Hope, Organic Style

Jack Morris stands at the sink. With a white vegetable brush, he scrubs four small carrots and one large Granny Smith apple. He turns the faucet off, flicks the excess water from his hands and slices the apple into eighths. He positions one of the carrots over the top of a gleaming, stainless steel, 70-pound juicer.

Jack's wife, Esther, a petite woman with thin glasses and a heart-shaped face, scoots her chair to the kitchen table on the tile floor and flips through a handbook on the cancer treatment that she's currently undergoing. Every few seconds she glances at the digital clock above the kitchen table.

It's 9:55 a.m. The lights flicker momentarily when Jack turns on the juicer. He slowly pushes the first carrot into the grinder with his left hand. He holds a wooden knob in his right hand behind the carrot to make sure the shavings don't add to the splatters already on the ceiling. When the four carrots are pureed, he lowers the apple wedges into the grinder.

"Ess is a pain in my ass, but I love her," Jack says in a thick New York accent, over the grinder's hum.

Esther giggles.

It's 9:57 a.m. The carrot and apple pulp collect in a coarsely woven cloth bag below the grinder. Jack turns off the grinder and unhooks the bag filled with pulp. He folds the bag, starting at the corners like he's wrapping a gift. He slides the folded bag onto the juicer's stainless steel tray, places a University of Georgia Bulldog glass beneath the tray and turns on the juicer's press.

"This press could break your hand," he says.

The tray slowly rises to a stainless steel square. When the bag hits the square, it's flattened and bright orange juice flows into the glass.

It's 9:59 a.m. Jack turns off the juicer. He adds three drops of Lugol, an inorganic iodine, and two teaspoons of a potassium-compound solution. Both are believed to increase oxygen in the body's cells.

He hands the six-ounce glass of juice to Esther. It smells fresh and tastes sweet, like a liquid version of carrot cake mixed with apple crumble.

"Perfect timing," Esther says and smiles at her husband. "Thank you, honey."

She takes a large gulp.

Jack turns back to the juicer and begins scrubbing the cloth bag, making sure to remove the leftover juice and carrot shavings. Esther finishes the drink. It's her fourth of 13 drinks for the day.

She'll repeat this exact routine, day in and day out, for up to two years. She doesn't know - and won't know - for at least another month if the meticulous routine she's followed since January is working.

Esther was sleeping when the phone rang at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 26. Her physician, Taylor Graves, of Emory's Wesley Woods Center, said, "Hello." His voice was subdued. Five days earlier she had undergone a lung biopsy."He said, 'I know you don't want to wait the whole weekend,'" Esther recalls. "'I'm afraid [the biopsy] shows cancer.'"

The news got worse from there. It was stage IV metastasized breast cancer.

The 72-year-old sank into her pillow. In the 1980s, Esther had undergone a modified radical mastectomy and reconstructive surgery to rid herself of breast cancer. Although her doctor at the time deemed the operation successful, Graves told Esther over the phone that a cancerous cell must have lain dormant until now. Then, it multiplied and spread to her lungs.

She didn't expect the diagnosis to be so severe. In previous checkups, Graves had said her breathing through the stethoscope sounded normal. He didn't detect wheezing or heaving. Only when she repeatedly complained about shortness of breath did Graves recommend a chest X-ray. It turned out to be inconclusive. The biopsy had been the next step. And now, the phone call.

"I was angry," Esther says. "I thought, 'How could this happen to me?' I feel good, I'm energetic."

But Esther says she came back down to earth quickly and prepared herself for another battle with cancer. That Tuesday, she visited Dr. Padma Nadella at Emory's Winship Cancer Institute.

Nadella, an oncologist, drew a diagram to show Esther how the cancer had developed. The diagram depicted little nodules covering Esther's lungs. Nadella told Esther that the number of nodules made the cancer inoperable. Nadella, Esther recalls, said chemotherapy was her only option. With it, she told Esther she could live up to five years. Without it, she estimated Esther would live for two.

The news was moving so quickly from bad to worse that Esther found it difficult to comprehend. She's couldn't digest her options.

Chemotherapy was a path Esther didn't want to take. The treatment can be quite effective when the disease is caught in its early stages. Lance Armstrong's battle with testicular cancer is an example of that. But Esther's cancer, already stage IV, the most severe stage, was a different matter.

Esther had watched her sister, who's now deceased, undergo and suffer from chemotherapy. She'd seen Jack lose five friends in the past two months to cancer. All of them tried chemo with no avail.

"People who have been through chemo, they almost die from it," Esther says. "They're dying, anyway, so why go through that just to prolong your life for another year or two years that are probably going to be miserable?"

Esther wanted to enjoy her last months, if these were to be them. Enjoyment didn't include losing her hair or constantly vomiting.

"Esther is in the last stage of cancer," Jack says. "She's going to die, anyway. Chemo is going to do nothing for her."

So she decided to seek other options. She says Nadella told her that if Esther didn't want to try chemotherapy, she couldn't do anything else for her. (Nadella didn't return CL's calls.)

At a dead end with mainstream medicine, Esther turned to her daughter-in-law, Alice, for advice. A clinical psychologist, Alice had studied the emotions of cancer patients for her dissertation at Georgia State. An avid follower herself of alternative and natural remedies, she's focused for more than 20 years on alternative treatments for cancer. One of the philosophies she found promising was developed by German physician Max Gerson in the late 1920s. Gerson believed an organic, low-fat, low-sodium diet could repair damaged cells and that frequent coffee enemas detoxify the body. Gerson concluded that the combination, if followed for 24 months, killed tumors and ultimately cured a slew of other diseases, including cancer.

As Esther left Nadella's office, Alice suggested she look into Gerson therapy. Until then, Esther had never thought about holistic medicine. But conventional medicine provided no other options. And when your options are limited, even a Hail Mary pass can look attractive.

"It sounded like a good alternative," Esther says.

Alice told Esther about a clinic in Mexico that administered Gerson therapy. Because the treatment relies on drugs, like Laetrile, that are illegal in the United States, the clinic must operate outside the country. Esther faxed copies of her biopsy, chest X-rays and bloodwork to the Baja Nutri Care clinic for consultation.

A few days later, she received a phone call from a physician named Luz Maria Bravo. Within minutes, Bravo agreed that Esther's situation was dire enough for her to immediately join a select group of nine other patients at the clinic.

On Jan. 5, Esther packed two pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts and one nice outfit. Then, she and Jack boarded a flight.

Before she was diagnosed with cancer, they'd planned a getaway to Vegas with Alice and their son, David. For three days they tried their luck at blackjack and took in a couple of variety shows. Esther noshed on shrimp, cake, eggs, sausage and bacon. She knew she wouldn't be able to eat meat or savor salt or sweets for a long time.

"I thought, 'I'm going to have fun while I can,'" Esther says. "'And I'm going to eat what I can.'"

On Jan. 8, Esther, Jack, Alice and David left Vegas and headed for San Diego, where a Baja Nutri Care chauffeur picked them up. The Baja leg of the trip was a bigger gamble than the blackjack. But Esther viewed the upcoming two-week, $11,000 stay as an exciting adventure, not a risky escapade.

By noon, they'd ridden through the dilapidated streets of Tijuana and entered the clinic's grounds. Lavish gardens full of benches and statues surrounded the two-building clinic.

A doctor greeted Esther and led her to the dining room where lunch was being served. She relished everything at the buffet, and gobbled down thinly sliced radishes, carrots, bell peppers, onions, potatoes, red cabbage and a special soup, thought to be the same remedial broth Hippocrates invented in 460 BC. Her mind didn't process that this would be the only food she would be able to eat for the next two years.

Esther was a 23-year-old Atlantan with blushed cheeks and rosy lips when she spotted him across the dancefloor at a USO dance for Jewish soldiers in Fort Benning. It was June 24, 1956.His blue eyes and chiseled chin caught her attention. But the fact that he was dancing with a homely girl whom she knew intrigued her more. She wondered why he, unlike the other soldiers who had just returned from Korea, picked a wallflower for a partner instead of a painted face. When the song ended she ambled over.

He told Esther he felt sorry for the girl. No one was talking to her, no one asked her to dance.

"I realized he had a heart," Esther says.

Jack, the 22-year-old Army private, thought Esther had a knockout body. For the rest of the evening, he twirled Esther around. The next morning, after flirting at breakfast, Esther told Jack she'd like to see him again.

On July 4, they picnicked on a blanket at Chastain Park and watched the fireworks. At the end of the evening, Jack told her he didn't want to lose her. He got down on one knee and proposed. Esther said yes. They'd known each other for three weeks.

A week later, they married. Since Jack only visited on weekends, Esther remained at home. When he did visit, she made him sleep in the guest room since she hadn't told her parents about their spontaneous marriage.

Jack got fed up. He wanted to hold his wife in his arms at night. He moved his mattress into Esther's room. When her parents asked what was going on, he informed them that their daughter was his wife.

In December, Jack was discharged from the Army. Esther was two months pregnant. They moved into an apartment near Piedmont Park. He took a job at a mortgage company and earned a degree at Georgia State. She found work at Capital Airlines, a subsidiary of United.

Around the same time, Max Gerson was in New York writing a book. A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases documented 48 patients whom he claimed to cure through his nutrition-based therapy.At a time when the Journal of the American Medical Association endorsed cigarettes and Philip Morris was its primary source of ad revenue, Gerson's organic treatment outraged physicians. The AMA launched an attack on his unorthodox regimen, even though there was little scientific evidence showing whether it worked or not. Gerson's medical privileges were soon revoked at many hospitals. The American Cancer Society placed his therapy on a blacklist - where it remains today.

Ironically, quite a few features of Gerson's diet are similar to cancer prevention diets now endorsed by the cancer society. And in general, more people are turning toward holistic approaches when diagnosed with cancer and other degenerative diseases.

According to Barrie Cassileth, chief of the Integrative Medicine Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, 80 percent of cancer patients use some form of alternative medicine during their treatment. Some patients combine alternative approaches, like acupuncture, with conventional treatment, like radiation. A smaller group tries conventional medicine and after not seeing results, takes a more radical approach.

With millions of combinations available, one thing is certain: The various options have pitted the medical establishment and conventional cancer researchers against a handful of alternative treatment advocates. While conventional researchers classify many alternative treatments as quackery, alternative advocates claim that mainstream medicine's narrow focus shuns treatments that might have potential.

In the early 1990s, Steve Austin, a naturopathic physician in Oregon, tracked 21 Gerson patients over five years. He concluded that only one of them recovered.

Austin told an author, "I was favorably predisposed ... toward the Gerson therapy, because you hear so many remarkable stories about recovered Gerson patients. But the reality turned out to be different. [The data] suggest that the therapy does not work as well as its advocates claim."

Gerson advocates tout an 80 percent recovery rate. But Ted Gansler, a physician and director of medical content at the cancer society, says that's bunk.

"No sweeping studies or trials show this therapy works," Gansler says. "The studies [that are performed] are limited by incomplete record-keeping and don't use the kinds of statistical methods that conventional researchers consider necessary."

The diet also has been criticized for severely depleting patients of sodium and increasing the risk of colon infections via the coffee enemas. And, among other things, critics have suggested that Gerson clinics lack the staff to monitor patients once they return home.

Charlotte Gerson sighs when she hears such criticism. She's used to being labeled a quack, and she's used to playing hardball with the medical establishment. She raises the example of pancreatic cancer.

"[Conventional physicians] claim there's a zero recovery rate for pancreatic cancer," says Gerson, daughter of Max Gerson. "So how come we've recovered people who have been living for the past 15 or 18 years [on their own] who had this cancer?"

Charlotte Gerson is founder of the Gerson Institute, which oversees the Baja Nutri Care clinic. She attributes the medical establishment's opposition to her father's treatment to the fact that his theories, unorthodox in the middle of the 20th century, were ahead of their time. She has a point: The AMA did battle her father when he suggested that diet directly affects a person's health, a notion that is now widely accepted.

Gerson also claims the establishment has financial motives. She contends that the cancer industry nets around $100 billion a year. Such investments have led alternative advocates to conclude that mainstream medicine suppresses cancer cures and tampers with study outcomes. If sweeping cures were found, critics say, thousands of researchers and doctors would be out of business.

"How much money can a pharmaceutical company make on a sack of carrots?" Gerson asks. "[Conventional medicine] suppresses everything that might interfere with their treatment."

Gansler, of the American Cancer Society, counters that the nutritional supplement industry nets around $20 million per year.

"If there was an inexpensive alternative to the current cancer treatments, I would think insurance companies would be pressuring doctors to use it," he notes. "The idea that doctors and researchers would be reluctant to apply life-saving treatments isn't supported by any reasonable evidence or logic."

He adds that both Memorial Sloan-Kettering and MD Anderson, two leading cancer facilities, have opened integrated medicine departments that promote the use of certain holistic therapies to complement conventional treatments. Despite that openness to alternative methods, he notes, neither facility has approved the Gerson diet.

As Esther sits in her kitchen with Jack, she's not pouring over the scientific debate. She's attracted to Gerson therapy because it allows her to take an active role in her own treatment."I wouldn't go through this if I wasn't doing so much of the work myself," she says. "I want to do as much as I can because it is for me."

With chemotherapy, Esther might be lying in a hospital bed with IVs shoved into her body. The diet forces her and her family to administer her care.

"This diet is a full-time job," Jack says. "But when you do it for someone you love, it's really not work."

Esther watches Jack prepare each drink. If she's out of a vegetable vital to the regimen, he hustles to the grocery store. David and Alice take walks with her and help slice extra vegetables when they visit in the evening. Each day, Esther injects her own shot of liver extract and B12. She performs four coffee enemas sans help. And it's not just Esther who's participating - it's her loved ones, too.

"I wouldn't be able to do this if my family wasn't helping me, especially Jack," Esther says. "He does it with a lot of love, he jokes a lot and that keeps me going. That's what keeps me optimistic."

Their relationship has helped both Esther and Jack work their way through previous health catastrophes.

In 1982, Esther skipped a menstrual cycle. At 50, she still hadn't shown signs of menopause, so she visited her gynecologist. A mammogram showed a suspicious shadow in her left breast. A biopsy confirmed breast cancer.

Esther chose to have a modified radical mastectomy instead of chemotherapy. The operation removed the cancer and part of her lymph nodes under her left arm. While friends and family worried, Esther took the process lightly.

"I thought, 'So I lose a boob,'" Esther says, chuckling. "Everybody was so concerned and I said, 'Hey, I'm fine, I'm OK, I just lost part of my body but I'm alive.'"

Five years later, Esther underwent reconstructive surgery. Tissue from her stomach was removed to construct a new breast. The doctor joked with her, telling her she got a two-for-one operation: a tummy tuck and a breast enhancement.

After Esther recovered from the surgery, her doctor pronounced the procedures successful. He told her she would never have breast cancer again.

He didn't mention the cancer could re-emerge elsewhere.

While Jack helped Esther regain her strength after surgery, he began pumping iron three times a week to improve his own health. But in 2000, he started to feel tired constantly. His complexion grew gray. In December, he visited his doctor. Within days he underwent open-heart surgery to replace a valve in his aorta. The surgery went well, Jack says, but his recovery didn't. He was supposed to stay at St. Joseph's Hospital for a week, tops. He ended up staying for 61 days.

During his recovery, Jack caught a respiratory infection and developed an infection from an improperly placed IV. He also developed an ulcer from too much medication. Ten days after the surgery, he was back on the operating table to have the ulcer removed. He ended up in intensive care for three weeks. A breathing tube was shoved down his throat. Doctors gave him a 50-50 chance to survive.

Esther spent every night in the hospital by his side, holding his hand and telling him she loved him. He didn't care if he lived. He was tired of medications and being confined to a hospital bed. He flat-lined twice. In private she cried often, not knowing if he would make it. But in front of him she kept his spirits up and told him he'd make it through - and he did.

"If it wasn't for my wife," Jack says, "I'd be dead."

Esther and Jack returned to their white-paneled ranch home near Emory on Jan. 22. A $2,300 Norwalk 270 juicer, which the Baja Nutri Care clinic recommended, was waiting on their doorstep. They already knew how to use the behemoth. They'd learned in Baja how to prepare the three special juices — carrot/apple, carrot and green — that she'd have to drink 13 times a day. They'd also learned how to concoct Hippocrates' special soup from celery knob, parsley, leeks and garlic, and to bake potatoes on a low temperature for two hours.Esther and Jack ordered 12 over-the-counter remedies suggested by Gerson doctors. They bought an extra refrigerator for their patio, to store the 50-pound bags of carrots, 20-pound bags of potatoes and crates of apples and onions. They threw out the Teflon pots and pans that, according to the Gerson philosophy, prevent the oxidization of fruits and vegetables, and ordered a $160 set of stainless steel cookware. Esther bought plastic containers and labeled them "chard," "green pepper" and "romaine."

She and Jack shop strictly at Whole Foods, the DeKalb Farmers Market and Return from Eden, a neighborhood organic market. Their grocery bill has skyrocketed from $75 a week to close to $300. She brushes her teeth with aloe vera toothpaste and washes her hair with chamomile and olive shampoo. She can't use any makeup, because it, too, contains toxins, and she goes through about one roll of toilet paper each day, thanks to four coffee enemas.

A typical day for Esther goes like this: She wakes in time to perform a 7 a.m. coffee enema, or as she calls it, "a coffee break." At 8 a.m. she has orange juice and pops nine pills, ranging from niacin to thyroid tablets. By 9 a.m. she's done with her organic oatmeal and drinks a green drink, made of chard, romaine lettuce, green pepper, watercress, beet tops and red cabbage. At 9:30 a.m. she has her first carrot/apple drink and gulps down another carrot/apple juice at 10 a.m. After she injects her shot of liver extract and B12, she drinks a carrot juice at 11 a.m. At noon she has another green drink and then takes a coffee break. Between 1 and 2 p.m. she eats a solid meal of a baked potato and special soup, and pops nine more pills. She also guzzles a carrot/apple drink and a green drink. At 3 and 4 p.m., respectively, she drinks a carrot drink and swallows two liver capsules. She takes another coffee break at 4. At 5 and 6 p.m. she downs two more carrot/apple drinks. Between 6 and 7 p.m. she eats another baked potato, a bowl of special soup, then nine more pills. At 8 p.m. she takes her final coffee break.

In one day, Esther pops 47 pills and consumes almost 20 pounds of organic food. Sometimes Jack will make Esther's carrot/apple and carrot drinks early so they can catch a movie or visit the Fernbank Natural History Museum. He makes it a priority to get his wife out of the house at least once a day so she won't go stir crazy. Sometimes it's for a special treat, like the Marvin Hamlisch concert at the Rialto in February. But most days, Esther just drinks, pops pills and rests.

"I've never spent this much time at home before and been so exhausted by the end of the day," Jack says.

Esther misses making stuffed grape leaves and munching on lobster legs. She doesn't, and can't while on this diet, enjoy a piece of birthday cake, a glass of wine or a slice of pizza. She grows cranky when she suffers from side effects, such as flu-like symptoms and restless sleep.

At least once a week, she wonders if the Gerson diet is worth it.

It's 2:12 p.m. on a sunny afternoon in April. Esther takes a couple bites of her potato mixed with yogurt. She's supposed to be done with lunch by now, according to her treatment schedule, and her tardiness makes her brow wrinkle. Jack stands next to her in the dining room. They're trying to organize the vegetables needed to make the next eight green drinks.

"Ess, you need to sit down and eat your lunch," Jack says.

"Honey, I'm just trying to organize the chard," Esther replies.

Esther's green drink is supposed to be imbibed precisely at 2 p.m. Jack hasn't even started to make it yet.

"Ess, you need to sit down," Jack says, growing a bit flustered.

"OK, I will," Esther replies.

Sighing, Esther sits and picks at her potato. She's not hungry. She's already gulped down seven juices and is supposed to drink another one in minutes.

"We're already off schedule today," Esther says.

"No, we're pretty much on schedule, darling," Jack replies.

"No, we aren't," Esther retorts, in a snappy manner.

It's 2:20 p.m. when Jack turns on the grinder to make the green juice.

Esther's feeling out of sorts today. Little things bother her. Jack didn't scrub the carrots well, he didn't clean the juicer enough and she doesn't want to rest. She's energetic, wants to do something besides watch "NYPD Blue" or "ER," but she can't.

"Sometimes," Esther says, "I think the afterlife is probably more enjoyable."

One afternoon, Esther picks up the white portable phone and dials the Baja Nutri Care clinic. When she's connected with Dr. Bravo, she sounds relieved. Bravo tells Esther she sounds good, much better than she did when they spoke a month ago. Esther laughs and looks at the notes she's scribbled down. This is her third conversation with Bravo since she left Baja Nutri Care, and Esther makes it a habit to write down any questions that surface between their phone conversations.Today, she's concerned about her skin. She tells Bravo the skin above her chest burns from time to time. She's worried she has skin cancer. Bravo tells her not to worry and to buy clay packets to place on her skin to alleviate the burning sensation. Next, Esther asks about being off schedule and the quantity of lettuce leaves needed to properly make the green juice.

Once Bravo finishes answering Esther's questions, they move on to her bloodwork. Once a month, Esther goes to Dr. Graves to get her blood drawn. The results are faxed to Mexico so the clinic can monitor Esther's progress. Everything appears fine except Esther's triglycerides, which have jumped. Bravo tells her she might be eating too much sugar. She should cut down on the number of raisins she puts in her morning oatmeal and limit the brown sugar she adds to the cup of peppermint tea she sometimes drinks at night. She also tells Esther to start walking, 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. This excites Esther. She writes down, "Walk 15 a.m., 15 p.m., every day!!"

By the end of the conversation, Bravo has told Esther to up her intake of potassium compound by a teaspoon, cut down on her "sweets" and start exercising. "She says I'm doing excellent," Esther boasts as she hangs up the phone.

"Honey, I'm glad," Jack replies. "We'll start walking together. I'm happy for you, and I like your spirit."

Jack and Esther step outside to the porch. She leans into him and he softly kisses her cheek. They can relax for the next 45 minutes, enjoying each other's company, before Jack has to prepare another drink. They sit side by side on the patio and enjoy the spring air.

"You have to be patient and know that things are going to work out," Esther says. "And if not, at least you know you gave it the old college try."

alyssa.abkowitz@creativeloafing.com