After my first Radical Neck operation for Melanoma in Oxford I had just been appointed Music Director of St Lukes Orchestra in New York. A delightful long-haired second violinist there told me about Dr Nicholas Gonzalez. The boy’s father had had outstanding results, and he urged me very strongly to see him. At the time I was thought to be in the clear, so didn’t follow up. But a few months later it became evident that there were dangerous metastases after all, and the dear Oxford oncologists gave me “months, not years” to live.

I thought this inconvenient, and at once made plans to visit Dr Gonzalez, sending him the requested hair sample and blood test. Finishing a set of concerts at the Berlin Festival with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and feeling distinctly unsteady, I flew with Kay to New York for a consultation in the doctor’s office on the Upper East Side.

Dr Gonzalez was very friendly, very professional and very detailed. He outlined his quite elaborate and demanding program, which involved a particular personalised diet, drinking a lot of carrot juice, colonic irrigation, and taking around a hundred  pills a day of various kinds. Some of these were involved in balancing up body systems, but most were Pancreas Glandular Tissue, which had been shown to neutralise cancer cells. These I would have to take, 10 at a time, 6 times a day and night.

We decided then and there that I should pursue his regime, and ordered a lot of expensive pills. As soon as I started on the programme I seemed to feel better. It was hard work, but definitely an improvement on the alternative. I sent Nick hair samples every month. He had an analyst who produced a report, just from the hair sample, of every organ in my body; 2 sides of A4. At the bottom of the print-out was a “Cancer Count”. When we started Nick said that this was only experimental, but over the next years he came to rely on it more and more. What it showed us, at any rate, was my cancer coming steadily down month by month, from a dangerously high level to a much more manageable one.

This meant I could soon start work again. Nick had said ideally I should not work but rest, but when I suggested it would be hard to pay his fees without an income, he saw my point. And when he came to my next concert with St Lukes he definitely changed his mind. “The way you work does you good. You need it,- and so do we”. He was intensely musical, came to every New York concert of mine after that, and we became firm friends.

3 years after starting the programme we had a major setback: serious migraines for the first time in my life. They were at first treated by our hapless GP with an aspirin! As they got worse Kay took over, rang the Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, and told them she was bringing in a very sick man immediately. There I had  a brain scan which sure enough showed a tumour. A useless oncologist declared it was inoperable. Very cheerful. Was he looking at the scan upside down?  When we asked for a second opinion the lovely brain surgeon Richard Kerr said it was a perfectly straightforward operation, and how about Monday?

He did a good job, but within a few months the tumour had regrown (it had a 2 year start on us). He did exactly the same op again, and this time we followed up with some radiation at a London hospital. It was a strange feeling being left alone in a room while a machine made circles round my head, irradiating it. But it worked. Future brain scans were completely clear and the Gonzalez treatment continued unabated.

The radiation, as expected, burnt out some of the image receptors for the left field, so I lack peripheral vision there. And if you have brain surgery you have to surrender your driving licence until doctors allow. They have quite rightly never allowed, so I haven’t driven a car since. But I wouldn’t dare anyhow; once again better than the alternative. Seeing is a bit like having a horse’s blinker; there’s a sharp cut off on my left, which at first was a serious problem for score reading. If I looked down at the second bar of a movement I had no view of the first one. So Beethoven 5 started apparently with a single chord, not the familiar 3 notes. Ach!

Eventually I got used to things. I had to warn solo violinists that I wouldn’t be able to see them during the Concerto. More and more I took to memorising scores,-over a hundred in all. It’s a wonderful feeling being free of the score and working with the sound alone. (See the post on this subject).

Most people were extremely sympathetic about my challenges. All the stranger to receive a letter from an angry listener in Wales. He seriously suggested that I had faked my cancer in order to gain sympathy from the public and boost my fading career! He must have got pretty fed up as I went from strength to strength during the extra 30 years, granted me by Nick and Richard. Bless them.

Nick died suddenly in his sixties, a brilliant and totally dedicated man with an unusual but highly effective treatment. He had dozens of patients alive after 10, 20, 30 years. He wrote several books which are fascinating and important. He gave me a typescript copy of the first one to show British medics. The people I met showed little interest. Although totally based on science it just seems too way out for them.

Even worse:  Each month I was asked to attend the oncology outpatients department at the Churchill hospital in Oxford. They were more and more surprised that I seemed to get better without their doing anything.  Eventually the Professor called me in. When I explained that the reason for my good health was that I had a very effective programme which used no chemo or other serious drugs, I asked him to borrow the Gonzalez MS. He was appalled at the idea: “I couldn’t possibly read that”. He wouId not touch it, he wouldn’t glance at it. He appeared to think it might make him mortally sick. I replied that in my turn I couldn’t possibly be treated any more by a doctor with his eyes and ears tightly closed, and I walked out, never to return.

30 years later I still take the Pancreas pills, though I’ve dropped the rest. We always had terrible trouble importing all of them (from LA) because of Customs. The final act of that drama was a total, and illegal, confiscation of over £1000 worth. We had all the permissions and documents, but they went ahead and destroyed the whole shipment. For a year or two I hadn’t the heart to try again, but then a miracle occurred: Online I found a UK supplier just down the road in Newton Abbot!  Next day free delivery. A highly satisfactory ending to a sorry tale.