The Renhehan’s - A Very Mixed Family

This is latest in a regular series of articles based on interviews with vegetarian/vegan families. The hope is that these will be of interest to others rearing children on a vegetarian/vegan diet, those planning a family and also give anyone requiring it the assurance that there is support out there for them. If you are vegetarian or vegan with children and would be willing to take part in an interview please contact me (Ita West) on 063 98926 or email me at cussensvegancottage@eircom.net.

Elizabeth Rehehan is a vegan. She has a son that’s vegan, a daughter that’s vegetarian, a son that only likes meat and her husband and another son are onmivore. Elizabeth explained that it isn’t as hard as it looks because her vegan son works in Dublin and only surfaces occasionally, her onmivore son is at UCC so he’s only home during the holidays and the carnivore son lives at home while serving his apprenticeship but generally sees to himself.

Having meat in the kitchen does cause problems with his younger sibling - the vegetarian, Kimberley. When her brother was away for a week recently, she constantly remarked on how nice it was not to have meat in the fridge (I’d say she’s got a point!).

Paul, Elizabeth’s husband was “semi-vegetarian” when they lived in America but no longer classes himself as a vegetarian at all. She has two sets of cooking utensils in the kitchen one for “veggies and vegans” only. Family holidays are the greatest challenge sometimes - the non-veggies just go out and get some fast food. Elizabeth would rather have a completely vegan household as she feels very much a hypocrite buying and cooking meat and fish.

Elizabeth first became 100% vegetarian in the early 90’s and then became vegan about two years ago, when she was diagnosed with cancer. Her eldest son, Tristan, followed her when he was only about three or four years old and her daughter Kimberly became vegetarian about five years ago. Kimberley has many friends at school but most of them are meat-eaters; there are only four vegetarians in the whole school and no vegans.

Recently Kimberley had to correct a visiting nutritionist to the school who told the class that a vegetarian was someone who ate “fish and chicken”. Paul, will usually eat the vegetarian meals that Elizabeth prepares but he can’t physically tolerate spices and curries so that’s when he’ll eat fish or chicken.

Elizabeth is a farmer’s daughter originally from Hospital, Co. Limerick and it was the cruelty element of meat eating that swayed her. She suggests that, having grown up on a dairy farm, she has first hand knowledge of the cruelty and exploitation of animals.

Generally, friends and family don’t cope well with her food choices. They do their best, but like most meat-eaters don’t seem to have a solid grasp of what veggies eat. She usually brings food with her but she has a sister Cariana who is “semi-vegetarian” so at least there’s one place that she can go and be catered for.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, Elizabeth read Professor Jane Plant’s book “Your life in your hands” and as a result, she altered her diet and became permanently vegan. She highly recommends this book particularly to women with breast cancer. Professor Plant has survived breast cancer five times. Elizabeth’s first cancer was invasive ductile breast cancer, it was grade 3 when biopsied and she was very lucky in being treated by a brilliant surgeon who was willing to listen to his patients and what they wanted.

Unfortunately after undergoing treatment with him, she was confronted by what she terms “medical terrorist” who wanted to fill her with chemotherapy. She refused this treatment and was told that she’d only have a 28% chance of survival without it; she still refused and looks very much alive today. Elizabeth goes on to say that if she knew then what she knows now she’d have refused all conventional treatment as she points out even the medical profession knows that the treatment she was given is only marginally effective (3 to 5%) against her type of cancer. In her opinion, the greatest threat to her life would have been the toxicity from the chemotherapy rather than the cancer..

She refused all conventional adjutant treatment but knowing that an effective adjuvant treatment was a “must” she set about and did her own research. She had the good fortune to find and try an exciting new treatment called at that time

“PDT”. This treatment had actually been around since the 1930’s but some new agents had just been developed and these proved very effective for Elizabeth. Having private health insurance was no use, as VHI or BUPA do not cover this particular treatment. It was very expensive and sometimes very painful but she knew that, no matter how well performed, surgery was not going to be enough and it was imperative to have an effective adjutant therapy and to make drastic lifestyle changes – not the least of these being to her diet.

However, Elizabeth didn’t get off lightly because two years later she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, grade 1B1. To use her own words:

“The fear that was not spoken was that it was a secondary from the first. I visited my gynaecologist with some trepidation. The good news was that it was a completely separate cancer. This time it was an adenocarcenoma of the cervix, grade 1B1. I was devastated as I was having regular smear tests. My cancer was missed because they don’t check for this type of cancer, as it is not very common. I looked for alternative treatments but some misguided doctors had challenged the PDT in the high court and it was no longer available. These people are not interested in progress and the health of others. They are interested in protecting their means of making very large amounts of money”.

If the PDT had been available, she would have used that again because it would have been minimally invasive but she was left with no choice but to have an oopherectomy. That was about eight months ago and she feels very well now.

She used some of the major alternative treatments in her fight for good health: homeopathy, reflexology and reiki. She has trained in reflexology and is a reiki master so she was able to treat herself, which really helped, and she also attended an excellent herbalist.

To go back to Elizabeth’s own words:
“In the surgical menopause which is a bit like a roller coaster ride I have made great use of herbal and vitamin supplements. These have made a huge difference. Once again, the Irish Medicines Board threatens many of these. This Board appears to be the leader in Europe in banning or effectively neutering some very effective and non-toxic treatments that have been available to women for many years all over the World.”

Her medics didn’t seem to have a problem with her being vegan basically because they’d no knowledge of it. She had to bring her own food into the hospital and the only comment that she got from a nurse was that she was putting herself at risk of osteoporosis by not having dairy products. When Elizabeth followed up on this view, the nurse couldn’t give her the answer to the fact that Americans are the largest consumers of dairy produce in the world and have the most cases of osteoporosis while the Japanese, who consume practically no dairy produce, have the lowest rate of osteoporosis.

At the moment, Elizabeth is studying a full time Interior Design course and one of the “vegetarians” on the course eats “fish and chicken”. Do you ever feel like you can’t win?!

Ita West