When Rick Hill, who was diagnosed at the MAyo Clinic with very aggressive embryonal cell carcinoma at a very young age, learned about a nutritional clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, that was treating terminally ill people, he journeyd south. Hill, a f

The Cancer Conundrum

Stop Dying—Start LivingBy Rick Hill

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Rick Hill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-1534-1

Contents

Preface..........................................................ixAcknowledgments..................................................xiPART ONE: Detroit, Michigan 1966.................................1"E" Is for Eunuch................................................3The Key That Would Unlock a Lot of Doors.........................6OCD Heaven: The Mayo Clinic......................................9Selling the Family...............................................15Decisions, decisions.............................................17PART TWO: Tijuana, Mexico 1974...................................21The Rabbit Hole..................................................23Life among the Dying.............................................26The Mystery of the Santa Ana Wind................................31The Pink Elephant in the Room....................................33Hit the Reset Button!............................................36Guidelines for Hitting the Reset Button..........................39Back to Reality..................................................41Mowing the Lawn with My Teeth....................................42Our Food Bible: The Laetrile Modified Diet.......................43Detoxification, Supplementation, Affirmation.....................46Feed, Starve, Build..............................................56Life after Hitting the Reset Button..............................65And I Thought Cancer Was Bad.....................................69

Chapter One

"E" IS FOR EUNUCH

Detroit was a magical place in the fifties and sixties. Financially, it was one of the focal points of the entire planet; the auto industry held a prominent place in the postindustrial US economy. Henry Ford's new company, which would eventually become known as FOMOCO, (Ford Motor Company) to the residents of Detroit, or the Blue Oval, led the way and spawned General Motors and Chrysler. Growing up near Detroit, in Roseville, I lived and breathed cars as a kid. My father, Bill Hill (Wild Bill Hill to many), was a VP of sales for Dodge in the fifties and later worked for the Hurst floor-shift company. This meant I got to meet many of the famous dragster drivers and even Hurst's own Miss Golden Shifter, Linda Vaughn. A young man tends not to forget her attributes. The winters, though harsh, were often like a picture postcard, with snow-capped roofs and pine trees trimmed in white. Hudson's twelfth-floor Christmas display, a jaunt down Lakeshore Drive to see how the mansions were decorated, a Vernors' cooler on a hot summer day, the roar of the hydroplanes on the Detroit River, a lazy day spent on the Bob-Lo boat—all of this made the Motor City a grand place to live in the golden era.

We were Greasers back then in Roseville. We wore our hair in Fonzie-style water falls and dressed in full-length leather coats and skin-tight pants. All we wanted in life were fast cars; blond, curvy girlfriends; and jobs to keep it all going. Lucky me. I had a '57 Ford, my girl was two inches taller than I was, and I was manager of the highest volume shoe store in Detroit, Flagg Brothers, at 7 Mile and Gratiot.

I was consistently voted the most improved athlete because I was a late bloomer. Looking back, I think it was highly likely that I was allergic to wheat. This is now known as celiac disease. For me it went undiagnosed for fifty-five years. One of the characteristics is failure to thrive, or not developing on time. This was embarrassing for two reasons. First, the physical education teacher usually had the boys shower together, and around the seventh grade it became obvious if you were the only boy wearing his towel to the showers. Second, the girls were suddenly taller—much taller. It would have been obscene for me to slow dance with any of them, since, as you may recall, public breastfeeding was frowned upon in the sixties. Other characteristics of gluten intolerance are bloating, gas, diarrhea, and constant headaches. None of the aforementioned characteristics lends itself to successful dating. When my hormones finally did kick in, I threw myself into weight lifting in a nearly futile attempt to buff up and catch up for the ladies (see the gratuitous topless photo of me for proof). During a 175-pound bench press one evening, I felt a sharp pain in my chest when the bar came down. It would later prove to be one of four nonmalignant tumors removed from my chest area. This limited my future career with the International Federation of Body Builders—and I threatened my brothers and sister that I'd kill them if they told anyone I was having boob jobs. Something was wrong with me, but the doctors were unable to say anything more definitive than my hormones might be acting up.

"Fake it till you make it" has always been a way of life for me. My adolescent years were iffy for several reasons: I was four feet eleven inches in high school; I had the grade-point average that made all the others possible; and I was trying to figure out why I just couldn't digest anything. My salvation was my very cynical, warped, razor-sharp sense of humor. Simply put, I was dubbed the official class clown in 1965. I sifted everything I saw, read, and heard through the "What's funny about this?" filter. Almost everything that people believed, thought, or said made me blink quickly and think, "Really?" Years later, when I enrolled in theological school at my mother's behest, I asked one of my professors in the first week of classes, "What if the book of Genesis was really a satire, and we just didn't get it?" I envisioned Moses doing stand-up in the Catskills. Going for the joke was not a choice for me; when the talking snake entered the Garden to tempt Eve, I could hear him humming show tunes and speaking in the voice of Edward G. Robinson. This point of view proved to be very unpopular with the faculty and staff and partially led to my early departure from seminary.

However, it was during my theological studies that I learned a lesson at ten thousand feet in the air that would prove to be a game-changer later in life.

THE KEY THAT WOULD UNLOCK A LOT OF DOORS

When you grow up in a broken home in the 1950s, where money is scarce or mismanaged, it seems like other people's worlds are okay, but yours is not. I felt this way a lot living with my mother and three siblings. To this day, I have to fight feelings of scarcity even in the face of plenty. I recall being out with my little hoodie buddies, walking the streets late at night and looking into the windows of homes. I wasn't a Peeping Tom, looking into bedroom or bathroom windows. Instead, I was looking at families in living rooms, sitting on nice furniture and talking to one another. My family never had nice furniture, and we seldom spoke to one another unless it was with our fists. When I was growing up, my world was marked by what we weren't and what we didn't have.

My church and my mother were very interested in sending me to a Baptist college to straighten me out. Whatever did they mean? Class clowns don't need straightening out; they just need an audience. However, the unpopular war in Vietnam was brewing, and the draft was reinstated. Suddenly, I felt the call of God to enroll in theological school. Besides, this school was the only one that would take me with my grade-point average, and the church was willing to chip in for my tuition.

During my freshman year, when Thanksgiving break came I could not afford to go...