Posts Tagged ‘Health’

So hard not to be terrified …

Posted: December 28, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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I think I have mentioned before how I lose friends every other week or so to this monster of a disease.  I have so many acquaintances, online, from all over the world, and quite a few of them I have actually spent time with face to face.  I met some incredible warriors during my time spent in Georgia this past spring.  Of the several I befriended, only two are still alive and their disease has spread to where they had to move on to conventional oncology.  Most recently were a woman with ovarian cancer and a man with pancreatic.   I have changed their names to Stella and Todd.

The woman had a situation very similar to mine with tumors in her peritoneum and fluid accumulating in the free space in her abdomen.  She called me frequently just to let me know she was still in the fight.  Well, the weekend before Christmas, I got a text from another friend saying Stella had passed on just the previous night.  Let me tell you, she was doing much better than I currently am.  She was running errands and living her life.  One evening, she went out to dinner and the, later that night, began vomiting.  She went to ER but her intestines ruptured en route.  Her heart went ballistic, she coded, and could not be revived.  Just like that, her precious spirit had left us.

I have been secretly fearful of this exact scenario playing out in my life.  Those tumors have only ever been visualized twice … both times in an OR and it was the surgery team that saw them.  Scans or MRIs have never picked them up because, though there are hundreds of them, they are too small to be seen.  But the photos taken last April when they had me on the table, sure looked big enough to show up.  Anyway, they are all over my large and small intestines, and my stomach.  And no one knows what those little boogers are up to.  In her case, they were eating away at her intestines from the outside until the wall of her intestine was thin enough to just rupture and that was it.

Many nights I have vomited, unprovoked, and been scared of that very thing.  How much vomiting is too much?  When is the time to go to the ER if I want to catch things before they eat into my intestines?  Could it be happening right now?  And now that it has happened to someone I loved, I’m even more scared!

Also, I have been having horrendous night sweats, so I went to my go-to conventional community, bcmets.org.  I typed Arimidex in the search block and the very first post to come up was from whom?  ME!!!!  Dated Mar 09.  I have used this drug before.  So I went to my spreadsheet to see what was happening with my markers while I was taking it.  Unfortunately, not one helluva lot.  So it didn’t really work for me then.  Not sure where that leaves me this time, but I will have markers drawn again on 1/10.

Tazzie Jump2And then, the day after Christmas, Todd left us.  Todd had pancreatic cancer and refused to believe the 3-month stats for that kind of cancer.  He survived for a few years, despite their predictions.  But ultimately, though he was with us for far longer than they expected, he did leave and he wasn’t even 50 yet.  So much loss after such hard battles.  And the devastation goes on for generations.  Cancer deaths don’t just affect the person who dies.  It takes everything from you, both physically and financially with nothing left to leave or give to anyone.  And then there is the genetic predisposition aspect.  All in all, it just sucks.

So it is bitter cold again here today … too cold for me to go play with Gunner.  So I sit here crying, zoning, writing, watching tv … when I would much rather have my “old” life back and be competing in a dog agility trial somewhere or xc-skiing since there is such wonderful powder at the ski resorts right now.  Or even Me & JR Sapper's Return Trailrunning all over town, shopping with my BFF and trying on stuff … none of which I have the juice for any more.  And I’m beginning to suspect it will never return.  My mother used to always say it.  She would say not to give things up because, once you do, you never get them back.  Now she didn’t mean material possessions … she meant activities and things you enjoyed doing.  And, in my situation, I can see her as being right on the money.  That is one of the biggest reasons that I have not given up a horse, despite the expense Gunner is turning out to be.  But I will not give up a horse.  If it is the last piece of my old life I can keep, dammit, I will.

New battle plan

Posted: November 28, 2012 in Breast Cancer
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As I mentioned in my last post, I am now working with Dr Vincent Gammill and yesterday I received, and started, my new meds/supplements in hopes of kicking this mess to the curb.  I will give it a couple of months to do me some good and will pray for good results.  What really frightens me is that I can’t see myself healthy any more, I have been sick for so long.  When I try to envision a healthy me, I just draw a blank.  Does that mean I am creating my death in the next few months?  I really don’t know where the line is between just being human and scared, and creating a reality.  I know, in the past, when I could still see a healthy me, it didn’t make disease back down one iota.  So I just don’t have the answers about that.  

I have gained quite a bit of fluid and tomorrow am getting it drained yet again.  I have had it done every six weeks for probably four times now.  I am really nervous this time because of how I have had to take my blood thinners ever 12 hours.  They made me stop it yesterday, so I have been worried I would throw more clots.  But I am also worried that perhaps it is still in my system and do not want to bleed into my belly afterward tomorrow!

So I am now using metformin, which has really interesting research with it and cancer.  I am also using three other things that Vincent sent me.  Can’t really discuss them much but if it works, I will be shouting from the rooftops!  Some of it came from Mexico and some of it is off-label use, like the metformin.  But at this point, I don’t really care as long as it works.  And it isn’t nearly as hard on me as the conventional alternatives.  I may still have to buy off on some toxicity, in order to survive, but I will hold that off as long as I possibly can.  But it does feel better to be doing something.  Will get labs drawn again in a few weeks, but I need to give this 2-3 months to work.

Please send thoughts and prayers for two things … most immediately, for tomorrow morning’s procedure that there is no unexpected bleeding or clots.  And also that this new protocol knocks things back again.  I really need this to work for me.

Horsin around but not in a good way …

Posted: November 20, 2012 in Breast Cancer
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Most of you know I got a new equine partner in September.  His name is Gunner and he is, like most horses, a natural skeptic.  He is just not quite sure that people are a good deal for him.  I am guessing he was never respected as a being and was forced to do things without giving him time to adapt.  So he is just not convinced. At first, I just would hang out in his stall, grain him, and make it all about pleasure for him.  Then we started working on the longe line and riding in circles.  We were doing so well and had even had a couple of lovely trail rides.

Then one day, I had purchased a water bottle holder to put on my saddle, so I put it on and out we went.  We always start on the ground, but that water bottle gave him a scare, for some reason.  He jumped and got away from me and off he bolted into the woods. He came tearing back into the barn, up the breezeway, and tried to make a 90-degree turn galloping.  Needless to say, with shoes on and concrete footing, down he went onto his right hip.  His back right leg was scraped up, but we never did detect any swelling or heat.

We had some work to do to get him past that fright, and he was coming around just fine.  But then I went to Breck and threw these PEs, so he had a few weeks off work.  When we resumed, day before yesterday, he kept kicking out as hard as he could with his back right leg.  Since that is not normal behavior for him, and there was nothing flapping around his back legs, it had to be pain.  There was just no other explanation.  He was not upset or emotional, like he had been when he took his fall.  But there was something definitely bothering him.

So yesterday, a local lameness specialist came to see him.  She went straight to the point of injury: the upper trocanter which is right near where the femur joins the hip.  She ultrasounded both sides, found the fluid and chips in the joint, then applied a new therapy called Shockwave.  What an amazing technology!  You can check it out here:

According to Dr Ed Kane, PhD, of DVM Magazine, “the machine generates high-intensity shock or pressure waves, which pulse to a specific site within the injured tissue. Though its actual mode of action is still in dispute, it stimulates and accelerates the healing process, essentially combining an immediate analgesic effect with a reduction in inflammation, neovascularization in soft tissue and osteogenesis in bone. According to Dr. Scott McClure, DVM, Iowa State University, a leading researcher in the field, it can be used to treat various conditions, such as suspensory ligament desmitis, navicular disease, saucer fractures, bucked shins, bowed tendon, sesamoid fractures, stress fractures and vertebral spinal pain (kissing spine lesions).”

They shaved his hips and proceeded the Shockwave. He did receive some sedation because it is quite painful for the first couple of hours, but then it allegedly makes them feel incredible. His time of recovery was going to be 6-12 weeks but, with this technology, it helps break down the chips and decrease healing time by half, so he may well be good to go in 3 weeks. If not, he will have another Shockwave, but if he is OK, we’re done. So no riding, which is really kind of OK because I am feeling really weak these days. Not sure what is going on, but my arms and legs just quiver. When I feel shaky like that, I can’t walk around and God forbid I should want so do something active! Not sure if this weakness is part of a downward spiral or if the systemic infection/antibiotics have something to do with it. But only another week or so of antibiotics, so we will see then.

After having a chat with Dr Vincent Gammill of the Center for the Study of Natural Oncology, whom I have worked with for a period of time before, I have a new plan of attack … one that my oncologist will not approve of, most likely, because it involves none of his bag of tricks and some off-label use drugs like Metformin. Yup, the old handy diabetes drug is one helluva cancer killer. So we have a plan lined up for me that will both affect my possible multiple drug resistance, block estrogen, kill cancer stem cells, and interrupt the glucose pathway. That plan has multiple mechanisms of action, and the trick is to keep tweaking it so cancer doesn’t resist.

So, I’m sure my oncologist will roll his eyes at me yet again and shake his head. But he is always really good about letting me run off and do my thing as long as I promise to come running back if things go awry, which I always do. So I feel a little more peace now that I at least have a plan of attack.

And my energy healer, Kris Kraft, just called to tell me that he was checking in with me the other day and says my future is still just as bright and clear as a bell. He is a seer and sees these things. I have a healthy, happy future according to him. From his lips to God’s ears! And if he’s wrong, I want all y’all to descend on him like a dark cloud! LOL

 

Christian stoners … praise Jesus, dood!

Posted: February 27, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Cannabis Medicine, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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So how can one claim to be a Spirit-filled, tongue-talking, healing-believing Christian and still extol the virtues of weed? Easy, my dear. Easy. I was online last night, reading some of the thinking that is out there about Christians and cannabis … I’ll tell you what. Talk about living with blinders on. It just amazes me how people … and not just Christians … just don’t read or think for themselves. They hear something someone said and they take it as gospel. Look, I don’t take my pastor’s word, or my doctor’s word, for anything. Both my spiritual and physical health I cannot afford to lay in the hands of others. I need to know what I believe and why. I need to know what therapies I’m using and why. But so many intelligent people … many of you who are reading this right now … just believe what they’re told without looking for themselves. Marijuana is a drug. It is an illicit drug, at that … with no medicinal value whatsoever. And the only reason anyone would ever imbibe in marijuana is to get stoned.

First of all, marijuana is an herb. A plant that grows readily … that has been used for thousands of years with plenty of medicinal benefit. The first documented use of medicinal marijuana (MMJ) was in childbirth thousands of years ago. The Middle East and China had it going on from the get-go. There are those who believe it was used in Biblical times. Those people quote the recipe for the holy anointing oil in Exodus. The term kaneh bosum has been determined by some to be cannabis. I am not a BIble scholar and can neither agree nor disagree on this.

What I can tell you, however, is that I believe God is our Creator. I also believe that He created everything around us, as the Bible says. What I didn’t know, and I’m betting most of you don’t know either, is that we are created with an endocannabinoid system. This is a system in our bodies that regulates all the other systems in our bodies. According to Dustin Sulak DO of Maine Integrative Healthcare, “The endogenous cannabinoid system, named after the plant that led to its discovery, is perhaps the most important physiologic system involved in establishing and maintaining human health. Endocannabinoids and their receptors are found throughout the body: in the brain, organs, connective tissues, glands, and immune cells. In each tissue, the cannabinoid system performs different tasks, but the goal is always the same: homeostasis, the maintenance of a stable internal environment despite fluctuations in the external environment.” For the entire article, click here.

It was the cannabis plant that led to the discovery of the endocannabinoid system (ECS). Within this system, we have cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2. We make our own cannabinoids which can activate our cannabinoid receptors. For example, that’s why hot baths relax us. It stimulates our endocannabinoids. You know what else activates cannabinoid receptors? Phytocannabinoids … and only one plant has them. Cannabis. And what all, in the animal kingdom, has cannabinoid receptors? Everything from the nematode to the sea squirt. All vertebrates have an endocannabinoid system so, yes, your dog can get high too. And your cats, birds, lizards … you get the picture.

So now let’s look at the math here. I believe God created everything … including the plant and animal kingdom. Let’s call that 1. God created us with an endocannabinoid system to create homeostasis in our bodies. He also created a plant that activates that regulatory system. Let’s call that 2. In Genesis 1:29 it says, “Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” Let me tell you, if you don’t already know, that particular plant bears a boatload of seeds! It doesn’t say I give you every seed-bearing plant except the cannabis plant. Let’s call that 3.

My equation is 1+2+3=6. If you believe God created everything (and He doesn’t make mistakes); and He created us with a system that only one single plant can regulate, (which He created as well); and He gave us every seed-bearing plant to use, then let me ask you one question: Why aren’t you leading the charge to legalize marijuana? I know I sure am. He has given us “everything pertaining to life and Godliness,” so I just don’t see why Christians get their knickers all in a wad over this healing plant that He created.

Now that we have established marijuana is an herb, since I have explained the ECS, now you see that it does have medicinal value but in case you need more proof that we are being lied to, did you know the US Department of Health and Human Services has a patent on cannabis? Yes they do and why? For Alzheimer’s and dementia-related illnesses because they know it has medicinal value. But didn’t they tell us it is a Schedule 1 drug that has no medicinal value? And as a Schedule 1 drug, scientists can’t even research it. Despite what they are telling us, it is hardly illicit.

What about the argument that the only reason anyone would take a toke is to get stoned. Seriously? Just think about that for a minute. That’s like saying the only reason anyone would have a glass of wine is to get puking drunk. Sure, there will be those who abuse marijuana just like there are those who abuse alcohol and their pain pills.  Most of us only use what we need for relief just as some of us have a glass of wine with dinner. A great number of people still have that nasty image in their minds whenever someone says “pot,” of a junkie nodding on the couch, drooling, and not being a functioning member of society. The only thing that puts me in that particular condition is opiates. But they’re jussssst fine for us, right? I am a retired military officer. So is my husband. Fully functioning members of society … well, the only thing that keeps me from being that these days is a disease, but not the pot. The pot keeps my abdomen from spasming. The pot helps me eat. The pot keeps me from having total panic meltdowns. The pot eases me into sleep like I haven’t had in more than a decade. And even more than that, the oil. The concentrated oil, that I posted about here, that is spoken of in the Run From the Cure video in my Resources section, enables cures. There is no doubt in my military mind that pot has extended my life.

So yeah, pot is of the devil, you religious, legalistic Christians. Just keep believing that. More medicine for the rest of us. For more information on the ECS, see the links below.

http://www.medicalcannabis.com/Cannabis-Science/endocannabinoid-system

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gOYVJu__14

http://www.cannabis-med.org/english/journal/en_2006_01_2.pdf

And today is a better day

Posted: February 9, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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Now all systems are go again.  We just can’t not go to Georgia.  You know how I keep talking about the trail of bread crumbs and the path illuminating in front of my feet?  Well, this is it.  I could stay here and do conventional chemo, and insurance would cover every red cent of it.  But there would be no immune recovery or immune stimulation.  And let’s face it. If my immune system was acting the way it should, it would not have escorted cancer in my door, much less poured it a drink and had it make itself at home. Yeah, it made itself at home alright. Took over the whole damn house!

Everything has fallen into place, and I feel very drawn to it.  As I said yesterday, I have felt that before and wound up in so much trouble.  The self-doubt that experience caused has left me not trusting myself very much.  Here’s the really weird thing.  I have not once, in the past five years, gotten No Evidence of Disease (NED).  I have had active cancer in my body the whole time.  And I’ve been close to death more than once.  But each time, I have pulled back up out of that to the point that people take it for granted that I will be just fine.  I feel like the Boy Who Cried Wolf in that one of these days, it’s going to be the one that takes me out of here.  But who knows when that will be?

The important thing is that, looking back, I see a distinct pattern of healing. Each time I go down, when I come back up, I am better than before.  Stronger than before.  More energized than before.  Wiser than before.  And older looking than before, but I’m trying to be patient with myself.  My body has been a war zone for the past five years.  A bloody battlefield.  So a wrinkle or two … a scar or two … expected status.

So, the Devil Went Down to Georgia.  Day after tomorrow!  If anyone knows any good boiled peanut roadside stands, holler!  This Southern gal has been out of the South for too long.

Kris Kraft, energy healer

Posted: February 3, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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Once I returned home, it was not without complication.  I got home on a Monday night and Tuesday morning I realized my NG tube had not been suctioning out my stomach.  Knowing that vomiting around a tube in your throat is excruciating, I did not want that to happen again.  After 24 hours of no suction, we ran off to the emergency room to try to find out why. Several xrays and adjustments later, we knew the problem.  When they put my first tube in, they didn’t put it in far enough. This time, they had put it in too far and it lay coiled in the bottom of my stomach, not sucking out anything. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!  Finally I had a tube that worked again.

Kurt Peterson and CancerTouch had become old friends of mine by this time.  Quite some time prior to my little luxury resort vacay at Memorial Hospital, Kurt had brought in another energy healer, Kris Kraft, to his practice.  Kurt spoke extremely highly of Kris and together they worked on many.  When I first started working with Karen Korona, I did see Kurt one more time, and this time with no results.  So at that point, we thought that possibly my cancer had developed a resistance to Kurt’s particular gift.  I mean, it can develop resistance to any drug we throw at it.  Why couldn’t it respond the same to the same energy over and over?

Anyway, at this point, Kurt felt that if any energy healer in the world could help me, it would be Kris.  So we had arranged for Kris to work on me in San Francisco the end of May.  But then I was hospitalized, so that changed everything.  Now we weren’t even sure if I would still be here come the end of May and we knew if I was, I sure wouldn’t be able to travel.  So God bless Kurt and Kris … they arranged to have Kris come to me.  Now usually we go to the healer’s environment for work … to his suite or whatever.  But I had my NG tube, my IV nutrition bag, and all sorts of apparatuses to accommodate them.  Mercifully, Kris offered that if John could come pick him up, he would be willing to work on me in our home.  Done deal!  We could just have my neighbor come over and sit with me while John transported him back and forth.

On May 2, I met Mr Kris Kraft who was, at that time, still with CancerTouch.  Can you see how blessed I’ve been?  God has put such incredible people in my path.  Can you see the tapestry unfolding?  Is the chaos starting to look a little more like a work of art?  Sure is to me!  I later found out that Kris reported I probably only had a couple of weeks left at that point if something didn’t change.

He works very differently than Kurt, but the two of them are an imposing pair.  Kurt is blonde and over 6′.  Kris is brunette and 6’7″!    The towering team, right?  Anyway, he pulled up a chair at my bedside and we chatted for a bit.  He would gently put his hands on me and run energy.  Then he would stop and kind of just gaze for a few minutes.  Then he would start asking questions and making suggestions of a more emotional nature.  For Kris, it’s not enough to just kill cancer.  You have got to get to the source.  I have always believed this.  Killing the cancer is all well and good, but if you don’t fix the problem at the root, that cancer will grow right back.  I already expressed how I believe that, for me, cancer has a huge emotional component.  So this really resonated with me.

He spoke to me about my body image and my inner child.  He made suggestions of books that might be enlightening for me. And all the while, he ran energy.  He was a polar opposite of Kurt, who has a more “scientific,” if you will, approach to energy healing … just the facts, Jack.  While Kris goes to a psychological level while addressing the physical.

Kris no longer works alongside Kurt.  He has branched out on his own and is doing a lot of work in Europe as well as the US.

To the hospital … STAT!

Posted: February 2, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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I saw my oncologist on April 11, 2011 after avoiding him for three months.  When he saw the condition I was in … emaciated, full of fluid, gray skin, sunken eyes … he told me I had to get down to the hospital right now.  I resisted.  I did not want to go to that hospital!  I’ve seen it way too many times with friends I’ve lost.  They would be holding their own, albeit ill, but then they’d get an infection of some sort and that was it.  They were gone.  I didn’t want that to be me.  I knew what they would do to me in that hospital.  I know how they treat blocked bowels.  Watched it with an ex and decided right then and there, I never wanted that to be me.  But now it was.  And way worse.

So down the mountain we drove and got me checked in.  I didn’t consciously realize that I was dying, but I knew I was in big trouble.  My younger brother, Brooks, had arrived for a visit two days prior and I don’t even remember him being there.  That’s how sick I was.  John was leading me where I needed to go but, for the most part, I laid on the couch with a bowl nearby cuz God knows I couldn’t get to the toilet in time if I got sick, which I was doing a bit these days.

Anyway, they got me all settled in and sequence of events became a blur after that.  I know what all happened to me, but I don’t have recollection of what came when.  I only know I was there for two weeks and it was horrible.  I had reached out to the people I considered my community, the people I had met through Karen, for prayer.  But Karen emailed me to tell me to stop spreading negativity to her group. Suddenly, I was dying and had lost the support of this community of which I had been a part for the past eight months. Negativity?  Yeah, I guess what was happening to me was negative … and no one knew that more so than I … but there was a big difference between telling people what’s going on and intentionally trying to spread negativity.  Not to mention, I was on too many drugs to hardly remember my own name, much less spend time thinking about people who didn’t even care.  But thankfully, though I felt abandoned and scared, I wasn’t alone.

Thank God for my husband, who lived right there in that room with me for the whole time.  Thank God for my bestie, Diana … who is also a CNA and was able to stay with me so John could go shower and get food … and who lovingly tended to my personal needs.  Thank God for my daughter who was there after work every single evening, without fail, even though our relationship was fragile at the time.  Thank God for my younger brother.  He expected a visit filled with fun and laughter, but instead watched his sister almost die … the strain on his face … but because he was here, my man could stay at the hospital with me because Brooks was tending to my dogs at home.  Thank God for my neighbor who sat with me and brought me pudding when I was too sick to ingest anything else.  Thank God for my former pastor and his wife … and the wonderful worshippers who came to me on Easter to give me an Easter even though I didn’t feel resurrected.  Thank God for the women who so selflessly made me hospital gowns and cleaned my house and brought food to my man.

So the first order of business was a naso-gastric tube.  That was the thing I had been dreading.  When one has a blocked intestine, nothing can pass and your intestines can rupture.  Much like a water hose with a kink in it.  So they have to put a tube through your nose, down your throat, into your stomach.  It is attached to a pump that sucks everything you swallow right back out again.  I was so scared to have that thing down my throat but I didn’t exactly have a choice.  To be fair, they did as good a job as they could have.  They numbed my sinuses and throat up really well.  That took the longest.  Probably about a half hour.  Then the tube was in in a matter of minutes.  No fun, but it didn’t kill me.  Then trying to relax with a tube stuck in your throat all the time is no easy task.  But that’s where I was.  Then the fun began.  Can you imagine vomiting around a silicone tube in your throat?  That’s not supposed to happen … that’s the point of an NG tube … to stop the vomiting from the backing up in your bowels.  But here I was puking my guts out for a good day before they decided something was amiss.  Since the anti-emetics weren’t working (yeah, no crap), they took me down to xray in misery.  Guess what?  The NG tube wasn’t in far enough!!!!!!  Reckon they could’ve figured that out about 12 hours ago and saved me a lot of pain????  Five minutes later, all was well.  Jeez.  Such a simple thing but no one took the time.

Next task was to get that fluid out of me so we could see what’s what.  They drained me and, once again, got seven litres of fluid out of my belly.  This was my fourth paracentesis.  Two the first time, and this was my second one this time.  After the fluid was gone, they were supposed to send those seven one-litre bottles of cancer juice to pathology so we could know exactly what it was so we’d know exactly how to best treat it.  Was it estrogen sensitive?  Progesterone?  Her2neu?  All these

Small intestine

Image via Wikipedia

come into play with treating breast cancer.  So my life depended on it because metastatic cancer can change its prognostic indicators in about half a New York minute.  The next day, two gals came into my room to inform me that somehow, some way, every bit of that fluid had been lost!  Gone, kaput, zapped, poof.  Just like that.  Now we had no idea what we were treating.  Their solution was a liver biopsy.  Yeah, I just had all that fluid sucked out, I needed surgery to repair my multiply blocked bowel, and now they wanted to take a piece of my liver?????  Thankfully, my oncologist and I were on the same page with that and decided against it.

Meanwhile, we had that pesky small intestine to deal with.  So off I went to surgery that was supposed to take a while.  Thirty minutes later, I was done.  ’Scuse the language, but *ucked is more like it.  It was just that serious.  I had cancer everywhere in there.  In the peritoneum, on the small intestine, large intestine, stomach, and liver.  Blockages in multiple places.  The surgeon took pictures and closed me back up.  I was still unconscious, but all my loved ones dismissed to the parking lot, crying and smoking, certain Mom was a goner because there was no way chemo was gonna go down with me.

Not all created equal

Posted: February 2, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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By summer of 2010, my numbers were on the move again in the wrong direction.  Back to the drawing board … what now? Meanwhile, a friend of mine from across the internet sent me an email asking if I’d heard of the Emerald Heart Foundation and sent me the link.  I was intrigued and called up the founder to see what they had going on.  The Foundation was in its infancy then, so they didn’t have much going on at the time, but we started chatting about what each of us thought had helped us the most as she was a Stage IV survivor herself.  Without hesitancy, I said, “My energy healer.”  She said, “Me too.”  So we shared info and hers happened to be an hour away, so I could get to her easily.  I got her contact info and gave her a call.

I started working with Karen Korona in July 2010 and we worked together through eight months and roughly $24k.  When I first contacted her, I had the image of Kurt and Louis in my head.  I was seeking physical help and she assured me she could teach me to heal myself.  I believed that then and I believe that now, so that sounded great to me.  I expected a session when we had our first phone appointment, but she told me that she works during the night-time, while the patient is sleeping.  One part of me thought, “Suuuuuure she does.  That’s a pretty easy way to make $165 for an hour of sleep time.”  But my new friend said Karen had saved her life and had told me her story about how she even moved across the country to have closer access.  That’s how highly she thought of Karen.  So I figured I’d try it.

I couldn’t feel her work during the night, but I didn’t expect to.  I would wake up the following morning in a good bit of pain and she said it was detox, which was a reasonable explanation.  But that was only after she had asked how I felt.  Kind of seemed to me that, since she was the only one who knew what she did to me, she would know if I was experiencing pain or not.  But that didn’t seem to be the case.  I went to visit her in August for our first “intensive.”  That is where I get a motel room and pretty much spend the day with her for several days.  She did do hands-on energy work and we would do this for the mornings.  We’d break for lunch, then come back and do some Kundalini yoga.  She would give me visualizations to work on, sending energy to my organs in the right colors and with the right sounds.  I learned about chakras and how to clear them and keep them that way.  I was getting into an area that I really hadn’t sought.  I was there for physical healing, but this was quickly turning into something spiritual, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted.  Even so, there was enough truth, and similarity of belief, that I would just sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  I’d take what I needed and leave the rest.  Cuz, no offense to anyone Hindu, but that ain’t me.  I have a hard enough time with one deity, much less hundreds.  I carefully chose my approach to those things like making sure I knew the meaning of any chants and, if they didn’t line up with what I believed, I didn’t chant them.

When we worked together, she could certainly do some energy clearing.  I could go into her house feeling like I was about to explode and, after an hour of her work, I felt like all was right with the world.  That woman was like energetic valium.  But one can’t just move in with her to stay in her energy field.  I was beginning to think she could be just as addictive as valium.  Since then I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps I was just being brainwashed.  She was holding a couples and healing retreat, on Kauai, in October that year and John and I decided to go as well.  I have to say this was the highlight of my time working with Karen.  The two weeks we spent there were transformational in so many ways.

By the time we got to Hawaii, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to travel.  My numbers were going up slowly and my body was going slowly down.  I was slowly dropping weight and getting weaker.  By October, I was pretty damn weak, but I managed to get there.  We would get up at 0530 for some morning meditations, then we would drink a cleansing beverage and reunite for a couple of hours of Karen’s Kundalini/pilates hybrid which was kickass!  Then we would have breakfast and have free time from about 11 to 3 each day, but that time almost always involved an assignment and limited communication like grunting … or silence.  Being in a group, in silence, or unable to use words, is a challenging exercise!  It sounds silly, but it really was an effective way to become aware of how much energy we waste, every single day, with just blabbering.  When your communication is constricted, you have to be very selective which words you put to voice because you have to choose the best ones to get your point across.  It emphasized how much of our communication was without thought.  Then we would have a group assignment in the afternoon, followed by meditation, followed by dinner, followed by us sitting on the floor listening to Karen teach.

The whole time there was enlightening and wonderful and strengthening, but again, I couldn’t be near her forever.  Well, I guess I could if I had had unlimited finances, but that was not the case.  As my disease progressed, and she kept telling me I was healing and I just needed to surrender, I told her that we had saved a certain amount of money for if I needed to go to a clinic.  We addressed this with her multiple times.  We were spending the money we had saved with her, but we were quickly coming to the end of it.  I asked her if, at any point, she saw that this was too much for us, she would tell me.  I could always go conventional and bring in more fire power.  She promised.  I believed her.  Despite what my ever-declining body was telling me.

The first quarter of 2011 brought about a cancer explosion in my body.  Everything blew up all at once.  Markers raced upward, belly pain was returning, fluid re-accumulating.  John and I were quickly running out of money as I was getting worse. We asked her if she would consider some pro bono, or half-price work at this point, but she wasn’t willing to do that despite the fact that I was getting sicker.  The fact was I was dying but no one said a word.

By April, I had been hiding out from my oncologist because I knew he’d slap me silly but I was trying to “get out of my head” and do things differently than I had ever done.  Now that it was apparent I was receiving no help from my healer, I asked the rest of the group for prayer and disconnected from Karen.  I finally had an appointment with Dr Headley on April 11.  I only returned home to pack clothes.  It was just that fast.  Hospital-bound and in more trouble than I’d ever been in in my life.

Kurt Peterson and CancerTouch

Posted: February 1, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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It was about this time I was reading on the CancerCured forum and there was a discussion on energy healers … are they real or not?  One woman had replied that a man named Kurt Peterson had saved her life and that I could read about him on CancerTouch, his website.  She had lung cancer.  I emailed and asked her if she would be willing to share her experience, cuz I needed help fast, especially seeing what ascites means!  She sent me her phone number, I called, and we chatted about him and her experience with him for a couple of hours.  When she first went to him, she was on oxygen and not able to do much.  Only a month after treatment, she was outside helping her husband move rock, which is a major miracle.  She just couldn’t talk about him enough.  Now, he don’t come cheap, but he was going to be in Vegas just a month away, and those sessions were subsidized by CancerTouch and the proceeds were going to charity, so they were discounted. He just happened to have one slot left.  Just another coincidence?  SOLD!

We headed to Vegas on Aug 2.  Vincent was laughing at me.  His scientific mind just couldn’t allow for something so woo woo.  What kind of energy?  How is it quantified?  Lord, I doanno!!!!  But something in me … that intuition that was beginning to take hold … said, screw it!  Let’s do it!  Vegas was a gambling town after all, wasn’t it?  So off we went, to the Luxor, to meet Mr Kurt Peterson.

One doesn’t really know what to expect an energy healer to look like.  Louis was kind of a hippy sort of guy … bandana-ed and barefoot … a free spirit.  This guy looked like my doctor!  He wore dress pants and a freshly pressed, button-down shirt and stood well over six feet tall.  A very engaging man, Kurt immediately put us at ease.  He sat us down in his suite, offered us coffee/tea/water and then we spent the first hour just chatting and getting to know each other.  Next I undressed to my undies, wrapped myself in a blanket, and spent the rest of the day on a cot in his suite, while my husband hung out with us.  The first thing he did was to “scan” me starting with my feet and working his way up to my head, one inch at a time.  Kurt can “see” the difference between cancerous and healthy tissue, so I say he’s a sort of human thermogram.  He sees cancerous tissue as one color and healthy tissue as another.  Anyway, that process took about an hour while he scanned and took notes.  Afterward, he reviewed with us what he had found.  It was pretty widespread throughout my abdomen and skeleton, which I already knew.

Then we went to work.  My only job was to lie there relaxed while he put his hands on the spots that needed his attention.  While Reiki energy is a light, balancing energy, this is a whole different animal.  I compare Kurt’s style of work with gamma knife radiation.  He can send energy right to the spot and zap it.  He talks about in his early days when he could send the energy, but he had no control of where it went … how deep or how shallow.  But then a Peruvian shaman mentor of his taught him how to send it to a specific depth in the body and no deeper.  He said that’s when things really changed in his practice and took his ability to help others to a different level.  He worked his way through all my hot spots, which took about an hour-and-a-half, then we took a break.  We repeated this sequence several times … until the areas in question had heated up to let him know they had had enough.  That took about eight hours total.  We broke every hour or so and had a very nice lunch in the suite together.

As I said earlier, I don’t feel energy going through me, so I had no way of knowing what had happened, or didn’t happen.  Except that we went down for dinner and, by about 7, I felt like I was going to fall asleep at the table.  I told John I needed to get back to the room.  I was dead asleep by 9:00, which is crazy for me as I don’t sleep well at all.  I slept until wee hours when I was awakened by intense abdominal spasming.  It finally subsided and I had planned to do a little shopping before we headed home the next day.  But I felt like I had been taking narcotics that whole day.  I didn’t shop one iota.  All I did was lie on the bed, watch tv, and sleep.  So while I had no idea what had just happened to me, something sure had upset my apple cart!

The next day we drove back to California and I felt fine from that point on.   The following week, I had my ascites fluid drained (paracentesis).  They sucked seven litres of fluid out of my belly and I was instantly 15 pounds lighter!  Hey, there’s a quick weight-loss regimen … 15 pounds in an hour!

You already know how end-stage ascites is considered.  Well here’s another factoid … you drain it and it comes right back.  Immediately.  This was the second time I had had this procedure and the first time, it was all back in place within 48 hours.  Not this time.  Two days came and went … no fluid.  A week … two … four … no fluid!  I knew I was on the right track. I had my labs drawn and my markers had dropped by half!!!!!  Oh my freakin heavens!!!  I had had nothing but numbers going up, up, up for the past two years!  And now?  This man puts his hands on me for 8 hours and bingo?  This was the first break I’d had in the cancer action.  This dropping continued thru the beginning of 2010.  All of my numbers had dropped into normal limits except for one.  And it was only 3 points out of range.  Kurt Peterson saved my life!  If there is any doubt about the legitimacy of energy healing, I’m here to tell you, it’s real.  At least in Kurt’s case.  If not for him, I would’ve passed in late 2009 or early 2010.  In February 2010, we trekked, once again, to Vegas to see Kurt because I was so close to remission and I was starting to stagnate just outside of remission.  He wanted to see if we could finish this thing off.  After my second treatment, some markers went up while others went down, so there was not much response at all that time.  But I was still pretty stable all the way through till May 2010.  I have affectionately named his modality “Kurtotherapy,” and let me tell you, it’s a damn sight easier than chemotherapy!

Of course, there are those to whom this may all seem like placebo.  I’ve heard that before.  But the only thing I have to say about that is placebo is based on belief in the modality.  I believed in Budwig.  I believed in everything I did with Vincent.  But nothing had made a dent until this.  Not the supplements, healing teas, cancer vaccines, trips to Mexico, nor the nutrition.  Sure they had done me good.  But they hadn’t stopped the big wheel from turning.  Ding, ding, ding … another big clue in my world.

So now what?

Posted: January 31, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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At this point, I was already past my expiration date, so to speak.  While it was wonderful that I was still chugging along, disease was also still chugging along, despite thousands of dollars, my best research, and others’ best attempts.  By now I had developed a condition called malignant ascites.

“Malignant ascites can occur in patients with colon, pancreatic, breast, and lung primaries with the development of peritoneal carcinomatosis.202 The life expectancy of such patients is generally limited to weeks to months after the onset of ascites. Of the three major complications of liver cirrhosis—hepatic encephalopathy, ascites, and variceal hemorrhage—ascites is the most common.203 The development of ascites in the natural history of chronic liver disease in the absence of malignancy is an important landmark as approximately 50% of patients with ascites succumb in 2 years.204”   (Holland-Frei Cancer Medicine. 6th Edition. Kufe DW, Pollock RE, Weichselbaum RR, et al., editors. Hamilton [ON]: BC Decker; 2003.)

As you can see, this is considered a very end-stage process.  I was looking like I was six months pregnant by this time but without the hormone cascade to handle it.  Wow, how can I begin to tell you what ascites feels like?  For me, it involved about seven litres of fluid all compressed in a small-framed abdominal cavity, squishing all my organs and pressing everything upward.  Aches, pains … like a pregnant woman in her last month, but no baby … just cancer juice.  Acid reflux was constant, and my appetite started to dwindle.  Where before I was miserable at family functions because there was so much I wanted to eat and couldn’t, now there was so much to eat but I didn’t want it.  Now, the mainstream medical world will put you on proton pump inhibitors and all sorts of nasty things to stop heartburn.  But honestly, it is more of a lack of acid than an overabundance of it.  I know it sounds weird, but there is a lot of data out there to support that and any natural medicine practitioner will tell you the same.  If you can possibly help it, do not take the drugs for heartburn.  A better solution is betaine hydrochloride or any of the plethora of natural acid relief products out there.

What used to be a navel is now a dent

At this point, however, I had no choice.  That esophageal acid irritation is dangerous too and I had to stop it.  Plus I really didn’t want to eat with all that fire in there.  So Pepcid became my new buddy.  Here is where it gets challenging.  My head knew that Pepcid wasn’t in my best interest, but my body was miserable and I was really worried about my esophagus.  I had to sleep on an incline because I would wake up choking on bile in the night.  So yeah, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do and just be OK with it. I’ve learned so much about that particular attitude.

Those of you who know me know I used to be really rigid.  So when I was having to use something I knew wasn’t “good” for me, everything in me resisted even though I was doing it.  At this point, I was starting to feel like one of those clown punching bags.  You know, the kind us boomers used to have as kids that you could wallop.  They’d fall down and bounce right back up.  Well that was me.  I kept getting bad news after bad news after bad news and kept bouncing right back up again.  I just needed a break in the action so I could catch my breath.  I just had no relief.  I was having labs done every month and the numbers kept rising and rising, telling me that every pill I swallowed was a waste of time.  Vincent kept telling me to be patient and not be hasty because, after all, I should’ve been dead and I wasn’t.  But after a year or so, and no measurable results, I was getting quite restless and anxious.  Vincent can tell you that … I drove him crazy!

All while I was seeing Vincent, I had discovered a wonderful massage therapist who was also a Reiki master.  I had never heard of energy work or Reiki at all.  I had gone to the massage therapist because of some immobility from a previously broken collarbone.  My shoulder was all frozen and full of knots, so we worked together for quite some time.  During that time, we talked about many things, the most of which was energy.  I had always been curious about why people believed what they believed anyway, and seeing that many Christians are real leery of anything that isn’t specified in the Bible, I hadn’t heard much about it.

This was the next piece of the puzzle for me.  And so cool how it came about.  I was seeking relief from my shoulder pain and I typically look out in town (as opposed to on the military base) for them because military bases typically don’t have massage therapists.  But this one did.  I only found them because I googled massage therapists in my area.  This one came up with a base phone number, so of course, closer is better.  I called and that was that.  For some reason. Vandenberg had contracted for masseuses there.  And that masseuse changed my life.  Did you know that, Louis?  You changed my life, dude!

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