5 years cancer free today. My story

5 YEARS CANCER FREE TODAY.

Im delighted to share this news with all of you. But in truth I had decided on the all clear within 72 hours of hearing the diagnosis.

Cancer is a strange journey. Not least because you are immediately forced to face your own immortality. We all know at a conscious level that we will die one day. However we imagine that its some far away time and place when we are very very old.

But life doesn't work like that does it. As John Lennon once said "Life is what happens to you whilst you're making other plans"

The people in your life also do the most unexpected things upon the news of your illness. Some of the people you always expected to be there for you aren't. Some people who you'd never expect to be there for you are. Some people come to you with an unbelievable outpouring of love and support.

I just want to thank everyone as I learnt something each time regardless. For those of you who would like to know how I defeated stage 4 cancer which was so aggressive that it needed to be discovered and treated within 4/6 weeks. But went undiagnosed for 14 months. I've taken the section from my book "An unbreakable spirit" Not just to share but to also give you hope in case you ever find yourself in this position.

And if you do. I am here for you. You have my word and it doesn't even matter if we have only ever met in these words.

Thank you and God bless you all. x x x x x

During July 2011 I began to feel very unwell. Christmas came and Chloe was in her final year of college and had taken a job working in a fabulous old time circus in Great Yarmouth. She was worried that she had ruined Christmas as we always spent it together. And it couldn’t have been further from the truth as it actually made Christmas for us.

If Chlo`e couldn't come to us then we would go to her. We jumped on a flight to London before getting a hire car and heading off in the driving rain. As we drove we passed a Coca Cola Christmas truck and we all looked excitedly at each other. We collected Chlo`e and drove to a cottage we had rented. It was dark and bumpy and I wondered if maybe I should have updated the Sat Nav! We got to the cottage late and went to sleep. When we awoke we looked outside to see that we were staying in this little pink cottage just a few meters away from a cliff. It was heaven.

Over the next week we went to the circus everyday. It was like stepping back in time as if we had entered the twilight zone. But in the most magical way possible. I didn’t say anything but I was starting to feel really ill. I felt as though I was poisoned from head to toe.

I had been seeing my doctor since July that year. But he had continuously diagnosed me with stress without even getting up from behind his desk.Furthermore I wasn't even stressed. I felt so ill that I found myself in his surgery two or three times a month and I always got the same answer.

“I’ve lost over twenty pounds in weight”

“Well you would do you’re stressed”

On each visit I would present new symptoms but the answers would always remain the same.

“I’m getting drenching night sweats”

“Well you would do you’re obviously very stressed”

“I feel poisoned throughout my body”

“You would do you’re stressed”

“I sleeping in later every day and going to bed earlier every night”

“You’re stressed, what do you expect”

After a years of this I was now beginning to feel so ill that I couldn’t go on like this anymore. It was at this time I felt an ache in one of my testicles and upon examination I noticed that one had gone rock hard and reduced to the size of a small marble. When I went to the doctor he examined me and said that he was sure that it was nothing. But he would send me for a scan just to reassure me. Two months would pass before my appointment arrived as he had marked it as “Non Urgent” I was examined and told that I had a testicular infection and given a six months course of antibiotics.

I just knew that it wasn’t right and my intuition was telling me that there was definitely more to it than this. I decided to break the cardinal rule and Google my symptoms. By pure chance I came across a forum where a man had recently posted the very same symptoms and had been told the same thing as I had been told. However a doctor answered just as I was about to leave the site. He advised this man to go to his local accident and emergency department and present his symptoms. The doctor went onto say that he should not mention his diagnosis as he would be sent away and considered a hypochondriac.

The next morning I went to the accident and emergency department and told the lady at the desk that I was experiencing pain in my testicles. She told me to wait and I was called to see a doctor. A very junior doctor examined me and said that my lymph nodes seemed to be a little enlarged and that he wanted to get the Oncology surgeon down to see me. I had no idea that oncology meant cancer.

When the oncology surgeon arrived he examined me and didn’t say very much.

“I'd like to see you in my clinic on Monday, be there at 4 pm”

As we sat in the waiting room thumbing through three year old copies of National Geographic magazines I was consumed by this feeling that something was seriously wrong with me.

“The doctor will see you now Mr Baker”

We had barely sat down when the doctor began to talk and I heard the words.

“I’m sorry but you have a tumour Mr Baker”

It was just like in the movies when you see a doctor telling someone that they have cancer. The camera goes to the mouth of the doctor and all you hear is the doctor's garbled voice in slow motion. I immediately went clammy and momentarily passed out. When I came around Maria was holding my arm and the nurse was offering me a glass of water.

“We need to get it out Mr Baker, I’m going to operate on you this week”

The irony was that I had only been diagnosed with a testicular infection and given a six month course of antibiotics. Little did I know at the time but the prescription that I had been given was actually a death sentence. As I would not have lived long enough to finish the prescription.

The operation was scheduled for Thursday then subsequently cancelled. Then for Friday but then it was cancelled again. This time the doctor called and said that although they didn’t operate on Saturdays he considered this an emergency and a team had been assembled to complete the procedure. I was told to be there for eight am.

Saturday came and I was there at eight am sharp and I was very nervous. The fact that the doctor was late didn’t help much either. Then he appeared in a fluster motioning me to follow him to theatre as he removed his coat while walking. I kept looking back at Maria and she kept on motioning me to carry on.

When we got to theatre I was prepared and lay on the bed outside the theatre doors before being receiving the anaesthetic. The anaesthetist was an Indian lady and I asked her if she could pray for me.

“I already have she said”

When I came around the surgeon came to see me in recovery and told me that he had managed to get it all. Furthermore he was 99% certain that there was nothing to worry about. But just as a formality they would have to send the testicle to Southampton for a biopsy. But I wasn’t reassured at all. In fact I had a really bad feeling about the whole thing. A consultation was scheduled for two weeks later so I could get the results of the biopsy.

After what seemed an eternity Maria and I went back to the clinic for the results. Maria kept trying to reassure me but I had a really bad feeling about this.

The doctor will see you now Mr Baker”

I always hated being called “Mr Baker” Mr Baker was my father. The only time someone called me Mr Baker was when I was in trouble. It was a different doctor this time and we had barely sat down when he said.

“Bad news Mr Baker, you have Lymphoma”

“Is that curable” I asked.

“Couldn’t tell you, it's not my field” then he just got up, grabbed his file and walked out.

I began to faint again. We were on our own. Maria got me a glass of water before the two of us left the office in shock. I kept glancing at Maria all the way home but she just kept staring straight ahead. As we got inside the house I began to have a panic attack and began to suffocate. I ran out into the back garden but I still couldn’t breathe. So I began to tear my clothes off. Pulling at my shirt as the buttons bounced off the patio until I was standing there in nothing but my pants. I turned to look at the house and Maria was standing there staring at me with tears streaming down her face.

I was due to fly out on the red eye the following morning to collect Chloe with her car. She had just finished college and I needed to bring her home. Maria came with me and we packed up the car together. I had to make two trips as it was a little two seater sports car that we had bought her for her 21st birthday. We had only been on the road for about thirty minutes when Chloe began to cry.

“What’s up baby” I asked

“Have you got cancer Dad, are you going to die?”

Her words made everything real. It felt as though I had just been hit with a sledge hammer. I pulled over to the side of the road where we just held each other and wept.

“I’m not going anywhere baby”

We hadn’t told Chlo`e about my diagnosis but she had always been very intuitive from a very early age. If her mum was upset about something and couldn’t sleep. We would hear two little feet hit the floor in her room during the night.Then we would hear her little footsteps shuffling along the hallway before making several attempts to open the door. Then she would just climb up into bed and put her arms around her mum and go to sleep. It never failed to amaze us.

The truth was that I had no idea as to whether I was going to be ok. I didn’t even know what lymphoma was as the doctor had no interest in finding out before he broke the news. I didn’t know if I was s curable or had weeks to live. After two weeks of going crazy. I decided to call the consultant's secretary in England explaining what had happened to me and within minutes my consultant called me back.

“I am so sorry for the way you have been treated Mr Baker, what you have is indeed curable as long as you have been diagnosed within four to six weeks. How long do you think you've had it?”

“I have been misdiagnosed twice in fourteen months”

The phone went silent and I asked him if he was still there.

“Yes I’m here Mr Baker, try not to worry and I'll see you next week”

I arrived in Southampton England and saw my consultant where I had to undergo several tests before they could establish what my chances of survival were. The biggest concern was finding out whether or not my bone marrow was involved or not. The consultant had said that even if it wasn’t my chances of survival were less than 20% due to the extremely late diagnosis. He went on to say that the chances were very high that a brain tumour would follow within two years. I remember originally thinking that the original prediction of 50/50 was good until one night I sat bolt upright in bed when I realised that 50/50 was like playing Russian roulette with three bullets and my enthusiasm began to wane. But a 20% chance of survival concerned me deeply.

In truth I was terrified. I began to notice all of the news about people dying from cancer. Every magazine I opened talked about someone who was dying or had died. I even noticed shoe sales because I didn’t know if it was worth investing in a decent pair of shoes then it hit me. What am I doing. I teach this stuff.

I knew we only saw what we focused on as we have a function in our brain stem called the reticular activating system or RAS for short. It screens through information in order to bring to your attention what is relevant for you. The problem is that we are bombarded so much information via our five senses and we can only process a small fraction of that information. Your brain decides what is important to you by selecting information that corresponds with what you think about and focus on.

If you have ever bought a car and then suddenly began to see them everywhere then you have experienced using your RAS. If you are a lady who has had a baby then you would have experienced the very same thing. You would have seen babies and pregnant women everywhere you looked. You probably told yourself there must have been a baby boom on. Only there wasn’t unless you were pregnant just after world war two!

After my initial shock I began to practice what I taught and immediately began to gather information that would help me. Then instead of shoe sales and cancer deaths I began to see breakthroughs and successful treatments. I also began to work on my beliefs about health. People talk about the book “The Secret” but the secret left out the most important part as it's not what you think about that you bring into reality. You actually have to believe that you can do something at a subconscious level before it can happen.

As soon as I began using the tools I had put together and studied for years I immediately began to show signs of getting better.

I arrived at Jury’s hotel in Southampton.As the Channel islands permanently had the two top floors of the hotel booked for cancer patients. I began my treatment which included twelve sessions of chemotherapy. Six had to be administered into the spinal cord. It was a very delicate procedure and the exact amount of spinal fluid removed had to be replaced with the precise amount of chemotherapy.

The most concerning part was that chemotherapy that had to be administered via the spine had to be made in isolation. Nothing else was allowed to be made whilst it was being created. Furthermore the treatment had to be bought to me with two nurses in attendance. They weren’t allowed to put the bag down under any circumstances. When they arrived three of them would carefully check and double check every number on the packet to make sure everything was as it should be. I remember wondering what the hell are they giving me!

The only problem with the intrathecal chemotherapy was that I had to lie flat on my back for two hours after it was administered. If I didn't I would get the most horrendous headaches that you could ever imagine.The headaches were so severe they left my sight severely impaired for two weeks. This was as well as the projectile vomiting which would happen without warning. Only no one told me I wasn't allowed to move. Had they done so I wouldn't have experienced such severe effects. I spent weeks with headaches so strong that I could barely see my way to the bathroom to be sick.On the third visit I refused to move and the effects lessened substantially.

On my second session I met a young girl by the name of Annie. She was a slightly built young woman of twenty six and she was as white as a ghost.neither of us had any hair and our eyes were black and sunken into our heads. The two of us looked as if we had just left Auschwitz. I turned to Annie and smiled softly at her and asked her how she was going to beat this. She began to cry. I felt the eyes of the other patients burning in the back of my head as they wondered what I had done to upset her.

“Hey what’s up?” I inquired as if I didn’t already know.

“It's ok, it's just, it's just…. It's just that I really believed that I was going to beat this, all I ever wanted was to get married and have two children and own a little cottage. I believed I would get better I really did. I confounded my doctors as the tumours all began to disappear or get smaller”

“Then what happened” I asked.

“Well I was getting treatment a couple of months ago and the nurse asked me how I was getting on, I smiled and said I’m great and I’m going to beat this”

Annie began to cry again and once more I felt eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. I had visions of being escorted from the hospital in my backless gown with no pants on.

She continued “Well, then she took my hand and placed her two hands over mine and squeezed them then she said, don’t get your hopes up my love you have a very aggressive form of cancer. She must have been right as within just a few weeks my tumours began to return”

I told her that having aggressive cancer was a good thing as it responded to treatment better and told her that my cancer was aggressive also. I also explained to her that I didn't believe that the nurse was necessarily right. I explained that the nurse was an authority figure to her and as such anything she said would become true for her. If she accepted it as the truth. This is how beliefs are created within us. I then went on to teach her about belief and expectation and told her how there have been countless studies conducted that have shown that whether or not you recover was largely influenced by the expectation to get better. Just as your expectation of how the medicine would work was largely dependent on how well you expected it to work. I asked her if she had heard of the placebo effect and explained that placebos were influenced by the mind just as her recovery would be. Placebos work on your level of belief and nothing more. In fact your entire life is actually driven by belief.

As I was sharing this with Annie the nurse who was adjusting my drip was listening to everything I had said. She didn’t say anything she just went around the room and whispered into the ears of every patient in the ward. As she left each patient every single one of them stood up and walked towards me bringing their drips with them. In the end I had a round twelve people all sitting around my bed as I delivered a seminar on the power of belief from my hospital bed. I saw their faces change as they were filled with hope and it was very emotional for me to see them transformed right in front of my eyes. Their hope was renewed and invigorated and there was laughter in the room. Laughter wasn’t something I had ever heard before in a chemotherapy ward before.

The nurses asked me to speak to everyone I could. I was happy to help although putting so much energy into my message was very tiring for me but the satisfaction in being able to help kept me going. On one occasion I had several patients around my bed and I was in the process of getting my horse syringes inserted into my catheter. I’m sure they weren’t called that but I imagined that if you were going to inject a horse it would be with one of these. There were six syringes in all. Two of which had a bright red liquid inside. As the nurse put the red syringe into my arm she cheerfully said.

“This is the one that can damage your heart”

The patients all looked shocked especially as most of them were getting the same or similar treatment.

“Only if let it” I said with a smile. Followed by “Will you please let me be the last person that you ever say that to!” The patients seemed comforted by my words but I couldn't believe how careless the nurse had been. Words hold a great deal of power and the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword carries with it a great deal of truth.

Finally I was ready to go home after six months of treatment in the UK. But there was one small challenge. It had started to snow heavily during the night and we had a call to inform us that our treatment was going to be cancelled that day. As a consequence we would have to stay for another weekend. Everyone was really frustrated as by this time we just wanted to get home. I called the hospital and asked them if they would treat us if I could get us all to the hospital.They said they would and I convinced a mini bus driver to take us. We arrived safely and I had led a successful coup. It was actually quite funny as I walked into the hospital with my gang of cancer patients some of whom were in their eighties. All of whom were determined to finish their treatment and fly home after staging their mini rebellion!

That night I made my way to the airport. There hadn’t been a single flight all day due to the snow. But there was a small chance that my flight would be the only one to leave the airport. I had several drinks to celebrate completing my treatment. And even though I had never been a good flyer I was unphased as I sat in my seat on the plane watching them deicing the wings. This would have got less than a positive response from me normally. But I shook my head and laughed to myself. How unlucky would I need to be to be in a plane crash after receiving cancer treatment I mused. I arrived home a little worse for wear and didn’t even see Maria as I jumped into a taxi only to arrive home to a locked house and having to climb in through a window. I didn’t care. I was just glad to be home.

I had been speaking professionally since 1994. I had made many speeches to people From London to America. The speaking originally came about when companies wanted me to share how I got to be one of the top salespeople in the world operating from our spare bedroom. This eventually evolved into talks about the power of belief and how I transformed my life from one of abuse to success. My talks were always well received because of the authenticity of my story. But in truth it wasn't work to me as speaking to large groups of people and changing lives was both a pleasure and a privilege to me.

When I got back home I started giving talks to cancer patients and people with chronic health issues. As well as my usual audience which included people from all walks of life. After all we are all the same really and we all have the same faculties of mind The secret lies in learning how to use it effectively. It doesn’t discriminate by age, race or gender. Its functions are available to all that choose to learn how to use the greatest gift in the entire world. Our own minds.

Two years later I Completed my remission and on that day I received a very special gift. It was a call from Annie. She told me how she had used all of the visualisation exercises I shared with her and that she was once again in remission. She thanked me profusely. But it really had nothing to do with me as I was just the messenger. It was her that had used the information to change her life. It was all her.. She went on to tell me that she had also just got engaged and they were putting a deposit down on a small cottage. We both wept as she shared her great news.

There are things that take place in our lives. Circumstances that take place and set in motion a chain of events that we aren’t even aware of at the time. One of these chain of events unbeknown to me began in Anaheim California when I attended my very first Million Dollar Round Table convention.I had purchased a copy of every single book and tape from every previous convention. When I arrived home I listened to all of my tapes. There was one that stuck out in my mind but for all the wrong reasons. In this tape from a 1988 convention the speaker told the audience that there were six thousand of them in the audience that day and no two of them were hearing exactly the same thing.

I dismissed it as a ridiculous statement. However ten years later after many years of studying psychology and personal development. I had come to realise that he was right all along as we don’t hear what people say. We only hear what we perceive they have said only after it has been screened by our belief system. Our perceptions and our life experiences. This became very important to me as I was now very aware that this was true. I was extremely concerned as I didn’t want my message to fail to get through to some people especially when we were talking about life and death.

For several months I racked my brains as I tried to think of a way I could get people to witness the power of their own minds first hand as opposed to just listening to me. Because there are always some people in the audience who reject whatever they hear. For most it's not a conscious decision. They are simply accepting information based upon what they believe at a subconscious level and everything else is rejected. I had already experienced this myself several years before when I was teaching a small class in a local college. A lady in my class constantly came out with phrases such as. I can see how that would work for someone else but it would never work for me and a multitude of excuses and reasons why what I was teaching would never work for her.

But there was a young lawyer in the class who took endless amounts of notes and was constantly seeking additional clarification via email. A year later I bumped into the lawyer by chance in his office.

“You don’t remember me do you”

I had to admit I didn’t. He went on to tell me how my class had changed his life and that something had just clicked while I was talking. He went on to say that he had never seen himself running his own company but during a moment of clarity in the class he suddenly realised that it simply wasn’t true. It was just a limiting belief which had no validity.. As a consequence he went onto open his own successful law practice and now hired several people.

I couldn’t afford to let people slip the net due to the same kind of faulty thinking. Then I had an AHA moment. I know what I can do I thought. I'll get them to walk across hot coals. That will allow people to challenge their own beliefs with a physical demonstration to themselves. Many people have a misconception about firewalking. They see it as a thrill seeking activity. But nothing can be further from the truth. There is actually a much deeper reason for doing it. In my experience and the experience of the thousands of others who have attended my firewalking seminars have experienced dramatic changes in their perception. Which has in turn allowed them to make changes in their lives which prove to be both dramatic and often life changing. You see when I lead people over hot embers that are over 600 degrees they are actually shattering a belief that they have held subconsciously since childhood. What is it? Do you remember?

“Don't touch the fire or you will get burned”

Sometimes it was accompanied by a smack across the backside. But when you do and you don't get burned. You ask yourself a question either consciously or unconsciously.

If I can walk across hot embers and not get burned. What else can I do?

And I can tell you now. It's a lot more than you currently think and believe you can!