My Experience with Dr. Cathay Fung and Traditional Chinese Medicine
By S.V.
My Experience with Dr. Cathay Fung and Traditional Chinese Medicine By Sharon Valleau I first saw Dr. Cathay Fung in 2006 in a trailer – her makeshift office in Kansas City, Missouri. I was recovering from a lumpectomy for invasive ductal carcinoma – breast cancer. That visit would begin a relationship that spans seven years as of this writing in 2013. I credit four things with my recovery from cancer and several other serious health issues in this order: God – diet and lifestyle changes—Naturopathic medicine – and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) from Dr. Cathay Fung. I believe Dr. Fung and TCM are the reason I am alive today.
Following the removal of the one cm tumor with clear margins, I refused the rest of the “standards of care” recommended by western medicine for breast cancer: no radiation, no chemo, no hormone-stripping drugs, and certainly no cutting off my breasts.
Just six months before being diagnosed with cancer, I was diagnosed with a potential lifethreatening fungal infection in my sinuses. This particular fungus, called Mucor, is bad! It would have eventually eaten through the soft tissue and then the bone in my head! Yet, the diagnosing physician told me the Mucor in my sinuses was just a symptom. He said that particular fungus is everywhere, but it’s regularly kept away by a healthy immune system. He said that infection was a sure sign that my immune system was not working properly. “If you were to get cancer your immune system would never be able to stand up to the treatment,” he told me. I had to find another way to fight cancer.
I went to the library, found the cancer section, pulled up a chair and started pulling books from the shelf. That evening I reached into the sack full of books I’d brought home and pulled one out. I looked at the title and thought, “That looks interesting; I’ll go to bed with this one. ” I ended up returning all of the other books unread. That one book was A Woman’s Guide to Healing from Breast Cancer: Traditional Chinese Medicine by Nan Lu, O.M.D. (Doctor of Occidental Medicine – the Chinese equivalent of Western Medicine’s M.D.).
I was determined to find a good Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. Luckily, I found the best when a friend told me about Dr. Fung who treated her after breast cancer.
Dr. Fung is always careful to say I should have a Western medicine doctor and she says some things are better treated with Western medicine. Many tines she has insisted that I consult with my western medical doctor about various issues, such as an irregular heartbeat that she detected by pulse readings two years before the western medical doctors I went to detected the problem.
Dr. Fung takes the ancient art of TCM very seriously. I have always received from her the opposite of “standards of care” – I receive true personal care. That is one aspect of Traditional Chinese Medicine I have learned over the years of treatment. I learned that there is a major philosophical difference in the way western and eastern medicine view illness. In the TCM philosophy illness is the result of blockages in the normal balanced flow of bodily energy, fluids and function. Therefore, the illness can be reversed and treatment usually should not last forever. Where western medicine is dependant upon treatment of illness through “maintenance meds” that might be taken the rest of your life, eastern medicine reverses illness with acupuncture and herbs that are customized to the condition you have now. Dr. Fung custom blends herbs, adjusting them according to changes in my condition. When the illness has reversed, there is no need to treat with those particular herbs.
In the time I have seen Dr. Fung I have been diagnosed with a separate cancer in my other breast, an autoimmune disorder, and chronic kidney disease. I believe most of this is because of the underlying immune system deficiency that the specialist told me about when I got the sinus infection.
Underlying conditions are something physicians aren’t talking to cancer patients about, except in the case of smoking and HPV. Cancer is a disease of mutant cell changes when cells refuse to die according to their normal course. All day, every day, every one of us experiences cell changes that have the potential to become cancer. The difference is the activity of the immune system. So it follows that cancer is the result of an impaired immune system.
In TCM, the immune system is Qi (Chee) and there are other different considerations between the two healing modalities.
I followed the same course of action when diagnosed with cancer in the other breast – lumpectomy followed by TCM. Over these past seven years, I’ve known many people who went through the “standards of care” that I refused for cancer. Some of them died as what was left of their immune systems were destroyed by toxic chemotherapy. Many lost months of life – unable to work, writhing in pain, depressed and tormented by harsh side effects from cancer treatments. Except for a couple of days following the lumpectomies, I didn’t miss any work because of cancer or cancer treatment. I didn’t lose hair, body parts, hope, faith, or my life.
But here’s the kicker: the autoimmune disorder I was diagnosed with has apparently reversed – there is no longer any sign of it and there are no longer any associated symptoms. The chronic kidney disease that was borne out on test after test and that reeked havoc with my systolic blood pressure – has apparently reversed! My creatinine levels have gone back into normal bounds and stayed there.
I was what they call a “sickly child – I have had health issues my entire life. Medical testing verified that I had low immune response. Retesting over years of treatment has shown substantial strengthening and improvement in my immune system, which I attribute to TCM.
Even as other western medical test results come back with glowing reports, which my doctors read as indications that I’m all well and must feel great, I don’t always feel so great. I know I’m not crazy and I know bloodwork and other western medical testing very often fails to find illness. In her assessment, Dr. Fung can tell that I still have some weaknesses that she continues to treat. When I have the flu, she gives me herbs that cut the time I have them in half. When my slippedbulging-ruptured lower back discs start shooting pain, she applies needle treatment and cupping therapies that immediately relieve the pain and stiffness. Dr. Fung’s treatment with TCM has given me quick relief from headaches, allergies, constipation, craving sweets, and many other common medical issues. She moved out of the trailer and into a beautiful building that she custom designed to treat patients according to the medical practice that has sustained a people for millennia – Traditional Chinese Medicine.