In Honour of Joseph Vincent Brophy ... the closest of my generation to pass on ... a Ballad of sorts

This has shocked me, prodded me and nudged me along ... various dimensional lines ... he is so like us, mostly self-educated and iconoclastic ... he did the work and self-study to get all the naval tickets. I got to know him in the early 80's when he was studying and writing the 1st Mate ticket and stayed with me. He eventually got his Captain's papers and worked at sea for 30 years. In 1983 he was clipped by a snaking cable on a supply vessel and his right leg was shattered. In the recovery from the accident he received some of that famous tainted blood and hepatitis C which was unknown to him until the late 90's showing up on a health exam during a mortgage application. Hep C reduces the liver function which normally has about a 10 fold excess capacity which all of us take far too much advantage of during what is considered a normal lifetime,. Joe, like many of us has no love for doctors and their snake-oils, so he did not do much about the condition that was not all that apparent and when more acute trouble came refused biopsy because he had had one at some point and did not like the feeling of it. He also believed that if you receive a label you tend to play out the labelled role. I am going on about this for the living, especially those of the stubborn male persuasion, because health and well being centres around the liver, which is trying its best to detoxify the human experience. As long as it can, we generally thrive irrespective of our behaviours. While Joe waited too long to begin working with his liver, he did discover a Way to cleanse and rejeuvenate the liver which could be of great benefit ongoing, especially if there is an increase in the environmental toxicity. The nutshell version of the Gerson Therapy and a key link to the Gerson Videos Tapes 1 - 4 A doctor's report describing the AMA attacks on Gerson... disclaimer: the American Cancer Society is against this approach (maybe that makes it more attractive)

The other side of this journey was the discovery of Answer Cancer a rather disturbing book that insists that disease is a subconscious self-mutilation program. Run the other way, you might urge ... I didn't because of the auspicious coincidence of "finding" the book on my laptop in an odd moment in Halifax, when it would ordinarily have been lost in the thousands of info bits this collector cannot stop gathering, but they do erupt in interesting ways ... why is this important? I have been faced with my own seemingly self-sabotaging behaviour for, well, ever and Joe related to the information of his tumour development in what for someone so meticulous in other ways, was out of character. The author of the book points out that the body is leading physicians on a symptoms hunt, "you fixed my hip ... I have another hip and a knee and ... " when the root cause is an event between conception and 4 years old that is resolved by later life illness ... a radical, disturbing idea. Well I just watched a friend behave in ways that led to his physical demise far sooner than might have been and I find myself and most of the people I know involved to some extent in the same kind of confusion. I know, a good buddhist, would just say, "Samsara" but that is not satisfying for me. I believe this is the personal apocalypse that parallels the transformation the larger culture has engaged at this time. The book can be engaged in less than an hour and I urge you to do so and comment on your own experience.

My daugher Heidi who has a university science degree, said "Gerson doesn't have any labs" ... after 30 minutes I emailed her saying that he used the best laboratory, the human body ... it's old school meticulous observation and an insatiable search for what works, changing course even reversing at times ... the opposite view from reductionist labs of the present. Tape 1 is that part of the story. At any rate, thank you Joe for letting us be involved with your life and death. In the end, he had to endure the medical nightmare and got his electrolytes out of whack causing even more confusion, but finally surrendered and was able to pass on within 24 hours of that.