Mistletoe Help in Cancer Fight

12:10pm Wednesday 15th December 2010

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Christmas is the time for mistletoe. But Linda Hulls has a use for mistletoe that has nothing to do with decorations – she injects it into her body to help fight lung cancer. Harriet Hernando reports.

WHEN Linda Hulls was told one year ago that she had just six months to live, she pinned all her hopes on the alternative treatment. now her cancer symptoms have subsided and she is in remission.

Slim, and wrapped up in a tweed coat with lustrous locks of white hair spilling out of a plum beret, Linda cuts a radiant figure.

Over a cup of tea she explains that mistletoe is a poison.

“At the time I was willing to try anything. I was really hoping that it would help,” she said.

The belief that mistletoe can help cure cancer is based on the 18th Century philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s notion that like cancer, mistletoe is a parasitic growth that eventually kills its host.

Inspired by the principle that ‘like cures like’, he believed that an extract of mistletoe would cure cancer.

Linda explained that her hope that the treatment would help lifted her spirits came at a time when she was feeling really low.

“When I found out that I was going to die I just wept and wept. my children said no, no, no, and told me that I had to remain positive,” she said.

Linda’s six children have supported her throughout the treatment. Her son Fred, 25, helps to inject the mistletoe at home.

The 59-year-old has been a fulltime mother most of her life but prior to giving birth to her first born she worked as a manager in a betting shop.

sometimes Linda would cry alone, not wanting her children to realise how scared she was. But her devoted children gave her the passion to live, and as she began responding to the treatment her outlook on life improved.

“At the time it was very tough because I was very sad. I thought that was the end,” she said.

The mistletoe treatment was recommended by St Luke’s Medical Centre in Stroud, which Linda describes as wonderful.

with a combination of this, and conventional treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy, her quality of life has improved vastly.

last year, Linda was confined to her bed but now she has been campaigning tirelessly to raise money for the Patient Therapy Fund at St Luke’s Medical Centre.

The premises on which the surgery is based is owned by St Luke’s Trust which subsidises treatments that are not available on the NHS.

Depending on your Primary Care Trust, NHS funding is sometimes available for alternative treatments like mistletoe, when it is administered at home as opposed to intravenously at a surgery.

Linda describes how lucky she was to benefit from the treatment free of charge but said other treatments she has received, such as art therapy, were only made available thanks to the Patient Therapy Fund.

with the support of generous shopkeepers in Stroud, Linda has been able to organise a raffle with 19 donated prizes to raise funds.

they include an MOT from Middle Street Garage and a painting set from Kendrick Street Gallery.

Linda, who has lived in Stroud since 1985 said: “The shopkeepers knew how ill I was and when they saw me walking around Stroud selling raffle tickets they came up to me and hugged me.”

* Raffle tickets, priced at £1 are on sale in Stroud at the Trading Post in Kendrick Street and at St Luke’s Medical Centre in Cainscross Road and at St Luke’s Gloucester centre in Tuffley Lane.

The raffle will be drawn on Monday, December 20.

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