Tag: diet

Surviving Adversity – Grace Gawler with Denise Drysdale

When she was just 21, Grace Gawler had a promising future. The former Geelong-born veterinary nurse had plans to study veterinary medicine when she received a lucrative modelling offer, enough to pay her university fees. Concurrently, her boyfriend, Ian Gawler, lost his leg to bone cancer. Grace was at a vital choice point; pursue glamorous, well-paid modelling work, while studying to become a vet, or support her boyfriend. The latter meant foregoing her personal and financial independence—and… lifelong dreams of becoming a vet. She chose to support Ian. Their proactive cancer journey and Ian’s eventual and unexpected recovery brought about by a combination of mainstream and complementary therapies; became a famous and a part of Australian medical history.

After a marathon effort helping Ian and thousands of cancer patients Grace’s life was turned upside down by a routine surgery gone wrong. She battled for her life over 13 years and found her solutions in Holland – becoming the world’s first bionically operated colon.

Grace talks about what she has learned and how that can help patients in the battle for their lives

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHinzasWIeg]

Grace Gawler's article in Wiley Interscience

Abstract – – reprints available from Grace

A Conversation with Grace Gawler (nee Adamson)

Abstract
Grace’s skills as a workshop leader span 35 years. She has presented workshops and lectures on supportive care for cancer patients and their families all over the world. Australian by birth, Grace’s experience as a carer of her partner diagnosed with bone cancer in 1974 was the inspiration for her work. 1976 saw her partner with extensive secondary cancer and given a two-week prognosis. Following his remission in 1978, she trained and qualified as a health professional specialising in natural therapies, counselling, supportive care and many other modalities.
She co-founded Australia’s first Cancer Support Group movement in the early eighties. Grace has now worked with more than 13,000 people as they have searched for life meaning, quality of life, and to use their illness as a positive turning point in their lives.
Grace’s work imparts the wisdom of life and professional experience thus helping people to live well with cancer. Her work with women with breast cancer resulted in the best selling book Women of Silence: The Emotional Healing of Breast Cancer (1994).
After dealing with separation and divorce in 1997, Grace began her own experience with an acquired, and at times life threatening, condition which resulted from routine surgery. Having experienced this life altering condition, which included ileostomies and colostomies, Grace teaches from a base of deep personal experience in how to effectively harness H.O.P.E -finding hope, seeking options, being practical and being empowered. She has four children between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four and has recently been happily re-united with her former PE teacher of 37 years ago.
Ruth Benor, a member of the editorial board, recorded this conversation in January 2003. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Full conversation available at …

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112545075/abstract

Grace Gawler’s article in Wiley Interscience

Abstract – – reprints available from Grace

A Conversation with Grace Gawler (nee Adamson)

Abstract
Grace’s skills as a workshop leader span 35 years. She has presented workshops and lectures on supportive care for cancer patients and their families all over the world. Australian by birth, Grace’s experience as a carer of her partner diagnosed with bone cancer in 1974 was the inspiration for her work. 1976 saw her partner with extensive secondary cancer and given a two-week prognosis. Following his remission in 1978, she trained and qualified as a health professional specialising in natural therapies, counselling, supportive care and many other modalities.
She co-founded Australia’s first Cancer Support Group movement in the early eighties. Grace has now worked with more than 13,000 people as they have searched for life meaning, quality of life, and to use their illness as a positive turning point in their lives.
Grace’s work imparts the wisdom of life and professional experience thus helping people to live well with cancer. Her work with women with breast cancer resulted in the best selling book Women of Silence: The Emotional Healing of Breast Cancer (1994).
After dealing with separation and divorce in 1997, Grace began her own experience with an acquired, and at times life threatening, condition which resulted from routine surgery. Having experienced this life altering condition, which included ileostomies and colostomies, Grace teaches from a base of deep personal experience in how to effectively harness H.O.P.E -finding hope, seeking options, being practical and being empowered. She has four children between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four and has recently been happily re-united with her former PE teacher of 37 years ago.
Ruth Benor, a member of the editorial board, recorded this conversation in January 2003. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

Full conversation available at …

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112545075/abstract

COMMENTS ON BEATING THE BIG C – Grace Gawler

Having worked with people with cancer in a psychosocial support setting for 30 years, I applaud the implementation of the prevention principles outlined in “Beating the Big C” The Australian 9 July 2005.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so they say and it should be said that this is not new; naturopaths have been espousing the same principals for decades! Continue reading “COMMENTS ON BEATING THE BIG C – Grace Gawler”