The Courier-Mail : The front page of tomorrow's The Sunday Mail.
OLIVIA’S CANNABIS CRUSADE
Aussie superstar declares support for medicinal marijuana and talks about her new cancer battle
The Sunday Mail (Queensland)3 Sep 2017
JORDAN BAKER REPORTS
IT was in May last year, after an epic tennis match at the home of the friend who wrote her hit song Physical that Olivia Newton-John first began to struggle with lower back pain.
It was so bad she couldn’t walk. She thought it was sciatica. It may well have been, because eventually her back felt better and, by May this year, she was well enough to pick up a racquet again.
She hit gently and didn’t play long, but the pain came back – with a vengeance. This time, it definitely wasn’t sciatica. An MRI showed that 25 years after her first breast cancer diagnosis, the cancer had returned, this time in her sacrum, the bone at the base of the spine.
“I felt innately that something wasn’t right. This pain had been going on for a long time,” NewtonJohn said in her first Australian interview since diagnosis.
“It wasn’t a total surprise, it wasn’t a total shock, probably not the same as the first time.”
That was in 1992, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer after finding a lump during a selfexamination. She VETERAN conservationist Bob Brown has slammed the “destructive wealth and arrogance” of Indian mining giant Adani at a protest against the Galilee Basin mine.
Adani chairman Gautam Adani this week said the company would break ground on its $16.5 billion Queensland coal mine in October.
Dr Brown has joined calls for the Federal Government to rule out helping fund the “devastating mega project” through a loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility.
He said Mr Adani, in had a partial mastectomy and chemotherapy, and her treatment lasted almost a year.
Back then, a cancer diagnosis was considered a death sentence; many people kept it secret. “It wasn’t something that was talked about much,” Newton-John said.
“It was frightening. It’s always frightening, but it is something more known about now.”
Cancer changed NewtonJohn’s outlook on life. Ever since, her music has focused on healing and gratitude. Cancer survivors are as common as Grease fans at her concerts, and she is passionate about raising money for Melbourne’s Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre. So, when she faced the disease a second time four
months ago, “heightened arrogance”, had been signalling that the $1 billion loan was already secured despite no confirmation from the Turnbull Government.
“A message back to Mr Adani – you’re welcome to this country,” Dr Brown told a summit in Sydney yesterday.
“But you’re not welcome to bring your destructive wealth and arrogance to ride over the majority opinion of Australian people who don’t want you to have that loan and won’t let you get away with that mine.”
Dr Brown led the Franklin Dam protest in the 1980s. Newton-John was well prepared. “[This time I had] the wisdom to know that I had dealt with it before and could do it again,” she said. “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have moments of fear, but I was pretty determined that I would get through.”
This time, Newton-John was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, the same type she had suffered so long ago. It is a serious diagnosis, but that doesn’t mean the disease can’t be beaten or managed like a chronic illness.
The 68-year-old has responded well to treatment.
“As far as I am concerned, my pain level is gone,” she said. “I had terrible pain. I was limping and walking like a duck and a penguin for a while, but that part is gone.
“I am getting my mobility back to normal all the time, but I have done tests of course to see that things are better, have had my blood work tested, and these things lead me to believe that I am on top of it.
“I used to believe that cancer was one of those diseases that you can manage and live with. I know many women who have done that. That’s what I imagine will be my life, but I am
positive and hop- ing that I can get rid of it to the extent that everything is fine.”
She has had photon radiation therapy, but also uses natural remedies. One of the most important of those is cannabis, which is legal and easily obtained in Newton-John’s home state of California (her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi, owns a cannabis farm in Oregon).
“I use medicinal cannabis, which is really important for pain and healing,” NewtonJohn says. “It’s a plant that has been maligned for so long, yet has so many abilities to heal.”
Newton-John says she will champion its use in Australia, where medicinal use was approved by the Federal Government this year, but obtaining necessary permissions is still a long, complicated process.
“It’s an important part of treatment, and it should be available,” she says. “I use it for the pain and it’s also a medicinal thing to do. The research shows it’s really helpful.”
Since her diagnosis, Newton-John has taken a long break on her farm. She has
I use medicinal cannabis, which is really important for pain and healing
Her husband John Easterling has, she says, been “incredibly knowledgeable and smart, and calm and loving”.
She doesn’t like talking about her cancer much, so Easterling – an expert on medicinal herbs from the Amazon – has been doing it on her behalf. “My husband has talked to my friends and explained what’s going on,” she says. “I need to focus on being around and being healthy.” While she will keep her workload light, Newton-John returned to the stage late last month and will tour again in October, singing songs from her Liv On album, which she wrote with two other musicians who have also been touched by cancer. This weekend she returns to Australia to host a gala and a fundraising walk for the Olivia Newton-John Wellness and Research Centre at the Austin Hospital. Friday night’s gala will feature her close friends, singers Daryl Braithwaite, with whom she went to school, and John Farnham. This year, she wants to raise $1 million for the Centre. “My dream is that the whole thing will be about wellness, [and] we will have a way of healing people,” she says.
Next Sunday night she will give her first Australian television interview since her diagnosis to 60 Minutes, to raise awareness of the fundraising walk that will be held on September 17. Newton-John’s cancer relapse is also sending an important message to long-term breast cancer survivors to be vigilant. “I don’t want to scare women that it could happen again, but it can, you don’t know why,” says Newton-John.
The star said she has been buoyed by the support she has received from around the world. “People send me letters, just the most beautiful well wishe, and prayers and love,” she said. “I want them to know that the prayers have worked, and thank you.”
et la version web .. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/olivia-newtonjohn-tells-how-marijuana-is-helping-her-beat-cancer/news-story/12705dfadc0579a1139472271aa03bf8
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COME ON OVER
Pour la photo .. certes pas inédite ...
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ONJ BY HERB RITTS
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MY CLOSEST CELEBRITY FRIEND
Seymour, who was born in England, headed to the US as her career took off. On the eve of her trans-Atlantic move in the mid 1970s, she was joined at the Frankenberg family dinner by a patient of her doctor father’s, an Australian actress named Rona Newton-John.
Rona was also moving to the US, so they decided to share a house.
That’s how Seymour met Rona’s younger sister, a singer named Olivia. Today Seymour calls her “my closest celebrity friend”.
The challenge of mixing motherhood with show business bonded the pair.
“I knew lots of other people who were mums, but not many who were dealing with the stresses of performing and travelling, and people know who you are,” Seymour says. “We really clicked. Our children became best friends, [Newton-John’s daughter] Chloe and [Seymour’s son] Sean. They grew up together.”
Et le reste de l'histoire de la très jolie et sympathique Jane Seymour est à lire sur http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/stellar/somehow-i-lactated-onto-his-bare-chest/news-story/0bfc3498947181758b7701dd9eae9a24
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