YES to Life - Healthy Life Essex
The charity that says ‘Yes’ – the pioneering Yes to Life
The charity that says ‘Yes’ – the pioneering Yes to Life
Most conventional cancer treatments work by killing cancer cells. This approach helps many, but does nothing for the damaged immune system that allowed cancer to occur in the first place. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for cancer typically aims to support the body and to rebuild the immune systems that are nature’s sophisticated inbuilt mechanism for controlling malignancy. Those that aim to directly target cancer cells, do so without further degradation of the immune system. But in cancer treatment there are few certainties. No medical discipline has all the answers. Many, however, have some of the answers. So increasingly, people want to try to pull together all the available resources to create what is now termed an ‘integrative’ programme of treatment – one that allies the best of CAM approaches with conventional medicine – to give themselves the greatest chance of success. They want choice and are looking for support from their doctors and therapists in finding their own way through the intense challenges facing them.
Just such an approach is being pioneered by Yes to Life. We are the first charity in the UK breaking new ground by directly supporting people with cancer in taking an integrative approach to treatment. We are dedicated to making the widest range of CAM readily available to people with cancer.
Yes to Life was born from urgent need. My precious daughter Bryony was dealt the terrible blow of a third diagnosis of cancer at age 23, and the only hopes of a way forward lay in the realms of CAM. Experience taught me then what enormous hurdles there are to overcome both in terms of finding authentic, appropriate and available treatments, and in paying for them. Cancer is one of the most complex conditions and is fraught with contradictions and disagreements in even the most fundamental areas, such as causes and mechanisms. In order to make intelligent decisions, one has to become an ‘expert’, and in this field that is a tall order. And then, even when you find treatments that may help you with your particular cancer at your particular stage, as well as a practitioner who offers them in a location you are able to reach, there is still the matter of paying for what is almost uniformly private medicine.
Yes to Life’s purpose is to fill this wide gap of need by providing people with cancer information and support when their lives have been thrown into chaos. Everything the charity provides is free, and includes:
- HelpCentre services: a help line, patient grants for a Cancer Options personalised report and for CAM treatments.
- Searchable on-line directory of CAM treatments and practitioners linked to cancer type
- Wellbeing Workshops: workshops for people with cancer on non-toxic lifestyle choices.
In addition to direct support with information and grants, Yes to Life, helps those with cancer set up personal fundraising schemes, giving people the opportunity to do something positive for themselves, giving their friends and family a way to support them directly, and thereby creating a community of care that dispels the isolation often experienced by people with cancer.
Cancer and cancer treatment can be relentless and impersonal – Yes to Life will look for any way to counter this and to support those who come to us for help. The NHS will often tell you what you have to do – Yes to Life will help you find out what you want to do. Yes to Life will help find a way through both the bureaucracy of the NHS and the maze of private alternatives. Yes to Life will say ‘Yes’ and will support each individual in the choices they make for their own healthcare. We are pioneering a new model of cancer care, one that is much broader in scope than traditional western approaches, one that empowers individuals to help themselves, and one that is increasingly being espoused by leading thinkers in the field.
Tragically, my daughter Bryony died suddenly before we could really begin the treatments we hoped would help her, but she has left an extraordinary legacy: her shining example, the majority of the money we had raised for her treatment – which was used to establish the charity – and her great wish that Yes to Life go on to help others like her.
Robin Daly, founder/chair
For information on the work that Yes to Life does, and how you can support them,
go to www.yestolife.org.uk.
Or contact the
Help Centre on: 0870 163 2990. email: helpcentre@yestolife.org.uk
Office on: 0845 257 6950, email: office@yestolife.org.uk
YES TO LIFE – Your Options For Cancer
Yes to Life empowers people with cancer with information on CAM and supports them in taking an integrative approach to their treatment
Registered Charity No: 1112812
Unit 4, The Energy Centre, Bowling Green Walk, London N1 6AL
follow us on Twitter.com/YesTo_Life