Life After Cancer: How A 25 Year Survivor Healed His Disease at CHIPSA Hospital After Being Given Months To Live!

It’s not often that a cancer patient is able to talk about “life after cancer,” especially when their disease is stage 4. But John H. is different. He has been living “life after cancer” for 25 years. While others consider him one of the lucky few, John believes his “luck” came from some good research and a lot of hard work.

John chose a healing path outside of what he calls “orthodox treatment,” and he was recently united with 21 other like-minded individuals who did the same and overcame the impossible: late-stage cancer.

All 22 of these patients utilized immunotherapy-based treatments to treat their cancer.

“Being here today is extremely moving for me,” said John, who received treatment for his melanoma at CHIPSA back in 1991. “It’s always emotional to be here and hear other people’s stories that are resonating with my own.”

John was diagnosed with late-stage melanoma when he was just 41 years old. He came to CHIPSA from England without having any traditional chemotherapy or radiation treatments. “At the hospital, the therapy was so powerful for me that it turned around my terminal disease in 11 days. My tumor started to shrink, and disappeared entirely after 11 weeks.”

And John has never had a single recurrence.

The main treatment that John utilized at CHIPSA is called the Gerson Therapy, a natural treatment regimen that calls upon the body’s own powerful potential to heal itself. By adhering to a strict organic, plant-based diet, consuming large amounts of raw, cold-pressed juices, and performing daily coffee enemas, patients aim to activate their body’s ability to fight disease.

The Gerson regimen is not just a treatment, it’s a lifestyle change. And that’s truly how John views it: “Life for me became before cancer and after cancer, and for me, that was before Gerson and after Gerson.”

What made John come to CHIPSA Hospital all the way from England?

For some, choosing therapies considered “unorthodox” is a difficult choice. But John describes himself as a rebel. “I go against the grain,” he said. “My history being in the health food business for 10 years, along with my mother and grandmother’s interest in homeopathy, led me to research more natural options for healing.”

After giving him his diagnosis, his surgeon told him he had just months to live. There was nothing else they could offer him. But John says that was the best thing she could have told him.

“I didn’t even have to think about it. Orthodox medicine wasn’t going to be any good for me. I knew I had other options.”

Advice from his friend, who was a homeopathic doctor, led him to research Gerson therapy, and once he did, everything just clicked. It seemed perfectly logical to John that his own immune system would know him better than any doctor ever could. “So if you can generate the ability of your immune system to fight the cancer, that’s gotta be the best way,” he said. “To me, Gerson therapy seemed like the way to create the right environment for the healing process to happen.”

John describes his time at CHIPSA as a life-changing experience unlike anything he’s ever known:

“It wasn’t even really like a hospital. People were in there with very serious illnesses, but the level of humor was amazing. People were laughing and smiling. People were socializing. We’d get together at meal times and share our experiences. That was what Gerson Therapy at the clinic was like for me.”

CHIPSA’s Celebration of Life event in 2018 united several long-term cancer survivors, giving John the opportunity to revisit the place where he believed his healing began. Having a chance to connect with people who had been through his same trials and tribulations — and chose a different path for healing — changed John’s life.

Being one of CHIPSA’s oldest patients, John was also able to compare where the hospital was 25 years ago to where it is today. “To see the way that the hospital has been developed with so much scientific research is commendable for the people who have taken it over.”

Although people often call the immunotherapy treatments offered at CHIPSA “alternative,” John believes that we’re actually moving into more middle ground. “When I did this therapy, it was definitely ‘alternative medicine.’ But what I’m picking up on now is that the two are actually moving together.

And John is right. What was once considered “alternative” is now becoming mainstream. Integrative oncology is a newer branch of medicine that combines many kinds of treatments to achieve the best possible results.

So for the people who are coming into the hospital today,” said John. “Or the people who are struggling at home with a diagnosis, I would say that it’s not all as it seems. Your doctor with all his knowledge and scientific support might tell you that there’s nothing more you can do, and a large part of you will believe them. But then there’s a little part in you that could be a fighter. You could say, I’m not going to accept this. There is something else that maybe this doctor doesn’t know about.”

For John, that was Gerson Therapy. In the words of longtime Gerson survivor Beatta Bishop, John needed “a time to heal.” “Maybe you do too,” he said.