My Story (Part 4)

[Congrats on making it to Part 4 of my story…]

If I had to name two of the biggest turning points in my life, those would be the fall of 2001 and May of 2005. 2001 brought the Big C into my life. As for May of 2005…well, I’ll let you be the judge of what went on here.

In May of 2005 came an email from herbhealers.com, telling me that the holistic, very inexpensive and highly effective cancer treatments I’d been using successfully – aka black salve and graviola – were no longer available. The maker of black topical salve, which I’ve used as part of my personal cancer-fighting arsenal the past dozen-plus years, had been raided by Federal Marshals, the business destroyed, property confiscated and the founder incarcerated. They made cancer treatments that worked, and very cheaply at that ($25 for black salve and $60 for the graviola tincture I’d been taking). Did this not fit in with US Sick’n’Pay’s Too-Profitable-to-Cure business model?

Fast on the heels of that indication that I was not living in a truly free market or equal opportunity environment came my chat with a lawyer who just so happened to be licensing out “Pink’s” Janis Joplin covers. Seeing as “Pink” is now the brand name for my cousin Alecia, I was wondering if this very nice man would intro me to his publisher in San Fran, because, you know what the ad copy says: we are ALL pink inside. Even those of us with the same last name, as I was hoping that some of that oh-so-fine Hollywood nepotism might just kick in with a decent payday.

I was less than an hour away on BART, living in the Bay Area at the time (lovely). I’d just won VH1’s Song of the Year for the first time with Something About You, signed the European deal, and the week before, licensed Fate to Dawson’s Creek with the help of NOMA Music. IOW, ready to rock! But after spilling the beans to me as to why “Pink’s” third album had really tanked and other stuff I thought surely was attorney-client privilege, he refused. Refused to make a simple intro, even with a great resume full of those items I’d been told by the industry were needed to earn the deal I was working toward.

Hmmmmm. What on Earth was going on here? Why jail the maker of an inexpensive cancer treatment that worked…in a free marketplace? And, regarding my pursuit of music industry happiness – was I failing on my own? Or was I related to the wrong pop star, who’d grown up in the same little tourist trap of a village in PA, but whose corporate Philly street girl bios I didn’t recognize? These and other questions started coming in by the hundreds, then by the thousands, finally topped off by this from a trusted music industry colleague: “Keep writing music and tell your story. People love this shit!”

As I’ve found, shit it is. This is squarely in damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t territory, often revealing who my friends, family and yes, even music industry colleagues really are – or are not. Whatever this was, it reminded me of all the very embarrassing back-stabbing I Got Mine behavior I’d ever seen among family back in Doylestown. Always over money and the limelight. I never really understood why people could not simply enjoy their own success without worrying about mine. Fear of competition? Insecurity?

You decide. 

And while you’re at it, please answer a question of mine – what would YOU do if you found yourself in my set of circumstances?

In late 2005, I won VH1’s Song of the Year for a second time with an excellent remix of my song Dream by Germany’s ElektroMolch. In 2006, I scored a platinum-selling overseas hit (South Africa, of all places!) with a cool remix of Something About You, then another hit in 2007 with Keep Me Inside, remixed to sheer perfection in South Africa by BlackwHole Entertainment. Still sans any sort of deal in the US – even spec or development – the questions (some of them extremely intrusive) kept pouring right on in. Gossip – love it or hate it – it’s simply one card in the hand I’ve been dealt. I didn’t ask for any of this.

Doing my buy-in in the US remained elusive, but all the stress saw me once again focusing on health, aka more crazy-ass shit. It was past time to get the last of the mercury fillings taken out. Seven large had been spent on insurance premiums and for weeks, I attempted to figure out what was covered and which doc was on what plan and what they knew (and when they knew it), and then another week realizing much of what is referred to as health insurance is yet another transfer of wealth when several of the dentists didn’t even recognize the plan’s name. I dropped the insurance and never called the dentists back who insisted I needed expensive root canals without even seeing my teeth. No thanks.

I finally found someone to drill the suckers out for a low negotiated cash price, and as neatly as possible. It was re-exposure nonetheless, and afterward, another group of melanomas “matured” over time, during which I experienced what seemed like a total relapse in all my various syndromes. Food intolerances. That overall sick feeling. Fatigued, but amped up, aka tired’n’wired. Stressed out from all the career frustration. I was back on the Not-So-Merry-Go-Round.

Moving to LA in 2009, I visited a highly recommended naturopathic doctor in Rolling Hills Estates who told me point blank that I must rid my system of heavy metals and keep them out, otherwise the cancer, digestive problems and everything else would continue. He’d seen many cases like mine, and put me on a protocol using medical food and a zeolite supplement that started to help, but wasn’t quite enough. DMSA was too strong for my system at the time – kidneys weak, liver weak, food allergies raging. On top of that, I’d rented out a spare room to a stunning, has-been movie star gone nuts on divorce, drinking and drugs. Police from the San Mateo Virtual Crimes Unit entered my home under false pretenses and without a warrant, later on leveling an accusation of securities fraud (I wished – I’d already be payola’ed onto radio with that kind of dough!). I found out they’d surveilled my internet activities for who knew how long. Their accusations didn’t stick, but soon the knee-jerk CYA effort happened: a reprimand letter from the cable company regarding pirating a movie – a really bad one: The Men Who Stare at Goats (I plead insanity!).

Home again, full circle, and (don’t) RIP habeas corpus! Lawyers flatlined, one saying “if this happens again” to call him back. I guessed if I’d been shot in the head, it would have to happen twice.

Soon after, a minor earthquake woke me around 4:00 am and had all the neighborhood dogs up and barking. All the racket found me getting up and sitting at my laptop where a draft version of part of my story flew out of my fingertips and onto the screen – 15,000 words in two days. The revolving-illness tail-chase actually calmed a bit when I started, literally, to write some of the lead – and the stress – out. Sending it around to people for opinions, I got a lotta love…and some well-targeted hate. Excellent! The makings of a bestseller!

Moving to Las Vegas in late 2010, I visited a doctor’s office because of the ongoing problems (yes, more skin lesions – this is called extensive melanoma, popping up where the sun shone, where it hadn’t and even going wild at times into other parts of the bod). He tested me for the heavy metal nickel, which he said was “a real problem in Las Vegas” and “a factor in cancer.” Urinalysis confirmed elevated levels of nickel in my system. He branded me as partially autistic, telling me that, along with all the heavy metals sensitivity, cancer and digestive problems often came as a package. He charged an arm and a leg for treatments that didn’t work, a reminder that even working with a renowned alternative doc was a crapshoot. And sometimes a costly one.

In late 2011, a lesion on my left breast nipple started surfacing. It began as a fungal infection – it itched, I scratched, it bled. Not good. It took so long to find a reasonable diagnostic that I dove in beforehand with the black salve once again – the same tub I’d bought for $25 in 2001. As always, root causes beckoned – genetic predisposition, toxicity, childhood emo trauma, years of career frustration, digestive distress, lingering dental problems needing resolution.

So in early 2012, after trying several supplements and doctors to no effect, I researched and designed my own heavy metal toxicity reduction diet chelation protocol, which in my case amounted to 3 days on and 4 days off every week of bunches of cilantro, spirulina, chlorella and other foods known to help rid bodies – and even municipal sewage systems – of heavy metals and other baddies. After a year, I felt way better, then stepped in it by going veg – a no-no for me, apparently – after which I started backsliding – and after which again I went back to eating meat. Up and down, up and down.

Determined not to lose all I’d gained, in mid-2013, I started working with an excellent Chinese doctor in Las Vegas, who told me in no uncertain terms: “No…no…NO vegetarianism.” It seems that rabbit food isn’t right for my type…steak is. Root vegetables are. And then some.

In early 2014 through to 2015, I was back and forth to Mexico for some fine holistic dentistry and other cancer treatments like IV vitamin C, which, aside from my self-penned metal detox protocol, provided the most significant turning point yet.

Thanks to that country Down Under the USA’s southern border, I feel so much better that I cannot even remember how lousy I felt before, call it the kindness of time passing. It’s like I’ve woken up, brain fog gone – and feeling the double-edged sword of “wow, I feel so much better” and “wow, THIS is what I’ve been putting up with all this time?” Shit!

But no matter. Change is good! Still on guard, though – as always, gotta keep the cancer cell count down to a minimum. And much to the chagrin of some in the music business, I’ve survived it all.

“Whate’er you wish for me, may it come back on ya tenfold…”

Yours in Good Health,

Alison

Back to Part 3 | No, No – I’m Done, Thanks, and I Need a Drink 🙂

PS — During mid-April, 2014, I had a phone conversation with an MD and key player in healthcare systems in the US of A. He’s appeared before Congress, designed major healthcare initiatives in the US, and then some. What he said to me after I told him my story in brief: “I apologize for the system.” Wow. Never been there before – an MD actually saying sorry. Them’s healin’ words! Read the blog about his presentation at UULV (Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Vegas) here…