Candice on Cancer, Part I

This was written by reader Ella as a guest post. 

Candice on Cancer, Part 1.

I’ve been wading through an interminable interview with Candice-Marie Fox on something called “The Statera Podcast” on YouTube. It goes for one-and-a-half hours, but it felt more like one-and-a-half years. The interviewer is a guy called Adrian Snary, who – despite a negligible following – seems convinced that he’s quietly helping usher in the Age of Aquarius. Or something.

A three-minute clip from this podcast was featured in the Daily Mail’s recent write-up of Candice’s bizarre story, and subsequently shared by Candice on her “healthycandy.me” Facebook page. I’ve painstakingly transcribed some generous chunks of this drivel for you, because – while it is mind-numbingly vacuous stuff – I think it helps to document it, for the same reasons that Violet has been preserving deleted comments from Candice’s Facebook page. Candice’s own comments reveal the gaping errors in her own story – a story upon which she hopes to found at least one lucrative business.

I’m hoping to break this up into three parts over as many days, if I don’t die of exasperation in the meantime. I’m not including the whole transcript, because it’s quite a slog. But I’ve preserved the juiciest bits for posterity. I’ve bleeped the swearing (for such “positive” people, they sure use a lot of expletives) and edited out approximately 75% of instances of the word “like,” which Candice uses, like, a lot. Small omissions are indicated by ellipses, and larger blocks of text by ellipses in square brackets. I don’t want to be accused of editing this ridiculous interview to make it sound more ridiculous than it already does.

You will find this interesting. You’ll laugh. You’ll weep. You’ll roll your eyes - even the third eye, the one you didn’t know you had. I may be accused of being negative, but I personally feel that a generous dose of sarcasm is pretty healthy when it comes to alternative medicine. So grab a coffee, put too much sugar in it, and enjoy.

Candice on Cancer, Part 1: “I have to fib, otherwise I’m not gonna get seen.”

First up, Candice explains the unhealthy lifestyle that preceded her diagnosis:

CANDICE: “I didn't treat my body [well] growing up. So, coming from...near London...it was like drink, drugs, partying; just...I started very young, doing all the naughty things [...]. It was just a party scene, and I was damaging my system from about 13…[to] 18+ [years old], partying, having fun.”

Next, she tells us how she came to be diagnosed:

CANDICE: “Well, I was actually on my honeymoon at the time, and we were drinking heavily, and we weren't really suited in the first place. And we were arguing and drinking. So a lot of built-up anger and [inaudible]...during our honeymoon. Oh, it was because we went on a 'Topdeck Tour,' and we were drinking a lot, and I was never very good with drink. And he would always try and put me in my place...and just try and curb me from the drinking, and I was always like 'don't you tell me what to do,' you know?

We were just battling against each other, and I was just in a bad place and we just did not gel very well. So all that built up, as well as travelling [to] Italy and all over the world. Like, we [had] meats, drink, cheeky cigarettes here and there. All brilliant stuff for, like, breeding disease.

I started getting a...well, I had a tiny little lump just above my left collarbone, and then by the end of the honeymoon we went back up to Karratha [Western Australia] where we were working. It was huge [pointing to her collarbone], and it had fixated. So it was like a tiny little lump, and it was moving at first, and I went back home to England when we were on our honeymoon [visiting?] the family and stuff...and basically my mum's a nurse, and she was like 'no, no don't worry, it's probably just because you've been ill, it's probably just the swollen glands.' So I was like 'okay, sweet.' Like, you know, 'fine.'

[We] carried on, we obviously went travelling, we were arguing and I was drinking a lot and la la la. And then, yeah, when I got back to Karratha and I found it was massive, I was like 'no.' It wasn't hurting, but I was just like, 'this isn't right.' Like, 'it's not going down.'

It did feel like a gland - you know when…your glands swell when you're ill. It felt like that but it was huge, here [gesturing at collarbone]. So then I went to the hospital, which was the local hospital there, and they were just like 'oh, we don't deal with any of that here. You need to go to your doctor.' And I was like, 'Love, this is Karratha. There's like a month wait. I need to see someone now. This has been growing the past few months that I've been travelling Europe. It's grown, and something's not right.' And she was like, 'Does it hurt?' And I was like, 'yeah, I'm in so much pain.' Because I just thought, ‘I have to fib, otherwise I’m not gonna get seen.’”

The nurse kindly admitted Candice and gave her an ultrasound. Candice suggests she could tell from the expressions of the “ultrasound guys” that something was up. They told her, “We can’t actually explain any information to you. What we’ll do is we’ll send you a letter once we’ve gone through this properly.”

CANDICE: “And then I got a letter back saying that they wanted me to come in for a biopsy…they said basically that it had all these lumps in my neck [gesturing towards front of neck]; they said they were all covered. And they all had their own blood vessels, so they were all feeding. And if I had’ve [sic] known anything about cancer at that time, I would have known it was cancer. Because, you know, it feeds…if it’s feeding the tumour, it would have its own blood vessels. But I didn’t, I was just like ‘well what the hell are these lumps doing all over my neck?’ I felt fine, I wasn’t ill or anything, nothing was hurting. I just had this lump miraculously appear.”

And now we’re up the treatment phase:

CANDICE: “Stupidly – I didn’t know it at the time – I went and got the lump cut out. And it came back as being papillary thyroid carcinoma, which is thyroid cancer. So then they done [sic] a needle biopsy in the other side just to make sure that all the lumps had it [cancer], and they did. And then as soon as that happened I got put into the system. It was like, ‘Okay, you’ve got cancer, here’s the surgeon’s letter. Go and see the surgeon.’ Like that’s it, you’re kinda funneled through. It’s surgery, radiation, chemo, straight away.”

I’m not clear on whether getting the “lump cut out” refers to a biopsy or a lumpectomy that took place prior to the cancer diagnosis. If that is the case, Candice must have had surgery twice – once to remove the first lump, and a second time to remove the lumps “in the other side.” However, she doesn’t mention a hospital stay relating to the first surgery, if that’s what it was.

Snary then asks, “So what were you feeling at that time, when you found out…what’s going to have to happen, and what you were going to have to do? How…what was your reaction to it?”

CANDICE: “As soon as…because, I went into the hospital, and they…it took ages for them to tell me about the lump. So I walk back in there, about two/three weeks later, because I really wanted to know. And they were like, ‘Oh, the doctor’s on holiday, blah blah blah blah,’ and I was like, ‘No, I need to know now.’ So then a girl that I knew, her boyfriend was a doctor there, so he saw me, you know, in a bit of a panic. And he came over and he was, ‘are you okay?’ And I…explained the situation, and I was like ‘I really need to know. What’s going on, what do I need to do.’ Like, ‘why is it taking weeks?’ And then he pulled me into a room and he said, ‘okay, I’ll go and find out.’

So he went off and found my records, come back [sic] and he was like, ‘I’m really sorry to tell you, but it’s papillary thyroid carcinoma.’ He goes…you know, my chances of survival are very slim, because it’s like all over, and I was just like, ‘oh my god.’ […]. Then my husband at the time, he came in and he heard everything the doctor said, and he didn’t really know what to say or do, so he just kinda sat there. I just was a mess […] and then I just went back to my house, and just spoke to my friends and family.”

Who this doctor was, what he specialised in, and why he broke the news to her that she had cancer without actually discussing treatment with her, is not clear. Candice goes home, presumably uninformed, and decides for herself how she plans to treat the cancer:

CANDICE: “I instantly wanted to do it naturally…I was just like ‘I don’t want to be cut open,’ because they were gonna cut me like here [gesturing across collarbone], and I was just like ‘oh my god.’ The vain part of me was like, ‘I need to still do my modelling! I need to do *this* and *this!* I can’t be cut open!’…I was just like, ‘if we can heal a broken bone, I’m pretty sure we can get rid of some cells.’”

I completely sympathise with the “vain part” here. I think this is a completely normal reaction for a young woman, especially a model. But the broken bone analogy is where the interview really starts to nosedive, if it hasn’t already.

CANDICE: “So that was my notion, that was my thinking. So I rung [sic] around all my family and friends back home. My grandad was just like, ‘Do whatever you think.’ My Dad was like, ‘Do whatever you think, but probably best to go with the doctors,’ and, you know, ‘they know what’s best.’ Everyone was kinda steering towards that. My partner and his family, they really thought I was crazy if I was going to do the natural route. Because that’s what everybody knows, you know? All my family, the family that I was surrounded with here, that’s all they knew. They just thought they were helping me.”

What comes out again and again is that central to Candice’s rejection of conventional medicine is the conviction that she intuitively knows more than the “indoctrinated” masses around her. She goes on:

CANDICE: “Obviously it’s not the right decision [having the surgery and radiation], because it just didn’t work, but at the time they thought I was crazy for thinking I could do it on my own.

            My partner’s mum, though; she knew…I can’t remember their names…‘Twin Labs,’ or some laboratory in Fremantle, and they deal with…natural cancer cures. And she actually took me there, and we looked into natural methods and stuff.”

Candice might just be talking about ‘Power Labs,’ a business in Fremantle that markets herbal remedies and supplements. Or she might be talking about ‘Resort to Health,’ a “clinic” in Fremantle run by Dr William Barnes, who advocates “non-toxic” treatments for cancer. Barnes had some involvement in the notorious case of Penelope Dingle, a young woman who died a slow, agonising death after opting to treat her cancer naturally. Dingle’s weight dropped to 35kg before she died of a bowel obstruction. I watched a feature about this case on current affairs program “Australian Story” some years ago, and I’ll never forget the graphic description of her death. Those episodes, including transcripts, are available here:

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/desperateremedies/default.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/desperateremediestwo/default.htm

…and the coroner’s report on Dingle’s death is available (in PDF form) here:

http://www.homeowatch.org/news/dingle_finding.pdf

Whether Candice was talking about ‘Resort to Health’ or not I don’t know. But either way, this is a good note to finish on for today. Because as comical as Candice sometimes seems, with her pineapples and her pencilled-on brows and her ditsy peace-love-dope shtick, it’s worth remembering why Violet started this blog: because alternative medicine kills.

Tomorrow, more on Candice’s treatment.