Mel O'Neill is a mum-of-two from Penketh.

She has been living with breast cancer for more than a decade and writes a regular blog for the Warrington Guardian

This is written from my perspective only. It may not be evidence based fact but through my learnings, I believe to be my truth that I’m willing to share.

From the moment I started to read the book Conscious Medicine by Gill Edwards almost 11 years ago, I knew that the cancer in my body had come because I wasn’t dealing with life very well.

I worried about everything, I talked about worrying about everything, I wasn’t eating properly due to my stomach being in constant knots due to worrying about everything. My life was unbalanced with worry and stress tipping the scales and as I read about it in this book I realised I wasn’t just unlucky like my oncologist had informed me when I asked him why me?

I was fortunate enough to be able to distance myself from my work place and work decided to only from home. My parents jumped in to help with the children as my life went from being busy with work, family and home life to being busy with my many hospital appointments and coping with the ugly chemotherapy side effects.

My first port of call was Meditation to help me switch my worrying mind off from the outside world, stuff that others found so easy to deal with yet I had dropped the many balls I was juggling.

This is it, I thought, I’ve found a way to relax and stop fretting.  The cancer is going to go and this will cure me but when it didn’t and the inflammatory breast cancer spread to my skin I went in search of my next cure.

Having been told about The Sanctuary of Healing in Blackburn, I drove myself there often three times a week for Chakra balancing, psychological therapy, Rife therapy (claims to kill cancer cells through light) and reiki in hope that something would be my cure. This is it, I thought the cancer is going to go but it didn’t.

Then I upped my sessions with Mandy Hall my homeopath in search of a remedy that would kill the cancer cells.  As the cancer got worse I booked in more sessions convinced that homeopathy would kill it having seen a video where it had cured someone else’s cancer but it didn’t kill mine.

Analysing my diet I embarked on a Nutritional Healing course in Manchester gaining knowledge of foods that help ease illnesses but it wasn’t to help mine as I journeyed to Florida to a raw food institute hoping to find my cure but it wasn’t to be and my cancer stayed put spreading across my shoulder and further down my back.

After visiting a spiritual healer in Brazil and researching spirituality, I wanted to gain knowledge of how to heal the cancer cells instead of kill them. Heal or Kill, they were going nowhere as I continued on my hunt for my cure.

Everything I dove into, I researched thoroughly and didn’t do anything on a whim convinced by my findings and facts of how it had helped others heal cancer, that it would help mine.

I therefore whole heartedly believed cannabis oil, which was proven to kill cancer, would kill mine.  After finding a reliable organic source I increased my dosage weekly after mixing the oil with coconut oil and dropping it into capsules to reach my gram a day goal as per Rick Simpson’s protocol.  More often than not, in the first few months, you would find me spaced out or stoned which was no fun for me, (I can assure you) as I battled through the side effects to continue as normal driving my six and seven year old kids to school and dance classes whilst keeping normality in their life as much as I could.  The cannabis oil and its unbearable side effects I endured made no difference to the spread of the cancer in my skin as I would watch it get worse on a a daily basis.

After a year on this regime whilst watching the aggressive nature of this IBC spread over my chest I embarked on a Clinical Trial at the Christie Hospital and within a month the cancer started to disappear. 

“You’re not cured you’re stable” I was informed by the Clinical Trial’s oncologist as I remained on the drug until it stopped working after more than two years of feeling the freedom of no cancer yet not of hospital appointments as they increased tenfold with the amount of monitoring that went with the trial. 

I began to realise that all the holistic stuff I was throwing myself into was great for keeping my body and mind healthy but was unable to kill the aggressive cancer cells now trapped in the lymphatic vessels of my skin.

Warrington Guardian:

Being passed back to my original oncologist (great guy Dr Wilson) from the trials team he experimented with different chemos, wanting them to work for me on their own without having to pay for the anti cancer drug Herceptin alongside them.

He warned me how they weren’t as successful on their own but wanting to save me the expense, but I discovered he was right as my hair thinned, the fatigue hit and my brain fog left me unable to string a sentence together when the cancer in my skin became worse than ever before.

Eventually I bit the bullet and had no other option than to pay every three weeks for the anti cancer drug Herceptin alongside a powerful chemotherapy where I would lose all my hair not long after my first weekly infusion.

Warrington Guardian:

The treatment combination worked well although crippled with lymphedema in my right arm and a mouthful of painful ulcers, I was told in November 2020 that my treatment would be put on hold until they could get my pain under control.  As the chemo was working so well, watching the scabs reduce on my shoulder, I begged the nurses to reconsider and continue with my infusions but they refused saying it was in my best interest to take a break from the chemotherapy regime.

Reluctantly I had to go along with it but I noticed the scabs completely disappear that Christmas and by January my scan results came back clear.  I was officially in remission!

I was advised by my oncologist to remain on the expensive Herceptin drug that kills the HER2 protein that feeds the cancer.

I remain cancer free (although being a stage 4 cancer patient I’m classed as incurable) after 10 years of chemotherapy treatments plus my unwavering search for something I would be able to say had “cured” me I also discovered “myself” along the way. I discovered a different kind of love, respect and belief in myself and my abilities that I had never had before. 

I started to live again. I started to live from a place of love and enjoyment, satisfaction and empowerment giving people hope that anything can change at any moment. 

So my search for my own holistic cure failed as I believe it was the chemo that finally decided to work in killing off the cancer.  Not only that, I believe it was my own state of mind and change of my perception of life that encouraged my trillion cells inside my body to start behaving and allow me to be and remain cancer free.

My searching kept me going, giving me hope at every hurdle which benefited my mindset making me stronger but what I was looking for was an external magic wand to erase cancer when I had the answer all along. The realisation to unashamedly be my true authentic self and to love myself knowing that I am always enough just as I am. 

I would never have reached this point without the love and support of so many people that have guided me and taught me many of life’s lessons or that have simply wrapped their arms around in (not all literally) but with a love and respect that when I was following my heart, I was on the right track.

Everything happens for a reason. I was meant to experience years or hitting brick walls and overcoming many hurdles. I was meant to learn about life to help others in their own lives. And most importantly I was meant to learn how to believe and love myself now knowing anything is possible when you have the knowledge.

After 11 years with Inflammatory breast cancer, at the age of 48, I have finally started to live from my heart being grateful for everything I have whilst learning how to celebrate life.