Archived from Charlotte Gerson's book

Story

   In mid-January 1979, Jesus Lechuga Valdez of Durango, Mexico, returned
from a business trip to Mexico City with a severe cold. A week later it had
deteriorated into a persistent cough and lingering hoarseness that made it
difficult for him to speak. Senor Lechuga, who, at this writing, is eighty-six
years old, in 1971 had retired from his position as general manager and partial
owner of a truck and tractor dealership. His travels for business had been
successful but hard on the man’s body. During the next six months, his chronic
cough and hoarse voice were treated by three allopathic physicians and a
homeopath, all of whom thought such signs of illness came from adult-onset
asthma. At that time he was sixty-six years old.

   The doctors’ diagnosis and treatment were incorrect, for X-ray films
eventually taken of Senor Lechuga’s thoracic area showed a 5-centimeter (cm)
round spot in the upper region of his right lung. A chest surgeon he consulted
confirmed the existence of a lung tumor 2 1/2 inches across.

   Since an El Paso, Texas, internist, Walter D. Feinberg, M.D., had been
keeping annual records of the patient's physical examinations, on June 18, 1979,
Senor Lechuga traveled to Dr. Feinberg’s office for comparing previous and
current radiographs. It turns out that there had been no sign of the potential for
a chest lesion the year before. Within half a dozen months, therefore, his mass
had formed spontaneously and quickly.

   Pulmonologist E. S. Crossett, M.D., at El Paso’s Hotel Dieu (French for
“God's house”) Hospital performed a bronchioscopy and mediastinoscopy
during lung surgery to remove the tumor. But because excision would have left
his patient too weak, the surgeon decided not to remove the tumor and only
performed a biopsy. The resulting tissue pathology and instrumentation
reports indicated that Senor Lechuga was victimized by stage IIIB “large cell
undifferentiated carcinoma with metastasis to the bronchial and mediastinal
areas.”

   The several malignant metastases of Jesus Lechuga Valdez were declared
inoperable, and his prognosis became established at only three to six months
of life remaining.

   Consultation with oncologist Ira A. Horowitz, M.D., medical director of the
El Paso Cancer Treatment Center, followed. Dr. Horowitz emphatically
recommended radiation therapy, but the machine used for this external
radiation failed to be state-of-the-art; its old-fashioned cobalt-60 electron beams
would present the patient with some awful side effects. The machine's
radioactive source was housed in a lead container, and as the cobalt isotope
decayed, it produced a beami n the megavoltage range.5

   With advice from his family, Senor Lechuga decided instead that he would
take radiation therapy in Chester, Pennsylvania, close to the Wilmington,
Delaware, home of his daughter, Georgina Lechuga Potter. (Mrs. Potter, who
now lives in Vienna, Virginia, acted as translator for her father’s Spanish spoken
case history. Besides hospital records, she is a main source of the
information you are reading. The patient's wife, Dolores A. Lechuga, signed the
permission form to release this story.)

   From Wilmington, Mrs. Potter brought her father to consult with oncologist
Robert Enck, M.D., located at the Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Chester. He
confirmed the need for radiation therapy. Upon Dr. Enck’s referral, radiologist
Warren Sewall, M.D., from July 10 to August 21, 1979, used a linear accelerator
to administer radiation doses of 4,400 rads (the modern dosage term is centigray
[cGy]) to the right lung and mediastinum for four weeks. The patient also
received 1,600 rads to the upper lobe of the right lung plus 5,000 rads
simultaneously to cancer- filled “supraclavicular nodules.” He took this high energy
therapy five days per week for four weeks. Then the radiologist added
another 5,000 rads to those supraclavicular nodules for two additional weeks.

   With the object of relieving his symptoms (not curing the cancer), Jesus
Lechuga Valdez underwent multiple exposures to the hospital’s linear
accelerator’s high-energy X rays. They were responsible for certain discomforting
side effects and may be responsible for cancer to have appeared
currently, twenty years later. The massive amount of X rays given then to
normal tissue supposedly never exceeded safe doses.

   Through a process of “ionization,” the radiation is designed to kill some
cancer cells by damaging their chromosomes and DNA to stop cell division. Of
the centigray dose, one gray equals 100 rads, so that Senor Lechuga each day
actually received 44 cGy plus 16 cGy plus 50 cGy for a four-week total of 2,200
cGy, and then he accepted another 1,000 cGy for two weeks more. The 3,200
cGy dosage is enormous and, as you will learn later, such radiation therapy
held significance for the man’s future health prospects.

   The beam’s adverse effects caused Senor Lechuga to experience mental
depression, loss of appetite, serious weight loss, darkening of the skin in the
irradiated chest area, and difficulty swallowing from esophageal scarring that
resulted from the radiation burns he sustained. Even today, almost twenty-one
years later, he must swallow carefully because he can be choked by an overly
large food particle getting stuck at the esophageal scar site.

   By means of follow-up diagnostics back at the El Paso Cancer Treatment
Center, on August 31, 1979, Dr. Horowitz confirmed that his patient’s lung
tumor had been reduced by about 80 percent. The coughing fits were less
strong and not striking Senor Lechuga as often; his appetite had returned; and
the annoying hoarseness improved. Throughout his examinations and
treatments, the doctors put no dietary restrictions on him whatsoever,
permitting Danish pastries, fatty hamburgers, french fried potatoes, pizza, cola
drinks, and other assorted junk. He was told merely to avoid sunlight directly
on his irradiated skin areas.

   When pressed for a prognosis as the result of radiation therapy received, Dr.
Horowitz gave him an estimated 50 percent chance of either having a lung
cancer recurrence or living somewhat longer. It was then that the man returned
home to Durango and resumed working in his truck and tractor dealership.

Lung Cancer Returns

   Less than a month after conclusion of the radiation, his cancer came back.
Coughing spells and hoarseness returned worse than ever for Senor Lechuga. It
was then that he and Dolores decided to act upon information about the Gerson
Therapy provided by their daughter, Georgina Lechuga Potter. Her friend,
practicing pharmacist Irwin Rosenberg, Ph.D. (a doctorate in nutrition),
acquired information and taught Mrs. Potter about healing cancer using Dr.
Max Gerson’s dietary/ detoxification program. Dr. Rosenberg is owner of the
Apothecary Pharmacy on Georgetown Road in Bethesda, Maryland (ironically,
located across from the National Institutes of Health).

   On October 28, 1979, Senor Lechuga accompanied by his wife arrived at the
Gerson Therapy hospital in Tijuana, Mexico. Victor Ortuno, M.D., the hospital's
medical director, initially examined the patient and then turned the Lechuga
case over to his cousin, Arturo Ortuno, M.D., who took full responsibility for
supervising treatment.

   Although very uncomfortable from his numerous healing reactions, Senor
Lechuga’s physical response was rapidly positive. His cancer markers and
other laboratory tests improved; however, his state of mind hit bottom—
depression set in. Still, from Dr. Arturo Ortuno’s efforts and with much
encouragement from Dolores Lechuga, Senor Lechuga stayed on the
dietary / detoxification program at the Gerson hospital and then later at home.

   On his own back in Durango, Senor Lechuga struggled with tolerating the
many glasses of Gerson juices, coffee enemas, castor oil treatments, salads, and
eating the well-done and unsalted foods. The Gerson diet was contrary to his
Mexican cultural background and abhorrent to his psyche.
During healing reactions, appetite left him completely, and such reactions came
on frequently for prolonged periods. Sometimes they lasted for a week, but the
love and support of Dolores, his companion for life, prevailed over his
discouragement. Dolores prepared the foods, juices, enemas, and other healing
components; she became his self-contained caregiver and the household's
Gerson therapist. In effect, his wife saved the life of Senor Lechuga.

   By the week between Christmas and New Years day of 1980, his healing
flare-ups diminished, and he began to feel better. However, the man did
experience extreme weakness and had to force himself to eat anything at all. He
preferred to do nothing more than rest in bed and sleep frequently. In another
week he made enough progress to return to work part-time and sporadically.
Sitting at his desk gave him a renewed will to fight his cancer with all his
might. With an office a mere five minutes by car from home, the patient went
home for coffee enema cleansings, to eat his meals, and to drink the green
juices. He carried carrot juice in a thermos with him to work for hourly
drinking.

   By the end of April 1980, the patient traveled to the Gerson hospital once
again for his first six-month checkup. (In all, after November 1979, he returned
to that hospital for semiannual examinations twelve times.) His cancer markers
and blood tests showed a near-normal physiology so that the Gerson diet was
modified by Dr. Arturo Ortuna, who after eight weeks had included yogurt, rye
bread, raw skimmed milk, infrequent meals of fish, chicken, and a few other
items heretofore forbidden. Senor Lechuga was feeling better and better, and
his mental outlook became optimistic. He told stories, joked, sang, and became
a joy to everyone around him.

   Having reported his progress to Charlotte Gerson during the weekend of
October 17 and 18, 1981, he accepted her invitation to participate as a speaker in
San Diego at a “Gerson Survivors’ Conference.” In June 1985, Dr. Arturo
Ortuno traveled with Senior Lechuga to a San Diego diagnostic center for him
to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to confirm that after five years
his cancer had completely cleared. It had! Receiving the affirmative MRI report,
Dr. A. Ortuno declared his patient officially cured of cancer and asked him to
return to the Gerson Hospital in one year for another checkup. Then the doctor
suggested that he go back to the very restrictive Gerson Therapy for just one
month more as a kind of “insurance” toward his cure. This Senor Lechuga
agreed to do along with promising that he would report results of his following
the difficult lifestyle for a final month that’s demanded by the therapy.

   When the patient telephoned Dr. Arturo Ortuno that single month later to
report on the experience, he learned that his forty-year-old physician had just
died and was being buried. While Dr. A. Ortuno had been playing hard at
racquetball with Dr. Victor Ortuno the day before, he suffered a massive heart
attack. He succumbed in his cousin's arms.

   Shocked by the terrible news, Senor Lechuga never returned to Tijuana.
Also, he markedly reduced his adherence to the Gerson Therapy. Although he
continued to consume a sensible diet, his juice intake fell to about four glasses
daily. During the fourteen years following, Jesus and Dolores Lechuga lived the
good life. They traveled extensively to Hawaii, Canada, Washington State, New
York City, and other places. They flew, cruised, drove, took train trips, and
went places all over North America.

   Then, from July 25 to August 5, 1999, he enjoyed a cruise to Alaska to walk
on glaciers, hike mountain trails, and eat the multiple massive meals
served aboard ship. During this Alaskan excursion, the patient felt back pain
just below the right shoulder blade. Upon his return home, he was treated in
Durango by two medical doctors for a “contracted and knotted muscle” until
the lack of relief caused them to request a biopsy. The surgeon who did the
biopsy in Durango, J. Roberto Salas Gracia, M.D., reported that this muscle
“knot” actually was a tumor. It was diagnosed as a malignant pleomorphic
fibrotic hystiocytoma in the soft tissue of the right shoulder blade. Because of
insufficient viable tissue surrounding the tumor unable to be biopsied, it
remains undetermined as to whether Senior Lechuga’s cancer is a malignant
schwannoma.

   Receiving this diagnosis of malignancy in mid-October 1999, Senor and
Señora Lechuga and their daughter Georgina Potter immediately made
arrangements to admit him as a patient at the Gerson Therapy facility in
Tijuana. On October 25, 1999, he became a resident of the Oasis of Hope
Hospital. The attending clinician there, Jaime A. Martinez, M.D., advised that
such a cancer cannot be completely excised by surgery because the procedure
would negatively affect the use of his right arm. Dr. Martinez conjectured that
the new cancer might be a delayed adverse side effect of the original radiation
therapy that Senor Lechuga had undergone some twenty years before.

   Three weeks after entering the Oasis Hospital, he left to follow the Gerson
Therapy at home. While the specific diagnosis of disease remained uncertain,
there was no doubt that this eighty-six-year-old man once again needed to fight
for his life— but with a different form of cancer. Then, during the last week of
November 1999, Senor Jesus Lechuga Valdez died suddenly of heart failure.