Laura Ross-Paul

Laura was in High School when her mother died of breast cancer. Determined to somehow help find a cure for the disease that took her mother from her, Laura went to Oregon State University in the late sixties to study pre-nursing. She and her husband Alex met through their activities in the peace movement. Laura was an artist for an underground newspaper and the pull of her incredible artistic talent soon propelled her to switch to an Art major with the hope that someday she might be able to use her artistic skills to help fight breast cancer.

After graduating with her MFA from Portland State University, she began her teaching career as an Adjunct Professor of Art, specializing in painting and drawing the figure. She also began her continuing career as a gallery represented studio artist. That career blossomed and her work can be viewed at her web site, lauraross-paul.com. Settled into her art career, Laura became a mother and was raising three amazing and talented children, Sean, Louie and Emma, when breast cancer once again came into Laura’s life.

In 2003, Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer and a mastectomy was advised as the only treatment option.

Her artist’s appreciation for the beauty of the human form propelled Laura to search for a way to avoid a mastectomy and deal with her cancer. Alex was determined to help her find such treatment and he spent hundreds of hours searching the internet for a safe and scientifically proven alternative to the mastectomy. His searching eventually led Alex and Laura to Detroit, Michigan to discuss the possibility of using cryoablation with Dr. Peter Littrup. Dr. Littrup had helped pioneer the use of cryoablation to treat prostate cancer and he had been doing research into its application for breast cancer.

Despite warnings that the cryoablation would probably work, but that it was not the gold standard of treatment like the mastectomy, Laura decided to go ahead with the procedure with the knowledge that if the procedure failed to kill the cancer, she could still have a mastectomy.

Laura’s cryoablation treatment occurred in the spring of 2003 with radiation and hormone therapy as follow up treatments. After overcoming some initial concerns that growth in her breast was cancer, it wasn’t, it was new tissue growing to replace the frozen tissue, Laura was declared to be in remission. Grateful for the outcome of the cryoablation and eager to spread the word, Laura and Alex turned to writing a book about her experience to inform women about this new treatment technique. Laura had kept a journal through her experience, so Alex, an award-winning Young Adult author, acted as narrator, using Laura’s journal as the spine of the story and weaving the events together.

Dr. Littrup was asked to join the effort in order to spread awareness of the miracle of cryoablation for breast cancer treatment. Alex travelled to Detroit to interview Dr. Littrup regarding his history and career. Dr. Littrup also provided pertinent research information so that the science of cryoablation could be related to the reader in layman’s terms.

A website soon followed the release of the book. Laura found herself fielding questions on a daily basis as women, eager for the treatment. Laura was happy to relate her experiences and help women facing life and death decisions. She found this work to be a way of achieving the goal she had set for herself originally in high school after the death of her mother.

This activism kept on opening new doors and opportunities to help others. A Philippine woman, "F.L." who was a resident of Canada, contacted Laura in 2012 and asked Laura to travel with her to Guangzhou, China to provide support during FL’s cryoablation and subsequent immune system stimulation treatment of her breast cancer.

An unexpected, but welcome, result of the cryoablation treatment, is the "immune effect." Immediately after the freezing, the body's immune system starts removing the dead tissue left behind. The freezing doesn’t destroy the cancer’s DNA, and since the cancer is dead, it is unable to mask its presence in the body. When the immune system “cleans out” the dead tissue, it sees that the cancer is a foreign body and creates antibodies to the cancer. These go out and kill cancer which may have metastasized to other parts of the body. These antibodies give the patient a natural immunity to their cancer.

Historical data shows the immune effect occurs naturally after freezing in about half the cases of treatment with cryoablation. Researchers at FUDA Hospital had developed a process whereby they could amplify the amount of antibodies and increase the incidence of the immune effect to approximately eighty percent or higher. "F.L." wanted this additional treatment, which was one of the main reasons she traveled to China.

When FUDA hospital learned that Laura had paid her own way to travel so far to help F.L., they insisted that Laura be housed at the hospital’s expense in patient/caretaker housing so that she could be closer to F.L. Once living in the hospital, Laura soon met the renown Dr. Xu Kecheng, the head of the hospital and the President of the International Society of Cryoablation. Dr. Xu read her book and invited Laura to come back to FUDA in 2014 in order to receive FUDA’s advanced immune stimulation to enhance her immunity to her cancer.

Laura and Alex traveled to FUDA in Guangzhou China in the spring of 2014. Alex had suffered prostate cancer and was treated by High Intensity Focused Ultrasound, which also stimulates the immune effect, so both of them were able to receive CIC, the name the Chinese had given their immune boosting procedure.

Dr. Xu personally supervised their immune treatments and in the process, he learned more about Laura’s activism on behalf of cryoablation. He was so impressed by Laura's pioneering spirit, her book about cryoablation, her internet activism for cryoablation and her speaking and communication skills that he invited Laura to be a fully hosted speaker at the 3rd International (Guangzhou) Forum on Cancer Treatment Conference in 2014 and again in 2016.

Between her two trips to China, Laura conceived of the idea of the Early Freeze Protocol, EFP, (she kindly allowed her husband to name the procedure), because she was frustrated by the slow pace of adoption of cryoablation to treat breast cancer in the USA. Her idea of freezing "something suspicious" when it is first observed in a mammogram will hopefully encourage women to seek early and frequent mammograms with the promise that if something small has been found, it can be removed immediately by a simple cryoablation. This would be much preferable to current practice where “something suspicious” has to be given a chance to grow large enough to be biopsied

Laura's EFP presentation in the summer of 2016 at the 5th International (Guangzhou) Forum on Cancer Treatment (IFCT) in conjunction with the Founding Conference of International Society of Stem Cell Regenerative Medicine conference was praised by such top doctors as Lu Youyong, Phd., Professor of Beijing Cancer Hospital, Peking University, Secretary General of the Chinese Cancer Genome Consortium, Beijing, China. Laura has had follow on discussions of the Early Freeze Protocol with Americans Ray Harter, a medical instrument startup entrepreneur promoting the use of robotics to apply the cryoablation therapy for the EFP, and Ingrid Edstrom, a nurse practitioner with a thermography practice detecting early stage breast cancer and author of the book “Protect Your Breasts”.

The FUDA Hospital personnel were so impressed by "They're Mine and I'm Keeping Them" that in 2014, they requested the rights to translate and publish the book for use in China. The three authors consented for no compensation in the hopes that this can further advance cryoablation treatment for breast cancer in China.

The book has been well received by the medical community. Several patients related that their doctor recommended reading the book to learn about cryoablation for breast cancer treatment as it gives their patients an excellent idea of what to expect during treatment. Doctors have also contacted Laura and said that they have really appreciated the research information assembled by Alex as it helped them learn about cryoablation.

An online article about Laura and the idea of the Early Freeze Protocol appeared in Breast Cancer Weekly Digest in 2016. It was BCWD’s most read article for 2016 and had the highest number of shares of any of their articles that year. That led to a large increase in people contacting Laura through the keepingthem.com website. One woman, the publisher of California Coachella Valley’s “ Desert Health News”, Lauren Del Sarto, recently related in a DHN article that Laura's book was critical to Lauren’s decision to be treated with cryoablation. This should in turn increase the awareness of cryoablation for breast cancer treatment, especially as more and more doctors are turning to cryoablation as their preferred method of treatment. One Cryoablation trial, the Ice Cure trial, has been completed with excellent results and another , The “Frost Trial” is mid-way through completion.

Laura continues to keep a studio and exhibition practice going. She remains cancer free since her cryoablation in 2003. Laura joins her husband in many outdoors adventures, most recently adding stand-up paddling to her activity list. Laura and Alex spend the winters in Portland, OR and live in a small cedar cabin on the Oregon coast during the summer. There Laura works in her yurt art studio surrounded by huckleberries, pine, cedars and firs while Alex adds to his series of Young Adult books, Arken Freeth and the Adventure of the Neanderthals, (Laura’s art is used on the book covers).

Laura continues her activism with the creation of the Breast Cancer Freeze Foundation. She is instigating a Social Practice Art show fundraiser to help spread the word about cryoablation. Part of the painting sale proceeds go towards the foundation to help pay for treatment of women without resources until such time as the cryoablation is universally covered by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance. It has been a long and winding road, but Laura’s original goal, to help women beat breast cancer, is coming true, even though she is not a medical researcher. And Laura’s continuing remission since 2003 stands as a towering proof that it is possible to save your breast through freezing and put breast cancer in remission.