Dear Lesley,
You need to do controlling and wrathful fire pujas. Not everyone can do the wrathful fire puja. Maybe you can request Bari (Dagri) Rinpoche through Tushita Meditation Centre. Tushita can organize it and Bari Rinpoche can do it there.

Ask the geshe at your center to do chab-tru puja (blessing water in a vase and pouring it on your head.) I will do lu-zong puja five times.

You should study lo-jong and read my lo-jong book: Transforming Problems. The heart of lo-jong is first accepting that the illness is the result of past negative karma. Use it as a path to enlightenment, by practicing tong-len and using it to develop bodhicitta and for happiness. Seeing it as purifying past negative karma created during beginningless rebirths is a very good thing. The advantage of practicing tong-len is that you can develop bodhicitta—each time you do tong-len, it purifies many eons of negative karma, collects extensive merit and brings you closer to enlightenment.

The illness is very positive and most needed, since it leads you to really involve bodhicitta in your life. Therefore, the illness is very precious, very needed. This is totally opposite to what the selfish mind that has ignorance or attachment to this life thinks, so it is very positive.

Each time you do tong-len, it brings numberless sentient beings from each realm closer to enlightenment. Make your main refuge bodhicitta and the practice of tong-len.

If you can afford it, sponsor the monks at Sera Je to read the Kangyur. Discuss with the monastery what would be the expense of offering morning tea and bread, lunch, dinner and a one-time money offering, or just breakfast and lunch. Check if you can afford it. Maybe other people or your family can help.

Realize that this is not just a puja for you, but will collect extensive merit. Since it involves Sangha, there is unbelievable merit, and as most of the monks are gelongs living in the 253 vows, the merit is unbelievable. It also helps support the monastery.

In the past, somebody offered food to four monks who were not even arhats, and that person was born in the next life as a most powerful king in Kashgar. But don’t think just of the next life; think it is to achieve enlightenment and to liberate numberless sentient beings from the ocean of samsaric suffering and lead them to enlightenment. If you can make this offering, there is unbelievable merit.

Also, request the monks of Tsawa Khangtsen to do she-nyin du-dög. It only involves six monks and will cost 2,100 rupees. You can arrange it through the manager of Osel Labrang. Offering pujas has the same merit as offering to the Sangha and, it also helps to support the monastery. There is the name of a particular Buddha that can be recited if you cannot afford pujas.

You need the protection, ga-gön. You can ask the monk at Vajrayana Institute or Geshe-la to make it, through Secret Hayagriva. If they cannot do it, I can send you one.

I am sending you a protection called Protecting from Fear that you should wear, and I am also sending you His Holiness’s blessed Dorje Phurba.