My Cancer Healing Journey, by Phyllis Koenig

Excerpts transcribed from an interview on The Healing Hour Show featured on Tao of Wellness’ YouTube channel

 My story is actually really stupid. It started out with pure negligence. I’ve always been healthy and strong. In fact, I was running a business that employed many people and knew literally thousands of people. I was proud that I was working hard, being successful, and feeling strong. All this despite knowing that on my mother’s side, her brother, sister, cousin, and others all died of cancer. But in my head, I thought since it skipped my mother, I was fine. I never thought it would ever happen to me. When I was first diagnosed, I had a four-centimeter lump in my left breast. I thought it was nothing; it moved around, and since I’m very cystic, it was not a big deal. So I just kept moving forward and never stopped for a moment.

When I went to the doctor and had my mammogram, the doctor said afterward, “Hey, do you mind waiting for a few minutes while we look at your imaging?” So I sat in a lonely chair, watching everyone walk by. Twenty minutes later, the doctors came out and said, “Do you mind if we take some tissue from you? It’s probably nothing, but we just want to make sure.” So I waited for another 20 minutes, and after the biopsy, I left in a sling. Eventually, 3-to 4 days later, I got a call on a Monday morning, and the doctor said, “You’d better come down here, you are very, very sick.” That was the beginning of my journey.

I went from being the strongest woman to being a hysterical woman—I was a mess! I was lucky enough to find Dr. Kristi Funk, a breast cancer surgeon. She was this beautiful, petite doctor, pregnant with triplets, and she said, “I want you to wrap your head around Chinese medicine and go see Dr. Mao at the Tao of Wellness in Santa Monica.” As soon as I met Dr. Mao, I knew I was going to be fine. I went through surgery, chemo, and estrogen blocking under the care of Dr. Philomena McAndrew, all the while getting acupuncture treatments from Dr. Mao and taking his herbs and supplements. That kept me alive, and here I am.

It was wonderful because it was stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and I had three months to live, according to my Western medicine doctors. That was until I found Dr. Mao at the Tao of Wellness. My experience was that I didn’t have to go through Western medicine alone. With Dr. Mao being versed in Western medicine too, he was an essential part of the decision-making process when it came to my integrative care for both medicines. I recently had my 11th year anniversary, and even my Western doctor said, “You are so wild. We never expected you to live past one year, and the fact that you made it past 10 years... we don’t know what to do with you.” I am grateful and happy that I can share my story so that others in similar situations may be helped by hearing it.

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