Feeling Better

I figured out why I was experiencing this "new pain" I mentioned in my August 27th entry. I had been soaking in a hot tub every day for about the last week. Two days ago, I stopped the hot baths to see if it would make a difference. Well, it did. It seems the added heat to my body was affecting the area where the tumor was found [I'm no longer going to refer to the said tumor in present tense, since for all I know, it's packed its bags and sailed to China and I'm just dealing with the after effects].

While at the clinic, I learned that hot baths are used to increase the temperature of the blood. This will expand the blood vessels, which in my case, is a bad idea because what ever is happening in my rectum then becomes less protected since expanded blood vessels can rupture when irritated [pass!]. So, no more baths for me unless I can handle a cool bath which almost seems like a good idea...almost. And in the mean time, my pain has nearly vanished.

Update

I've been feeling a lot of discomfort lately: my legs have ached every day for the last week or so from the hips down - muscles & joints (oddly enough). Right now the bottoms of my feet hurt along with minor leg aches; I am having a lot of discomfort where the cancer was located last Spring - soreness and pretty consistent aching; my sacrum stings every morning when I wake up (then I ice it and the pain subsides...usually).

So, naturally, I have been getting a little curious about these aches and pains, and sometimes a little concerned. And then...I spoke to the husband of my friend who started Gerson Therapy the same time I did - the one I mentioned in my August 24, 2007 entry, whose cancer is going away. He told me that his wife was in a lot of pain prior to finding out that the cancer was going away. She was in enough pain consistently that she began to question the therapy (sounds familiar), only to remember what they teach us at the clinic: Gerson Therapy is not comfortable. Gerson Therapy can hurt. It's all a part of the detox/healing process. So, what I am experiencing is very likely my body healing. It feels like it is and that means a lot.

I currently have a sigmoidoscopy, CAT scan & PET scan being scheduled for mid-September to find out how my healing process is going. I am very much looking forward to these tests, especially after hearing about how well my friend is doing.

IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's part of an email I received this evening from a friend who I met at the the Baja Nutricare Clinic in Mexico. It's an email about this wife's current status.

"First, a little history. As you might remember she has a reoccurrence of breast cancer. This time they found several lymph nodes deep in her chest that had started to flare up and also they found several hot spots in many areas of the bone structure."


After three months of Gerson Therapy:

"The scans showed that a lot of these lymph nodes were either resolved (free of cancer) or they can barely see them in the scan (reduced in size considerably). The bone scan showed areas where the disease no longer existed and other areas where it was considerably minimized. And get this, just like we had read on the book and like Doctor Cervantes had indicated; her tumor markers went up for three months in a row at an incredible rate (not good if you believe in modern medicine) and then this month all of the sudden the markers started to go down. The Oncologist has not said anything, but I know he can not explain it. I clearly remember him telling us before we decided to go to Tijuana, that all he could do was try to stop the disease from progressing but whatever damage was already done it could not be reversed."

"Boy was he wrong. IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


What an incredible email to receive. I am SO happy for them!!!

On a Positive Note

I thought I might give ya'll an idea of one of the things I like to do when I'm not healing myself of cancer. Route 5 is a band of mine that's had many incarnations. Currently I only play my guitar here at the house (not to mention the fact that the other two members of our acoustic trio no longer live anywhere near by!). I love to write songs, play guitar and sing as much as I can.

If you care to have listen, I can't promise you Grade A recording quality - three of the four recordings are live - but you can get an earful of some fun stuff that we performed not too long ago by clicking on the Route 5 logo (right there at the top of this entry) which will take you to my very plain and unevolved Myspace page. Our CD was in the process of being mixed, but that got put on pause until I am on the other side of this little distraction.

Relief

Today, (emotionally) I feel great. Relaxed. Safe. It seems my fear was being kept alive by my need to suppress it. So it seems. For all I know...well, I'll see. And I'll let you know. In the mean time, I feel great today. However, physically I am uncomfortable. My sacrum muscles ache and the pain is directly related to the three coffee breaks (enemas) I do each day.

Last night I woke up sometime after 3 AM due to the pain. I woke up a second time at 5:45 AM and was up for the day - icing then heating the sore area. I also had an acupuncture treatment this afternoon which has made a difference. This evening I will receive an oil free massage. Massage is not recommended when healing with Gerson Therapy; it releases proteins from the muscles that can then feed the cancer. However, if the sacral pain continues, I will have to go to two coffee breaks instead of three and when it comes to coffee breaks, more is better. So, I will receive the massage for pain reduction so I can continue my prescribed therapy. Oil of course is prohibited in Gerson Therapy because oils feed cancer. So, as I said, I will have an oil free massage. And I am very much looking forward to it.

Reality

This afternoon, as I prayed for healing - for my body to heal fully and completely - I began to cry. And quickly my praying led to begging. It totally caught me by surprise. I got so scared that this cancer is not going to slow down.

Fear has continued to show up throughout this whole experience. I express it and share it - whatever feels right - so it doesn't just sit inside me. But lately, I have been resisting it - not wanting to acknowledge my fear - in hopes that it would disappear. I thought if I felt afraid, it would mean I had been beaten, so I replaced my fear with positive thoughts. This afternoon with the help of a new friend, Megan, I remembered something I learned quite a while ago: Courage is not fearlessness. Courage is being afraid and taking action anyway.

On my Saturday August 11th entry, I mentioned the heartbreak I felt about cancer and for those who are diagnosed. Today I realized it's more personal than that for me. Before I was diagnosed, it never dawned on me that I could get cancer. I believed that because I was in great shape, ate well, worked hard, "did the right thing" in the world and for my family (and occasionally drank a little more than necessary), that I would live a long healthy life, uninterrupted by such things. Once I was diagnosed and got present to how real this is, I was heartbroken - I just didn't know it. It broke my heart that the "world" I lived in, or my reality, was not the real world. In the world I lived in, healthy, 36-year old men did not get cancer. In the real world, "healthy" 36-year old men do get cancer. And when I came to terms with that - that the real world was not as safe as I thought - it broke my heart. And to tell you the truth - right now - I still don't particularly care for it. But don't worry. That doesn't include you. I like you just fine.

A Little Something on Max Gerson

Here's a short article I found on Max Gerson. I like it. It's clear and concise. Here's the link to the article on LifeSaving Health if you would like to read it along with additional information.

Max Gerson, the originator of the holistic nutritional therapy now known as The Gerson Therapy, was born in Wongrowitz, Posen, Germany (now Poland) in 1881. Throughout his German university and medical education, he suffered terribly from migraine headaches, which neither her nor any of his professors could alleviate.

Assigning himself the project of curing his own debilitating headaches, Gerson eventually discovered that by varying his diet, he could prevent the problem. When he discovered that his "migraine diet" would also cure cases of tuberculosis, his otherwise fine medical career became highly controversial.

Gerson persevered, however, always searching for the underlying cause of disease. When a patient with cancer came to see him for treatment, he was able to cure her with his therapy, contrary to his own expectations.

Gerson's blossoming career was interrupted in 1933 when he and his family had to flee Nazi Germany. They fled to the United States and settled in New York City, where, intrigued by his early success, Gerson took up the problem of cancer, achieving a reputation among patients, if not among his jealous colleagues, of being able to cure many of the most advanced degenerative cases.

Shortly before his death in 1959, Gerson wrote his towering book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases, detailing his 30 years of clinical experience and research with disease.

In the more than 60 years that have elapsed since Gerson dedicated his life to solving the problem of cancer, tens of thousands of grateful patients have successfully used his therapy to either cure or prevent degenerative diseases of all types. His book, translated into five languages, has sold nearly half a million copies worldwide and has been the basis on which a dozen clinics in the United States and Mexico have been founded.

The most advanced cancer research is only now catching up with principles Gerson so clearly articulated over half a century ago.