Alex Cider Vinegar

Truth, lies and leukemia.

The entertainment world has a longstanding love affair with Australians.

Hugh Jackman. Margot Robbie. Health Ledger. Nicole Kidman. Chris Hemsworth.

After starring in a 3rd-grade production of Disney’s ‘Fantasia’, I'm tempted to add myself to the list. I played Broom #8 and my performance was wooden but in a good way.

I’m not suggesting I’ll lead a Hollywood production soon, but I’d feel confident in similar inanimate cleaning roles — feather dusters, carpet sweepers, garden rakes.

You can add the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar to the Australian-adjacent entertainment list.

The wildly popular limited series dramatises the real-life story of Belle Gibson, the steaming hobo turd Australian wellness influencer who built an empire off the back of a non-existent brain tumour.

I have thoughts…

As a leukemia survivor, I know what cancer treatment feels like…

… And let me tell ya, chemotherapy is not for the faint-hearted. I had seven rounds of it, and every one of them absolutely fucking sucked. But the treatment saved my life, so (unsurprisingly) I’m an advocate.

Can that appreciation be chalked up to an anecdotal experience? Maybe.

If I were dead, writing this opinion piece would be challenging. My living status skews this personal study. Thankfully, I’m not the only person enjoying a second shot.

Conventional medicine — chemo being one type — has saved millions of lives as cancer treatments continue to improve and survival rates go up. The 5-year survival for cancer in 1991-1995 was 55%.

By 2016, the rate had increased to 71%.

My own leukemia treatment began with a stone-faced doctor telling me, “This diagnosis was a death sentence in the 1970s”. I suspect he meant to inspire me, though I wouldn’t recommend he get into the life coaching space.

Statistics aside, chances are you’ve got a loved one who’s still kicking around — or had more time — thanks to conventional cancer treatment. I’ve lived the most intensely fulfilling 16 years in remission, and I consider chemotherapy to be a true miracle.

None of that removes the reality that conventional cancer treatments can be brutal, with some so demanding that the side effects outweigh potential benefits.

The human body can’t always withstand aggressive chemotherapy drugs, so it’s not uncommon for patients to opt for end-of-life care rather than endure another assault via treatment.

My inclusion in an experimental chemo trial (pushing my treatment plan from 3 months to 7 months) was only approved because I was twenty and strong enough to handle the destructive side effects.

With aaaaall that said, if there were a way to side-step chemotherapy, radiation and the long-term ramifications they have on physical and mental health, I’d have 100% considered it. I’d have given up everything I had to pursue a proven alternate path.

You probably would, too.

And that’s how Belle Gibson got us.

Who is Belle Gibson?

Belle Gibson was a social media influencer who rose to fame by falsely claiming she had terminal brain cancer.

The Gospel, according to Belle, was that she’d been diagnosed with an inoperable, malignant brain tumour at age 20 — the same age I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

After two months of chemo and radiotherapy, she discontinued conventional medicine after suffering the harsh side effects. In place, Belle treated her illness with alternative therapies and a strict, healthy diet.

Belle went on to monetise her diet plan and cancer-healing recipes on a website (and later app) called The Whole Pantry, which helped fuel her over 200,000 Instagram followers — a platform used as a space to promote alternative medicine as a viable and proven alternative to cure cancer.

As the face of the alternative medicine movement, Apple handpicked The Whole Pantry to be included on the Apple Watch. And with 300,000 downloads, her app was named the second-best iPhone app in the world. 

That Wikipedia-style recap aside, I don’t doubt that her healthy recipes helped people. If your diet consists of a 1.25L Coke Zero and deep-friend Maltesers wrapped in prosciutto, switching to something healthier is a win.

It’s the influence she held over cancer patients who had endured chemo horrors or heard horror stories that grind my gears.

That’s not a spicy hot take, by the way. I’m not blazing a trail connecting the dots between her lies and patients replacing traditional treatments with unproven holistic methods — likely resulting in their deaths.

As a cancer survivor, it’s not the loss of life that hurts my heart the most.

It’s the loss of hope.

Hope is all a cancer patient has

My Dad told me I had cancer.

After a month of increasingly worrying symptoms, a hurried late-night phone call from my GP, and instructions to pack an overnight bag, we drove 30 minutes in silence before Mum jumped out of the car and vanished inside the hospital.

Parking in a leafy sidestreet, my Dad slipped the keys out of the ignition and quickly appeared at my side window.

“The doctors say it’s leukemia”, he said sorrowfully.

Dissolving into uncontrollable sobbing, it felt like reality had shattered. Any cancer diagnosis is a lightning strike of terror. In that moment, I’d have done ANYTHING to return to normal — there’s no more vulnerable state.

Chemo made me vomit so often and forcefully that it hurt to breathe. Chemo left my mouth crusted with ulcers, robbing me of the ability to taste anything for months at a time. Chemo left me crushed under the weight of a thin hospital blanket, with so little strength in my body it felt like I might slip into nothingness at any moment.

Don’t you think I would have LOVED to side-step seven months of that and drink my body weight in juice instead?

I know my family would have remortgaged the house if it meant I could avoid the surgeries, the septic shock, and the immense sadness of a year-long treatment protocol that left me sobbing into my pillow nightly.

But you know what would have happened if I had opted out to spend a month in Tulum drinking fresh papaya juice and shooting coffee enemas up my ass?

I’d be six feet under. A memory my mates would share. Stone cold dead.

This isn’t pent-up frustration because I failed to leverage a personal brand like Belle. It’s rage, knowing what it feels like to cling desperately to hope when you’re told you have cancer.

When your existence has been reduced to statistics, hope is the only thing you have. It’s your life jacket when cancer pushes you out to sea — the one thing keeping you from slipping under the waves and drowning in indescribable, inescapable agony.

My heart breaks for the people who placed their hope in Belle Gibson’s greed-laced lies. In their vulnerable state, the expertise of medical professionals should have been the only safe harbour.

Instead, Belle Gibson made people believe natural remedies were sufficient tools to fight tumours. That’s not bringing a knife to a gunfight. It’s standing in front of a tsunami with a cocktail umbrella.

The realisation those cancer patients must have had — when it was too late to change course — devastates me. When all they wanted was a fighting chance, Belle Gibson stripped them of their life jackets, stripped them of hope, and let them drown.

Where to next?

If you’re like me, several emotions rise to the surface of this story, whether you’ve been watching on Netflix or following the trainwreck in real time.

There’s rage.

Rage at con artists faking illness to grow a social media following and monetise fear. Rage at the (ongoing) acceptance of false cures from false prophets. Rage at unproven, costly alternative treatments that lift the bank accounts of some while putting others in the ground.

There’s also sadness.

The other primary protagonist in Apple Cider Vinegar is Milla Blake, inspired by the real Jessica Ainscough. Diagnosed with a rare cancer in her 20s (again, like me), she chose to cease chemo and pursue a treatment of juices and coffee enemas. Jessica reportedly convinced her Mum to try an alternative therapy route, too.

Her Mum died from breast cancer in 2013. Jessica died from her cancer a few years later.

In an era where TikTok opinions are treated like scientific studies, the harsh reality is that Belle Gibson wasn’t the first person to exploit fear and she won’t be the last. She’s a symptom, not a cause.

The easy path is to maintain the rage but I’ve felt enough of that throughout my cancer experience. I’ve been so angry at the world, universe, God — whatever. That anger hasn’t brought me anything of value.

I’ve also been sad for too long. Weeping in the darkness of my hospital room when the nurses were busy with other patients morphed into a generalised anxiety disorder and depression throughout my adult life.

I only want hope now.

I hope I remain in remission forever. I hope other cancer patients find solace in their choices, with all the information available to them. I hope no more Dads have to tell their sons they have leukemia. I even hope Belle Gibson can find peace with herself.

Research shows that patients who reject or delay the advice of doctors are more likely to die. Nearly 5x more likely.

I hope people take that to heart and make informed choices.

I hope knowledge trumps fear.

I hope.

With love,

New World Porter

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