Tracy Hall

- - - UPDATE, November 7, 2002 - - -

Sadly, Tracy Hall died on May 5th, 2001. Tracy died completely cancer free. He passed away due to complications from the radiation he endured in 1995. Tracy was able to donate all of his skin, bones and organs to help others. Dawn Hall wishes to continue being an integral part of the Burzynski Patient Group. You can contact her at 419-826-2665. She will be happy to answer your questions and also give you information on her cook book which is still being used to help patients raise money for treatment.
The Hall family is from Swanton, Ohio. Rooted in a strong family relationship and Christian faith, Tracy, Dawn, and their two daughters Ashley and Whitney have battled Tracy’s cancer for 4 years. Dawn is the founder and owner of Cozy Homestead Publishing, which exclusively publishes her low-fat cookbooks Down Home Cooking Without the Down Home Fat and Busy People’s Low-Fat Cookbook. Dawn and Tracy began the company to supplement their income to pay for Dr. Burzynski’s treatment. Currently, the company has sold over 150,000 copies of Busy People’s and 200,000 copies of Down Home Cooking.

Tracy and Dawn lived the American Dream. Married out of high school, Tracy worked in the tool and die industry while Dawn raised and home-schooled their two daughters. Active members in church, they built their own home and were an idyllic American family portrait.

Four years ago, Tracy suffered a focal seizure that made the left side of his body tingle and some of the motor skills in his body fade. Tracy thought it was a mild stroke. At Dawn’s urging, he went to the doctor, who recommended an MRI. The MRI showed a tumor the size of a baseball almost in the center of the brain. An immediate operation removed 1 pound of cancerous tissue and left Tracy’s left side paralyzed. However, only 85% of the tumor was removed. Tracy was diagnosed with a mixed-grade astrocytoma multigliobioma tumor that appeared to be stable, and for the moment, under control.

The Hall family did research on brain tumors while Tracy recuperated from his operation. He underwent rigorous physical therapy to recover motor skills impaired by the operation. By Christmas of 1994, he was able to walk with the use of a cane.

Tracy’s tumor was classified as stable. However, both he and Dawn believed that the best way to keep the cancer from recurring was to fight it. They continued to research brain tumors and therapies, and Tracy decided to begin radiation therapy.

Tracy entered a full regimen of radiation therapy, about 30 visits throughout the winter of 1995. On completion, Tracy began physical training, healing himself from the effects of the radiation. Unfortunately, the MRI scans showed little evidence that the tumor was shrinking. Exploring the only other option known to them, the Hall family was told that chemotherapy would not have much effect on Tracy’s kind of tumor. Tracy and Dawn were told by their oncologist, "It’s spring. Go home and enjoy life."

At that point, Tracy’s tumor remained stable. However, his life expectancy was placed somewhere between 6 months and 2 years.

Tracy said, "We didn’t really start searching for new therapies, but someone we knew had heard of Dr. Burzynski and said we ought to check out this guy. We viewed a videotape of a television program about Dr. Burzynski; Dustin Kunnari and his mother also were on the program. After that, we thought a lot more seriously about this treatment."

The Halls contacted the Burzynski Clinic and received a packet of information. Tracy and Dawn spoke with several families who were on Burzynski’s treatment before flying down to meet with Burzynski and his staff with their daughters and Tracy’s parents.

"Our initial visit was very positive. I thought everyone was very professional. I talked to the doc himself, and I felt that he was a compassionate man, not a real big speaker, kind of a shy guy. He seemed really positive about his treatment and therapy. He was up-front about what would and would not happen," said Tracy.

The Halls decided to start the treatments. Tracy carried the bags around on an IV stand and pumped the treatment via a shunt into his heart 6 times a day, which made it difficult to do much traveling or part-time work.

Tracy said, "During this whole thing, I’ve never thought about timeframes. Mostly, I thought about my daughters being that young, and my wife, so mostly my immediate family. I wanted to be there to raise my daughters and have a lot of influence in their lives. The next factor was: I wanted a miracle. I knew that the Lord could do it if He chose to do it through me. It was up to the Lord, not to me. So far, He has done that miracle for us."

Tracy is currently working part time at his former job with the tool and die company. He still has neurological damage from the surgery. He has experienced no side effects from antineoplaston therapy other than an increase in uric acid levels in his blood. However, battling cancer on Dr. Burzynski’s treatment has radically changed the Hall family life.

Tracy said, "This whole thing turned our family life 180 degrees, to the almost the complete opposite of what it was. I was the sole provider for the family, working 60 hours a week sometimes. Dawn was an aerobics instructor and home-schooled our kids. We built our own home, raised our children. When I became ill, we had no other source of income. We had to put our kids into public schools and Dawn had to go to work. I became the house dad."

The Halls kept their daughters Ashley and Whitney aware of their father’s illness. Tracy said, "We felt they should know at all times what was going on with their Daddy. They knew that I only had a 30% chance of surviving the surgery. They knew that the disease could cause my death, and they still do. I’ve spent a lot more time with my daughters. I know them better; they know me better. I spend more time than I did running them to their functions and events. It has made us more of a closer-knit family than before."

Dawn’s cookbooks and publishing company have helped the Hall family pay for the Burzynski treatment in its entirety. Starting the treatment with limited resources, the Halls refinanced their home and put everything they owned on the line to create Cozy Homestead Publishing. After 2 years, Dawn’s cookbooks have sold over 300,000 copies nationwide, and Dawn has been on several nationally syndicated shows presenting her cookbook and talking about her family’s fight against cancer.

Tracy’s tumor stabilized last year into a single nodule. The Halls’ oncologist in Ohio has said, "I don’t know a lot about it [the treatment], and I can’t say I sponsor it, but if money wasn’t an object, I’d stay on the treatment because it seems to be doing something." Visits to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, a facility specializing in cancer treatment, confirmed that Tracy is in good health and has outlived his life expectancy.

Tracy said that "the hope is for a complete healing. If the tumor is not there, if it’s totally gone, I believe I’ll always be living with it. I pray for continued miracles on my behalf. My other hope is that this drug becomes legalized, so that all these other people can use this treatment and have their insurance pay for it. We fought so hard for this because it's not just for us, it’s for everyone who doesn’t have access to the medicine. This isn’t just for Tracy Hall; it’s for all of mankind."

Tracy and Dawn have spent the past 2 years helping the Burzynski Clinic get the antineoplaston therapy approved by the FDA. Tracy said, "It’s very difficult to fight the government and the disease at the same time. When you’ve got children and a life, that’s owed a lot of time, too. When you fight for a treatment like this, you lose a lot of your life."

Dawn said, "One thing that I’m really thankful for is that the FDA has allowed people outside Texas to use this treatment. I’m really thankful that we were able to be a part of that. And I hope Americans don’t take for granted the hard work that we put behind our grass-roots effort to help get this treatment out there. It was a grueling process of endless hours, and money, and hard work. It was literally a war fought to allow people to have this treatment. I would rather lose my husband fighting, using Dr. Burzynski’s treatment, than not to have fought and have lost him to cancer."

For more information about Dawn’s cookbooks, contact Cozy Homestead Publishing at 1-888-436-9646, or by mail at 5425 S. Fulton-Lucas Road, Swanton, Ohio.