Archive for holistic

A lot on my mind the last few days

Monday, January 11th, 2010

A lot on my mind the last few days. I went in and had a check up with my oncologist and had my blood drawn and my port flushed on Thursday. Dr. Zukerman seemed surprised by my decision to continue to stay off of the chemo and even more surprised and how good my white blood cells and anemia looked. He felt my abdomen for longer than usual and then said “This actually feels really good, can you bring in all the stuff that you are taking? I am very interested.” I was glad to hear that but my holistic Dr. had told me to be prepared for ups and downs and not to be discouraged if it came back slightly higher so when they called me Friday and told me it had dropped to 67 I almost exploded! I was shaking and so excited. Tina and Sunnie were doing cartwheels and my dad held my hand for a while as we took it all in. It was great to have him there when I got the news. The whole trip over to Ephrata (moses lake area) was great. It was just he and I and we haven’t gotten to do that in such a long time. I was so grateful for the quality time and was honored when he said that he was very proud of how I have handled this situation. As a little girl I longed for his approval and couldn’t have gotten it at a better time.

We got to Ephrata around dinner time on Friday and enjoyed a nice dinner with the Munro family and attended the funeral for Sage on Saturday. I feel so deeply for his son as I understand how it is to lose your dad as a kid and to have so many questions. It was overall a very nice trip and Fawn came home with us last night.

We just got home from Hawaii and it was an amazing trip! We snorkeled, snuba’d, saw whales and dolphins and ate amazing fresh foods. Because of my anemia, lack of hair and weight loss I am always cold so it was so nice to feel warm for a while. The condo that Dr. Gardner donated was beautiful and sat right on the beach with many pools and activities. We can’t thank him enough for his generosity and all the others who did the fundraiser for our family trip. It was so great to not feel sick and be able to enjoy my kids and be active. I was still tired frequently but had much more energy than when I was in full blown chemo. I am so glad that the holistic stuff appears to be having some effect. I have been seeing Mark quite a bit and he has done urine samples, bloodwork and saliva testing and put together a very strict diet for me. It is very limited and difficult but I am trying! I can’t have any gluten grains, flour, sugar, vinegar, tomatoes, pork, milk etc… It makes life very difficult. I eat a lot of veggies, red potatoes and organic EVERYTHING if I can help it. It is very expensive but my cancer cell counts have dropped over 120 points in the last 5 weeks. This is better than the chemo has done alone and I am so grateful.

I had to go get ostomy supplies today and they are SO expensive. After a 20% discount they were still $230 for 10 wafers and 60 pouches. I’ll be lucky if they last me 3-4 weeks. Its days like this that I am so grateful for all the donors! Each time I go to the pharmacy or to get ostomy supplies I am so grateful that I don’t have to think this money is coming out of groceries or Christmas for my kids.

Speaking of Christmas I need to finish my shopping! I am hoping to go down with my friend Tina tomorrow and get it all finished up. Rilynn told Santa that she wants a violin and Mekaty wants reindeer horns. I don’t know that Aanta will be finding either of those :) I think he will find something that they will both like. Time to go unpack and put our summer stuff back in their boxes for a while…