Posts Tagged ‘United States’

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.

Another weekend of reconnections

Posted: February 26, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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Last weekend I reconnected with one of my first cousins … she’s a year older than I and is my father’s brother’s daughter.  She just happens to live in the same neighborhood as my brother-in-law’s family where we’re staying while I’m being treated.  How ironic is that?  She’s just around the corner from them and we reconnected last Friday night over wine and pizza.

Frances, me and Emilie

My father had another brother as well and he had a daughter who is a year younger than I.  I haven’t seen that girl since we were about 12 years old.  The three of us used to run all over the place at family functions.  Three daughters of three brothers … all within two years in age.  But those wonderful days didn’t last … my father’s family of origin was twisted as an old corkscrew.

My grandmother was a real piece of work and she passed that on to her three boys.  They, in turn, propagated that on their daughters.  We called our grandmother MaaMaa (probably spelled MaMa, but wanted to give you the right pronunciation … much like a sheep bleating) because she couldn’t bear to be called Gramma or whatever like that.  She completely alienated our mothers and we no longer reunited as we had as children.

I knew all about my branch of the Patton tree’s special flavor of … well, shall we say … eccentricity.  But I didn’t know about these other branches after we parted ways.  So the third cousin came to town this weekend and we all reconnected and it was just wonderful!  We laughed till our cheeks hurt . We shared our own flavors of eccentricity and found it all so interesting!  It really left me with such a sense of bafflement (is that a word?) wondering what on earth happened in MaMa’s family of origin to twist her up as badly as she was.  What happened to her?  I saw, for the first time, pictures of her as a young woman and she was beautiful.  Her eyes were so peaceful and serene … but I know from being raised by her son, that serenity and peace was the last thing going on behind those eyes.  She had eight siblings, four of whom were brothers.  I never knew she had brothers until this month because those sisters never spoke to those brothers.  I met my great aunts back in the day, but didn’t even know I had great uncles. So what happened to you, Mama?

It has been such an amazing thing, spending time with these women and my favorite aunt, who is more spry than I, even though she is 30 years older!  They are my family.  Family that I haven’t known in years.  And it feels so good to be back with them, in the South of my childhood, with all the Southern accents flying around!  Good heavens, I’m even drawling like I never left!  Of course, I’m the North Carolina girl … we’re a little tangy-er … a little more country than the genteel, Georgia Southern.  Hide the silver, y’all … the country cousin’s in town!  Oh, it is just so good!

Rebuilding and Reflecting

Posted: February 4, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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This was one tremendous shift in my learning.  All of the head knowledge I had attained over the past decade was largely for nought for me.  But it was not a waste of my time.  It was all part of the trail of breadcrumbs that I can now see in hindsight. If you had pointed me to Kurt’s website when I was first diagnosed, I would’ve looked at it, sure.  But I would’ve immediately scoffed and moved on like many people do.  I would not have been ready for it.  But God had been working on me in so many ways, slowly, insistently, subtly cracking open my mind tiny bit by tiny bit.

But then there’s that exorbitant price tag.  Sure.  But let me explain two things.  First, have you ever seen an explanation of benefits for a chemo infusion?  Yeah, just one little infusion costs way more than an entire day with Kurt or Kris.  And once is never enough with chemo.  Secondly, thanks to my work with Louis, now I knew how much of  a toll it takes on the healer to focus precious energy that intensely, into another person’s body, for that extreme an amount of time.  And then to get up and do it all over again?  Plus the travel and constantly being away from his own family?  I don’t know.  The man gave me my life back in a miraculous way and, in my opinion, that was worth every dime.

From a rigidly Christian perspective, those Christians who put limits on God … like I used to be … this might have been an evil thing and one that could jeopardize my very soul.  Dark energy … evil.  I mentioned that to Kurt once.  He threw his head back and laughed and said, “How could healing a brain tumor in a 12-year-old ever be evil?”  Ya know, he had me there.  There was no evil in my getting well … none whatsoever.  And thankfully my soul is still in my body.  If I hadn’t taken God out of His box two-and-a-half years ago, I’m not sure I would be able to say that now.

And now I was on weekly chemotherapy.  That evil chemotherapy.  It cannot heal anything.  Its sole mission is to destroy.  But my life was being restored to me in ways I had forgotten about.  My energy and stamina picked up, as well as my strength. The previous summer, I had such muscle weakness, I couldn’t even groom my horse.  But now I was out there grooming, playing with, riding … and I even had two camping weekends over the summer!  What a glorious miracle that was! Statistically speaking, chemotherapy gives tumor shrinkage, but that doesn’t always equate to increased time on the planet.  So the benefits, IMO, are typically not worth the side effects.  But such was not the case for me at all.  Once more, a miracle was happening in my world.  I would’ve been dead by this time, so this chemo definitely was extending life in my case.

My oncologist is a hoot.  Here he had talked me into all this therapy that he knew was not the way I roll … and I was coming back to life before his very eyes.  Months later, he asked me, “Did you think we’d ever see this day?”  I was doing so well and I told him no.  He said, “Yeah, I wasn’t too sure either.  Not sure at all.” Ooooooh I wish he had never told me that.  Now I know he has a serious poker face and we might need to make a tough decision together again one day.  Sure wish I didn’t know that part. But he humors me like a kind grandfather and acts as though he thinks the things I come up with are … well … probably more eccentric than ridiculous.  I guess, once one is four years past one’s expiration date, he can afford to let me run wherever I please.  He asks thoughtful questions about each and every modality I throw at him.  And then he says, “Whatever.”  The last time he said that to me, I told him, “Seriously?  Are you really going to say that to me?  You know I don’t respond like anyone else does.”  He had been walking out of the room and he whipped back around and said, “I know I say whatever.  But I also say I can’t argue with success and success is what is standing right in front of me.”  Guess he shut me up!

So what lesson could I take away from all of this conventional vs alternative experience?  The first time around, I nearly destroyed myself with toxic treatments.  I will never have pectoral muscles again from radiation to both sides of my chest. Secondary cancers are a huge risk as well.  Then I started reading and went to the opposite end of the spectrum and would not entertain anything remotely smacking of conventional cancer treatment.  It was toxic; it was deadly; it didn’t heal.  But here I was feeling better than I had felt for years.    Here’s my big lesson.  Yes, chemotherapy is toxic and natural therapies are not.  I still would not use chemotherapy as my “go to” stance in treating cancer.  My opinion is that chemo is extreme and should be used in extreme cases.  For me, it is a tool and should be used as such.

The way the conventional world typically treats metastatic patients goes like this.  They consider metastatic cancer incurable. So they don’t really try because now it becomes a fine line between quality of life and extending your life.  They don’t give you the extreme, “curative” doses of chemotherapy because it will make you really sick and won’t cure you anyway.  It becomes a balancing act.  They typically will not give you chemo cocktails (mixtures of drugs) now because they’re more difficult.  Now you get single agent chemos, for the most part, which are easier, but may not hurt your cancer as badly … not curing you, but keeping you alive a bit longer.   And when your cancer outsmarts the drug you are using, and it always does once it is metastatic, you move to another drug.  Until you run out of options.

I didn’t want to live that life.  I have learned that I have a pretty decent intuition in what to pursue and what not to pursue in my therapy.  I am slowly learning to trust that and not be afraid of it.  I have learned that when the fight has you on the ropes and your opponent pummeling the crap out of your face, you have two choices.  You can either go down for the count, or you can unleash something extreme to get that opponent off you so you can get back in the fight.  A tool to be used selectively. Unleash it, back off the enemy, then resume your style of fighting.

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.

The trauma

Posted: January 29, 2012 in Breast Cancer, Spiritual/Emotional/Energetic
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The year before I was diagnosed with those mets, I had a huge trauma in my life.  My mother and I had been best friends all my life.  I was an only girl in a family full of men, so you can imagine I was quite spoiled by my brothers and adored by my mother.  She was my intercessor, my defender when things got bad with my dad, which they did quite frequently.  Most often, I would see her positioned, standing literally between him and I.  Well, she transitioned out of her body in Mar 2004.  I was there.  I had never been with anyone as they left their body and I had no idea what to expect.  Those around me were in panic mode and kept disappearing for what seemed like hours on end and I really felt alone with the whole thing.  It was the only passing I’ve witnessed to this point.

I was, at her insistence, executor of her estate and while other family members could find their ways of escape, I had work to do.  All the prior assurances of the help I would receive fell by the wayside when the reality  hit.  I had to call creditors, find out how much debt she had, find out how much asset she had, and how to match them all up. Then came flying the body back to SC for burial and making sure things went smoothly.  A quick anecdote … I went to check on things at the funeral home before the viewing.  I looked at my mother and they had done her up in true old lady style … curling ironed ringlets on her head and pale peach lipstick and nail polish.  Anyone who ever knew my mother knew she would never be (and yes, I said this to the funeral director) caught dead with that on her!  So I had him take me back to the makeup, I took that pale peachy crap off her lips and put the most vivid red I could find on her.  That was my Momma.  All full of color, life, laughter, and love.  Anyway where was I?  Oh yeah, and grieve the loss of the most important person in my life.  To top that off, a mere four months later, we had PCS orders again.  A very stressful, painful, traumatic time and I had to handle all the work associated with it.

Now, to my knowledge, the United States is the only culture in the world that doesn’t have healers.  We have the FDA and doctors.  Not that they’re always bad, but there is a lot of intermingling going on, so we have to be our own healthcare advocates.  Anyway, those other cultures, Eastern and Ayurveda in particular, see tumors as a sort of red flag … an attempt, on the body’s behalf, to call our attention to something that needs work.  Sort of like the check engine light on a car.  Something that has been trying to get our attention and we just ignore it and keep on going.  That something, according to these culture, is usually something emotionally traumatic. 

There is a German man, named Hamer, who theorizes that all disease is related to emotional trauma.  And he takes it one step further.  He associates specific traumas with specific cancers.  For example, breast cancer is always a mommy issue.  I didn’t have mommy issues … or did I?  I’ll tell you about that later.  And I had already contracted cancer by the time she passed, so I quickly ruled that out as the cause of my original cancer … that was then.  But then, and even now, I’m pretty damn certain that what caused the cancer, that was laying dormant, to reappear with a vengeance, was the trauma of her passing and the void it left, combined with the stress of executing her estate and that move to Idaho.  I was exhausted emotionally and physically, I was wounded, and that set the stage for more serious disease to move right in.