I just reviewed the blog and realized I have not posted a significant change in my therapy. So before I can share what is new, I must update you on what I thought you already knew. Whoops - Sorry!A couple of weeks ago, the pain following my enemas became too much to bear. In addition, I have had an increase in the pain I feel on a daily basis. The possibility that the post-enema pain and/or the night time pain is a flare-up is highly unlikely because it is the same pain I have experienced since the pain began on October. The only difference is that it is more intense and most recently, accompanied by pain that feels like pulled muscles inside and outside of my behind. Not the area one wants to experience a pulled muscle. Not that anywhere is the area one wants to experience a pulled muscle.
The only effective remedy I have found is pharmaceutical pain killers. As a Gerson patient, this is not the route I want to go. And I do have non-pharmaceutical pain management techniques that work well, but let's be honest - I can only handle so much pain. Every evening when the sun goes down, the pain increases and I take a dose and it holds me over until the next morning when there is only pain from sitting or standing, so I lay down or use my recliner and have no need for pharmaceuticals. As you can imagine, doing enemas provided no pain relief and only made it worse. Sitz baths provided some pain relief, but I can no longer sit on a cushion that long without pain. So, if I do a sitz bath, my behind is sore in a different spot - equally as painful.
So. What I am doing is taking pain killers every evening and simply allowing my muscles to rest and possibly heal from the strain. It seems as though retaining the enemas strained my muscles, because the tumor causes some sort of interference with the muscles which results in a signal sent to the brain to open the gates. So, in order to retain the enema, I use a variety of techniques - deep breathing, visualization, books on tape (to distract) - which are in essence forcing the muscles to retain the enema. I believe this is the source of the strained muscles.
While I wait and see if the muscles will heal, I am doing three juices a day and Dr. Cervantes has made some changes in my supplements in order to make up for the lack of enemas and keep up at least some of the liver cleansing. This is not a permanent solution, but it is a temporary one to what I hope is a temporary problem.
All that being said, I am going in for a colonoscopy on Friday March 14th during which the doctor will do a biopsy. Apparently, it is not impossible for PET scans to reveal false positives with rectal cancer. I don't think the numbers are enormous - we ain't talkin' controversy - but they are high enough that we feel it is important to have a biopsy done to determine if the cells are cancerous. Now that may seem a bit odd - why wouldn't the cells be cancerous? Few people I know have any experience with healing cancer naturally and considering the significant change in my current status as a Gerson patient, it is well worth it to be 100% certain about a cancer presence or lack there of as we move forward and make whatever decisions are to be made in the near future.
Fortunately, the doctor doing the sigmoidoscopy is the same doctor who did it last year. I look forward to his comparison of last years notes. I will also ask him to look and see if anything else could be causing the recent increase in pain. Friday's colonoscopy will provide a far better view than what was seen with the scope on February 28th, because the colonoscopy requires me to fast and take a couple truck loads of laxatives to completely clean me out. Okay. Maybe it's only a box of laxatives. On the 28th, there was no fasting nor any other pre-visit prep. Kind of like looking at Golden Gate Bridge when the fog's a as thick as pea soup - you're seeing something, but you're not seeing everything.
Hopefully the pre-colonoscopy prep on Thursday will be easier than it was last year. Last year's colonoscopy preparation consisted of the same fasting but it also included four laxative tablets followed by another laxative called Glycolax Powder which did a real number on me. I spent the evening on the toilet bowl and the rest of the night wrapped around it. The stuff was purging me from both ends. I slept on the bathroom floor - pillow and blanket. This time it's only a laxative called Senna: only 15 tablets at 1 pm & only 15 more at 9 pm. Let's hope these things do me better than the Glycolax Powder. And by the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, I do tend to respond pretty intensely to whatever treatment I happen to be receiving.
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