ArticlesHow Breast Milk Led To a Cancer Protocol

The experiment was simply to pump the breast milk into a bottle and make general observations about its character. My wife was to continue taking her expensive prenatal vitamin and not change anything diet-wise. She was to start taking a heaping teaspoon of the barley mixed in water twice daily for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, pump the breast milk again and observe its characteristics as before. The initial observation was a thin white milk with a hint of yellow tint. Following the two weeks, to our astonishment, there was a half-inch layer of cream on the top layer of breast milk. We were amazed, to say the least. My wife nursed for 15 months, and our daughter remained abundantly healthy. I also faithfully took the barley and noted an initial detox reaction, followed by daily energy I hadn’t felt in years.

The explanation was that although my wife’s caloric needs were being met through diet, there were not enough micronutrients and minerals in our food supply to produce a higher quality milk. The prenatal vitamin was also made in a lab and could not affect health at the cellular level. Barley is a nutrient-dense whole food that is still alive with active enzymes. Most commercial green powders are just dead grass milled into a powder. The nutrients are still locked in the fiber, but no active enzymes exist. Freeze-dried grass juice powder is wholly different. Our friend knew this would be the outcome; she just needed to prove it through an objective experience.

We recommended the barley to anyone willing to listen to the breast milk story. We sold quite a bit of it over the next two years with incredible feedback from our customers. I became fascinated with learning everything I could about nutrition and holistic health practices. To our surprise, the Aim company rewarded our effort with the opportunity to host a weekend of lectures featuring a highly respected Oncologist who practiced allopathic and natural medicine. The event was free and an enormous marketing opportunity for our smoothie store. My father, Dennis Lagarde Sr., attended the lectures and found the topic fascinating. He took an interest in his spare time away from running a machine shop to help out in the store. Upon his retirement, at age 55, he announced that he would change the course of his life and open a health food store. The smoothie stores had failed to become profitable, but Whole Health Market was born. Ultimately, by God’s divine providence, he was also able to become an apprentice to a Naturopathic doctor who held a clinic at our health food store. I continued to work full-time as an RN and with my father on my days off. I was blessed to understand the medical end and have an ever-increasing knowledge of alternative/natural practices. My dad was able to counsel thousands of clients for over twenty years, ever learning even into his 70s. Our fundamental understanding was that to overcome health challenges; you had to affect change at the cellular level through food. Three core food-based supplements had this ability. 1) Aim Barley Life or equivalent. This fed the cells all the nutritional requirements and would eventually raise intra-cellar Ph to 7.4 due to its abundance of food-based minerals. 2) Food-based Omega-3 fatty acids to balance the inflammation response at the cellular level. 3) Long-chain polysaccharides to modulate the immune system-medicinal mushrooms or aloe vera. This is what I like to call the cake; all the individual herbs and nutraceuticals are the icing on the cake. No matter the health challenge, start with the core and then utilize specific herbs and supplements dedicated to the particular problem in the body. We observed countless repeatable positive outcomes using this strategy and counseling the dietary pitfalls to avoid the Standard American Diet.

Our third child, a beautiful baby boy-Cameron, was born on April 2nd, 2002. He had an uneventful childhood and loved sports and video games. He was a fierce protector of his two younger siblings. At age 14, Cameron pulled a muscle helping us build a chicken coop. The pain would come and go. He was initially diagnosed with chronic costochondritis (inflammation where your ribs join the bone in the middle of the chest). We consulted with our family doctor during a flare-up, requesting an x-ray. “It’s just growing pains, no need for a chest x-ray.” Approximately a year after the initial injury, the pain suddenly and dramatically increased on the eve of his freshman year. We went to the local ER, and I demanded an x-ray, threatening to sit on the floor until one was performed. Cameron had a baseball size tumor collapsing the lower half of his left lung. Our world turned upside down.
The next morning we met with the pediatric Oncologist, then a biopsy revealed that it was Ewings Sarcoma. This particular cancer was a rare subset of sarcomas, affecting an average of 100 children/young adults yearly in the US. The Oncologist was hopeful for remission as long as it had not already metastasized, which would be checked per a PET scan. The cure rate for non-metastasized patients is around 70%, dropping to approximately 25% if cancer has spread. Cameron’s PET scan was negative. Ewings is treated with more chemotherapy than any other cancer, with five different drugs given over 33 weeks. The possible side effects and long-term complications were endless. After assuring Cameron that we would let know harm come to him, my wife and I fasted for a week seeking God’s direction and healing of our precious child. The answer came as a picture of two rapidly flowing rivers in my mind. One was allopathic medicine, and the other was natural medicine. God instructed us to jump into both without a life preserver.

I already knew the foundation, so we immediately began giving Cam barley life caps as he couldn’t handle the grass juice powder, Nordic Naturals Omega 3, and Turkey Tail mushrooms twice daily. At this point, we had a week to wait for his IV port to be surgically implanted, then the first cycle of chemotherapy would begin the following week. The protocol was to do four cycles of induction chemo (12 weeks), then repeat a chest MRI to determine if the tumor would shrink enough to remove it surgically. I had the opportunity to talk to a few people who had mingled traditional cancer treatment with concurrent alternative methods, gleaning any insight they would share. I read every blog about cancer treatments available on the internet and researched studies on PubMed. It had to be divinely guided as I had inner peace in the middle of this dreadful situation. I was straightforward with our Oncologist on our plans to use quality supplements along with the chemo. Thankfully, although he had never had a parent request this route, he was liberal in his views and accommodating to our wishes. He only asked that we consult with him before implementing any particular supplements. I was astonished to find research that for every severe possible side effect caused by the chemo, there was a God-given plant-based supplement to mitigate harm to the good cells, hopefully. Ironically, most of the supplements to lessen side effects also helped fight the cancer. I will provide a simplified list of the supplements, exact doses, timing of doses related to chemo, and the desired effect related to general and particular chemotherapy agents. These included turmeric, ginger, grape seed extract, nature’s sunshine blood builder, Essiac tea, and slippery elm. See link here

Chemo began on a Monday, and we were to stay inpatient until Thursday. This would be repeated each week for the next 12 weeks. It was surreal to watch this therapeutic poison drip slowly into my son’s body; he was strong and already a faithful servant of God. Nausea began shortly after the completion of the first treatment. Reality had set in, we were in for 33 more weeks of this. We were still hopeful that this nausea would be the worst his experience with chemo would be. To describe what happened during the next three weeks is quite challenging to write, even today. Cameron began refusing meals and fluids. The sight of food made him nauseous. He dropped 20 pounds seemingly overnight. All of his hair fell out. His white blood cell count was nonexistent. He became septic with MRSA staph infection of the blood, requiring extended nights in the hospital receiving IV Vancomycin. Although we never spoke it out loud, if this continued, our thoughts imagined the worst. I had failed at my promise to allow no harm to come to my son. We even purchased medical-grade marijuana to make into butter as a last resort to stimulate his appetite and lessen the nausea. The Oncologist was actually in agreement. This was on the last Friday of the first cycle. We would give him the butter starting Monday to begin the second cycle, as it took a few days to make it. He laid in bed all weekend with no energy, listless in appearance. We forced him to take his supplements, watching him gag with every swallow. I begged God to give me this burden to bear instead of my child.

Monday morning arrived, back to the hospital for round two. We lay beside Cameron in his bed to hug and gently awaken him for the day. He sat up, and when the sunlight fell upon his face, his color had returned. “Can we get breakfast before we go to the hospital? I’d like an omelet and bacon.” Was this a mirage? We skipped the marijuana, waiting to see if he could tolerate breakfast. His pre-chemo blood work that morning had dramatically improved since the previous week. He had a fraction of the previously experienced nausea and actually sent us to pick him up a burger for lunch while on the chemo. His improvement was so dramatic that they let him go outpatient after that. Since I was a nurse, they trusted me to manage his post-chemo IV therapy at home between visits. The next few weeks were the polar opposite of our initial experience. The staff called him “SuperCam.” My Oncologist told us that during Monday morning staff meetings, they would discuss Cameron’s case apart from all the other patients. Following each chemo cycle, the white blood cell count drops to nearly zero. This is medically called the Nadir. Cameron had to wear a mask and couldn’t begin the next round of chemo until his count improved. His count typically returned to normal in half of the time expected. What started as a nightmare became an opportunity for us to draw near God and spend quality time with our son. By the end of the induction phase of chemo, Cameron was living life like any other high-school freshman, minus the actual going to school. The school district sent a teacher to our home, so he didn’t fall behind his peers.

According to the post-induction repeat MRI of the chest, the tumor shrunk to the size of a golf ball from the previous baseball size mass. Surgery was planned about a week later. The surgeon informed us that she would remove part of his lung and diaphragm and part of 3 ribs (where the tumor originated). Total time in the OR would be approximately 7 hours. Surgery day came, and we prayed over our son and sent him off to the care of the surgical team. Our hearts sank when we were unexpectedly called to meet with the surgeon at the three-and-a-half-hour mark. She noted the fear on our faces as we approached her, so she held out her hand in a thumbs-up fashion with a big smile ear to ear. “The tumor just peeled off his lung and diaphragm like wet gum; I didn’t have to touch those organs.’ The removed tumor was sent to pathology as per protocol for staging. Recovery in the pediatric surgery unit had its moments. The anesthesia did a nerve block to prevent any post-op pain, but that failed as his pain was unbearable. They finally removed it when it temporarily paralyzed the left half of his body. An Intern removed a chest tube incorrectly and collapsed his lung. We were discharged four days later to recuperate at home a few days before Christmas. The phone call we had been waiting for came a few days after New Year’s. The Oncologist began by telling me that he got into a heated argument with the surgeon about which one would make this phone call because “We’ve never given this kind of report following a tumor resection.” “The tumor was 100% necrotic/dead; that’s never happened at 12 weeks of induction chemotherapy.”

Outpatient chemotherapy resumed in mid-January with 21 weeks to go. Cameron had minimal nausea, and he gained a little weight. He did not experience any neuropathy, infections, mucositis, or neurological side effects. He maintained his strength, stamina, and vigor. We fell into a routine that, by the grace of God, Cameron deemed “uneventful.” Pediatric oncology is an extremely difficult place to spend your days, weeks, months, and for some patients, years. Although there was great joy when someone completed their course of treatment with good news, there were some children who did not make it. We would listen to the mothers explain the horrific side effects that their beautiful children were experiencing, gently encouraging them to look into the supplements. Most were paralyzed by fear, and if the Oncologist didn’t prescribe or recommend it, they wanted no part of it. All the children, including Cameron, received the same care, medications, diet, and endless prayers and support from their families, friends, and communities. That was the control, and Cameron was the experiment. I had 33 weeks of data: lab reports, MRIs, and daily physical assessments by a highly trained medical staff to demonstrate that my son did exceptionally well, far beyond their expectations. My wife eventually disabled Facebook as she couldn’t emotionally handle reading the stories from the other moms.

Cameron rang the chemo completion bell on July 7th, 2017. He had his lifeport surgically removed a week later. The following week on July 21st, we took our Make-a-Wish trip to Disney in Orlando. Amid the hottest days of the year, two weeks removed from chemo, Cameron or “SuperCam” didn’t miss a beat. He walked from the moment the sparks opened until midnight for seven days. We would tire out but not him. A few weeks later, after he began his sophomore year of high school, I found a cup of supplements that he had hidden in his room. I guess he was sick of taking so many capsules daily, as anyone would be. I said, “Cameron, do you want to go through this whole ordeal again? Take those damn supplements!” He replied, “it wasn’t that bad.” We both hugged and laughed.
Cameron is now 20, a sophomore in college, and works at our health food store. He loves counseling and encouraging customers who come in for advice when they receive the dreaded C-word diagnosis. He is a blessing to all who know him. Please utilize us as a resource if you or a loved one is experiencing this particular challenge or any health-related matter.