You have just heard that you have got cancer

Being told you have cancer is a shock - no matter how much you thought you were prepared for the news. Suddenly the endless days of life ahead seem as if they've hit a concrete wall. There is a great danger that you will now shrink mentally and emotionally into a tight ball as you hug yourself and this knowledge. You may feel, as many do, the need to strengthen your resolve to doing the hardest most painful treatments because 'the doctors are medically trained - so obviously they know best what's right'.

Please believe me when I saw that there is every chance that you can cure yourself of cancer - over 80 per cent. No matter how advanced the cancer. And you can do so without having to suffer the pain of the orthodox treatments. Really, it's true!

It may be that you are open to alternative approaches already - or it may be that you are very negatively prejudiced against them. Whatever the case, before you do anything else, you need to relax (stress and anxiety are known to make cancers more aggressive). Do not rush headlong into making decisions. The doctors certainly will be doing their best to push you into signing up for surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and whatever else they have in their arsenal. Just stop. This now is one of the most important decisions of your life. You can certainly afford to take a few days or weeks or - unless you have a highly aggressive cancer - even months to consider your options.

And of course the first thing I am going to recommend to you is that you read my books. These are the fruit of over ten years of reading and refining. Read The Little Book first. Then, if you feel you are ready for more information, read The Big Book

Ask one or two friends to read the books with you so that you can discuss the information. You will then be faced with what to do with all the options that I am going to tell you about.

Basically there are six ways of proceeding.

1. Only do what the doctor tells you to do. Disregard all the alternative approaches completely.

2. Only do one or more of the alternative approaches. Disregard what the doctors tell you to do.

3. Do what the doctors advise and if that doesn't work then consider doing the alternatives later

4. Do one or more of the alternative strategies and if they don't work then consider doing what the doctors suggest.

5. Do both mainstream and alternative therapies together in parallel from the start.

6. Do nothing at all.

It is possible to argue sensibly for each and every one of these approaches - even the last one. One statistician has concluded from the evidence that you are likely to live four times longer if you do nothing than if you do something (doing something in this context means doing one of the mainstream therapies: surgery, radiation or chemotherapy).

It is certainly true that the doctors do not claim to have found a cure for most cancers (For one or two they do claim 90% effectiveness) - and it is also true that orthodox therapies are painful and damaging. So unless you are totally opposed to alternative approaches it does make sense to see what is on offer.

I am not, myself, a doctor so I cannot make any specific suggestions as to what you should do in your case. But, for what it's worth, I can tell you this: it was our decision in my wife's case to take option 5 in the list above - but now that I have learnt what I have, should I ever get cancer, I personally would follow option 2.

But we are all different. Our cancers are different, our situations are different, our characters are different. You must make up your own mind, in your own way, at your own speed. I offer my books as the most efficient way you have of informing yourself of all the options available.

You have started on a lifelong journey. I wish good luck and good health

Jonathan