened to me!”  He had had a bowel problem in late June, went to the local hospital where they found a huge, malignant mass in the lower abdomen. The cancer was so entangled with the rest of the organs that they couldn’t remove it without “gutting him like a fish”, as they told him after the surgery. They sewed him back up, then told him that only one patient in 100 could survive what he had, so he’d better get his affairs in order. Now, the dilemma:  His wife depended on him for support, the house wasn’t paid for, and there were four kids who would need care. What to do?  Ron told me that one day while sitting on the deck, the thought came over him like a giant emotional “wave”. The feeling was strong, almost euphoric.  Suddenly, the mindset became one that would NOT consider his dying.  Ron knew that he MUST LIVE.  His work was not yet done.  And the thought came to him, “You can play a part in your own healing. You can be that ONE PERSON IN 100 who survives this!”  He set about devising his plan.  There were jobs at home that needed attention, so he began to fix:  porches, doors, electrical outlets; jobs that had been let go in the hurry of modern living.  Each day when finished, he fired up his basement sauna and perspired in the moist heat for an hour each night.  And, he did something else:  Back in the ‘60s, radiation oncologist Dr. O. Carl Simonton had pioneered a cancer therapy using mental pictures of the cancer cells and their antagonists, the immune cells.  With daily imaginings of the cancer cells as weak and the immune cells strong, patients improved, often becoming completely cancer free.  Ron read Dr. Simonton’s book, Getting Well Again, and he chose to try the technique.  How to do it?

In the early ‘90s, video games were new, and Ron had seen the one where the Pac Men characters gobble up the bad guys.  He decided to image the cancer cells as kernels of popcorn and the immune cells as Pac Men. Beginning in late July, Ron continued to do his daily work, his sweaty sauna, and his mental pictures. October brought a concern; he couldn’t seem to find the cancer cells in his imagery.  Had something gone wrong?  In November he had tests, and his oncologist reported, “Ron, GOOD NEWS!  You are FREE of cancer!”   Ron had gone from a one percent chance of survival in July, to NO cancer in November!  He gives credit to visual imagery, the sauna and a strong will to live.  We now know that the we can strengthen the immune system via mental pictures, that regular sauna use clears body poisons, that sauna heat can be hard on cancer cells, and that the Will To Live is paramount. That experience was 20 years ago. Ron’s cancer has not recurred.  Looks like a cure to me.  Ron’s lesson:  THERE ARE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO PARTICIPATE IN YOUR OWN HEALING PROCESS.

This story from our files is true. It was related to me by Ron (his actual name) in 1991.