Long-Awaited (and Long-Winded) Update:

 Welp, it's been most of a month since my last post, and I still don't really know what to write here. I have been investigating a few avenues for treatment -- all of which are outside my comfort zone, but I'm still unsure what I'm supposed to do.  Because some of you are wondering, I guess I'll just start writing, and see what comes out.  Warning:  There will likely be rambling.

I mentioned a book in one of my earlier posts -- "The Journey" by a woman named Brandon Bays.  She healed a basketball-sized tumor in her abdomen by seeking out the emotions that were the root cause of it.  Twelve years ago, I learned about the connection between disease and emotional/mental trauma.  Since then, in my massage therapy work, I have come to understand that emotions are at least 90% of disease and chronic pain. Read that again. Emotions are the root cause of at least 90% of our pain and disease. It doesn't have to be anything horrific like the Holocaust or parental abuse; it can be little things that our young minds didn't know how to handle, so they stuffed it down inside and pretended to move on.  The problem is that we think we're leaving it behind, but we're actually carrying it along with us like a backpack. It's out-of-sight, out-of-mind, so we fool ourselves into thinking it's gone, but at some point down the road, these little pockets of experiences try to head out like a pimple -- trying to get us to acknowledge and deal with them so the pocket can heal up.  Our family is pretty stubborn against this because it comes across as being weak, but what we haven't realized is that carrying around this extra baggage is sapping our strength and making day-to-day life more difficult than it would have to be. If you think about it, that's just stupid reasoning built on pride, isn't it?

Maybe some of you have a dash cam in your car. It records what's going on in front of (and, in some cases, behind) you. If your car gets hit, the dash cam "experiences" the shock and locks that part of the video so it can't be erased. Do you see the allegory? We may be going along just fine, but then someone says or does something that shocks or hurts us in some way, and that little event gets locked down in our memory for the rest of our lives. It may eventually get buried under many other memories, to the point that we've forgotten it. But our subconscious mind still remembers, and helps us avoid similar experiences in the future. We find ourselves living in patterns that we don't understand, with no idea of why -- or how to change them. This is why we really can't search our own hearts -- why we need God to do it for us: we look right past the things that need to be dealt with most. (Hymns #379 and #380 mention the "secret springs", the "motives that control", the "chambers where polluted things hold empire o'er the soul".)

I have felt for many years that my ability to love and be loved is broken. I don't know why. Or how to fix it. I've prayed about it a lot. I mean, really a lot, because God is Love, and if the part of me that loves Him back is broken, well, can a person who can't love God be in heaven?  He deserves my deepest love, but if my ability to love Him is stunted, and if I'm carrying around a 200-pound backpack full of emotional baggage, that limits how useful I can be to Him.  I'm speaking in the first person here because this is very personal. However, this sort of thing is epidemic in mankind, so you may recognize some of it in yourself.

All that said, one of the avenues I've been exploring is this matter of emotions and trauma. I haven't felt like I have any trauma to speak of. I mean, my parents did the best they knew how at the time, and my childhood was good.  I can see the effort they put into raising us kids, and the expense of it (i.e. horses), and I appreciate it very much. So what's with the emotional baggage? I don't know. Maybe it stems from some other source completely. Maybe it's just childish misunderstandings that need to be brought to light and dumped overboard. I really don't know. And I wouldn't follow up on this line of thinking if I didn't feel that God is pointing me down this path. I have been praying about it, after all, so who am I to determine the way He answers? 

Thru her website, I found that Brandon Bays has been teaching others how to take these emotional journeys for two decades, and in many different languages. I also found that she isn't trying to get rich from it. She offers a three-day "journey intensive" for $197 (I'm used to paying $900 for a four-day massage class), but then gives a 50%-off code to use! So for $97, I was able to attend a Zoom meeting in which I dipped a toe into the waters of her teachings. The first day was intense -- to the point that I didn't attend the second or third day -- but after mulling it over for a few days, I think I'm supposed to go back. There isn't another class in North America until after the first of the year, but there is a person in Portland that is trained to teach it, so I will be contacting her to see about getting together in-person while I'm there in December.  I'll try to let you know how that goes.

Another avenue I'm investigating is the role that massage therapy may have played in my cancer. I spoke with a medical intuitive a week or so ago. If you're not familiar with that term, it's a person that has the gift of being able to "see" into a person's body intuitively, and describe what's going on. Several years ago, I read a book by a man who apparently had these gifts as a child. He "saw" his grandmother's lung cancer before she even knew there was anything wrong. At the time I read his book, I couldn't explain how it could be possible, but I kind of settled on the idea that it must have been some other spirit -- not of God -- that was in him. That reasoning didn't make much sense, even then, but that's where I left it.  More recently, the verses Paul wrote in I Cor 12:28-30 have come to mind. Each person has been given one or more gifts, and each one is important to the body of Christ. Who am I to say this man is not of God, just because I don't understand his abilities? 

Fast forward to present day: I was recently given the name of a female medical intuitive by someone I trust, and when I spoke with her this past week, she told me that my cancer is just negative energy that I've picked up from my massage clients. Yes, it needs to go, but it isn't impossible.  Well, this pricks my pride a little because I thought I was taking the necessary precautions to protect myself against others' energy. But it would make sense. Looking back 12 years ago, I had been doing massage full time for four years. The cancer was small and quite easily removed by doing all the things I did back then. But I've been doing massage 12 more years since then -- the last year and a half of it working with military veterans -- and the cancer is not only back, but it's much bigger than before. So if I've been picking up and hanging on to negative energy all these years, well, it makes sense, doesn't it? But why am I hanging on to other people's stuff? Do I somehow feel that I can't help them without doing that? Or that I have to help people in order to justify my existence? Figuring all that out leads me back to the avenue of emotions and trauma. I feel like that is going to be the key to going forward. 

I realize this is completely outside the thinking of most of you, and that your take-away may be that I've gone off the deep end. If so, I ask you to just suspend your judgment for the time being, and see how this all plays out. It's well outside my comfort zone too, but so was massage school. I remember praying my way thru all of those classes because there were other spirits there that I wanted nothing to do with, but I needed the skills I could get there, so I asked God to be my protection. I am asking Him to be my guide and protector through this time too, because I need to rid myself of the crud that's weighing me down (think Depression, anyone?). And even if I am going down a rabbit hole that's not of His choosing, He sees my desire to do what He wants, and He is well able to turn any evil into good -- and to nudge me back onto the path of His choosing. So please just pray that God will be my guide.

Some of you have asked about the regimen I did last time.  I don't know if it's just a lack of energy, but all the stuff I did last time is not calling to me this time around. I am trying to eat cleaner; trying to cut out sugar; trying to move more; but there isn't the soul-deep drive to do it this time. It feels like the cancer came back because I didn't get to the root cause of it last time, and that is the soul-deep drive I have this time.  Yes, I need to eat better and bring balance to my life again, but those things won't fix me this time. This time, I have to go deeper. 

Aside from all of that, I have been using bee venom cream on both breasts. I found it on Amazon after reading about how being stung helps the arthritis in beekeepers' hands. Apparently it helps the inflammation. It's only been a week or so, but I think it's making a difference. How might that translate? I don't know. It's just an observation, at this point.

From a work standpoint, I shut off the VA referral pipeline the beginning of August, and I'm just now noticing a difference in my workload. At the peak, I was juggling 43 referrals (plus my own clients), but now I'm down to 18, all of which will be wrapped up by the end of January. I don't know what the path ahead looks like. A big part of me wants to close up shop and do something entirely different (20 years is long enough, right?), but I have some very dear clients that would miss me (and I would miss and worry about them), so I may just cut back to a couple days per week, and do something else the rest of the time. There are several options open at this point, but I guess I'm not ready to talk about them yet. I will be taking three weeks off mid-December to spend some time at the ocean and visit my kids. When I get back in January, I hope to have some clarity as to the next step or two. I'm guessing I won't be posting here until then, but you never know.

---------

P.S. The Follow button is apparently not working -- maybe because this blog is 12 years old, so probably the links are obsolete.  The best solution would be to start a new blog, but frankly, I don't have the time, energy, or motivation to do that. So I leave it to you, my dear friends and family, to check back every so often. 

(P.P.S. I love your comments.)  I thank you ever so much for your love and support. 💖

P.P.P.S. - The herbs I ordered for my root vegetable juice fast did arrive -- a week or so after I'd given up on the fast. I will be making the teas I bought them for, and at some point, I'll let you know how that goes. I may also circle back to the fast at some point. I'm thinking that my liver was already overloaded with toxins from eating poorly, so maybe after I've been eating clean for a few months, a fast might not overload it so badly. We'll see.

My fast lasted 5-1/2 days

 Well, I crashed and burned on the fasting plan. For a few reasons:

- The root vegetable juice that tasted quite good the first day, got steadily less tasty, to the point I was struggling to get it down. (Today is day 6 and I didn't even try.) I've always thought that would mean my body doesn't want it, but I have no idea why. I just know that 36 more days of trying to get a cup of it down (holding each sip in my mouth for a bit, remember) is incomprehensible.

- The sage tea that tasted good the first day, has also steadily become less tasty, even with some stevia in it. And I need some caffeine, for Pete's sake! It lifts my mind onto a better plain.  I did add some yerba mate (a tea that has caffeine in it) yesterday, but there's no substitute for coffee. 

- The herbs I need have still not arrived, though they've gotten closer. They're now in California, cycling between Oakland, Fremont, Hayward, back to Fremont, and -- this morning -- back to Oakland. No idea which carrier is responsible, but oh well. 

- I've been feeling sick the past couple of days. It may be a genuine bug, since others in the office have had one, but being on what amounts to a water diet for three or four days probably has something to do with it. I need the nutrients from the juice . . .

- I have no energy to work, but my schedule and my bank account don't care about that. So I had to admit defeat and have a nice nutritious salad today.  It tasted heavenly! (probably the 1000 Island dressing had something to do with it)  Interestingly, the beets that looked so good, did not taste good. I don't think there was anything wrong with them -- just my body does not want me eating them right now.  (shrug)

A few hours later and I'm feeling quite a bit better. Tomorrow's clients may get some work out of me after all.

I can hear you asking, "Now what?"  Well, I'm not sure. Several options are on the radar; I just need to figure out which one to look at next. Stay tuned.

The "Why do you think it came back?" question . . .

 In the years since I dealt with cancer the first time, I've learned a few things that have made me think of it (breast cancer, at least) in a different way.  My work as a massage therapist has been a huge contributing factor as well, because of working on so many people over the span of 20 years (can't believe it's been that long!), and observing things. 

Somewhere along the line I came to understand that a person and his/her body are like a team. We are souls that inhabit the body we were given until we're separated from it at death. In the meantime, our body does everything we ask of it -- sort of like a really good servant.  We ask it to labor long hours for years and years -- maybe physically, or maybe mentally. We ask it to go without sleep (which is its time to recharge). We ask it to digest all manner of garbage food. We ask it to be happy with a sedentary lifestyle while we sit hunched over a computer (or a phone).  And it does it!  It adapts, it compensates, it finds work-arounds in order to accomplish what we're asking of it . . . until it can't anymore. We may feel a pain here or there, cautioning us to ease up a bit, to pay attention; or it may develop a disease somewhere -- a sign we've been asking too much for too long.

In addition to our work life and our play life, there's our "mind life" -- what we think about all day. Do we fret non-stop; do we drive ourselves to keep up or surpass someone else; do we allow ourselves to feel hopeless? Whatever we dwell on in our mind -- real or imagined -- our body thinks it's actually happening, so it secretes the requisite hormones in response. When there's no activity to burn off the excess hormones (e.g. cortisol, adrenaline), they settle out in nooks and crannies where they become acidic, leading to inflammation. So not only is our body all geared up to DO something, now it has to deal with the aftermath of doing NOTHING.

And then there's unresolved trauma. Most of us have some form of trauma we haven't dealt with, even if it's "only" the teacher that made us feel small in front of the whole class. It's tucked away somewhere in our body, waiting for us to get back to it.  Which we don't do because out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Our bodies keep trying to get our attention, but we forgot how to listen long ago, so we puzzle over why we keep repeating the same patterns that bring us back to the same point every time, or we act all surprised when something like Cancer or Autoimmune Disease comes up like a 2x4 to the head.

All of this to say "Every disease and every chronic pain has an underlying emotional component to it." And if that component isn't acknowledged and addressed, the disease or pain will keep coming back. I didn't make that up; there's research on it. But I see it all the time with my clients, many of whom are veterans. You may try to imagine the horrific things they've seen, the agonizing things they've gone thru physically, the mental torture that flows like lava thru weeks of training. The military has trained these people to compartmentalize their trauma so they can carry on effectively. In many cases, it's a matter of life or death, so compartmentalizing has its place. But at some point, those pockets of trauma have to be dealt with in order for there to be true healing. Until that happens, they feel better for a day or two -- great, even -- but the pain comes back. But oh man, *when* it happens, when the trauma is acknowledged and released, the transformation is amazing!

So at its root, every disease has an emotional component. One of the emotional components of breast cancer has to do with nurturing everyone but yourself. I thought I got this message last time, but since my body is growing cancer again, there must be more to it. Or maybe I got busy trying to help an unending stream of veterans with chronic pain, and didn't take good enough care of myself. (Fast food scarfed on the fly while trying to squeeze in one more errand probably isn't the best way to take care of oneself. Who knew?)  It's been immensely fulfilling work, but it's time to hit the Pause button.

I'm eager to see what the lesson is this time around. In that vein, my new doctor gave me a few books to read, and one of them is "The Journey" by Brandon Bays. She (yes, Brandon is a "she") healed herself of a basketball-sized tumor in a little over a month by finding the message it carried. What a cool concept! I hope to do the same; maybe not in a month, but yeah . . .

The "What are you doing to treat it this time?" question . . .

 Last time when treating my cancer, I pretty much overhauled my life. I ate only organic whole foods (so nothing processed); I was pretty much vegetarian for most of four months; I exercised daily; I meditated and visualized the cancer burning up; I re-trained my mind not to go down dark rabbit holes (with a little success); I took handfuls of supplements and painted on iodine; I went to bed with castor oil packs; I did dry-brushing to stimulate lymph flow; I did ionic foot baths frequently.  There's probably more.

I will be doing some of those things. Or probably, I'll do most of them at some point, but not all at once. In the past several years, I've gotten interested in herbs, and have been making my own massage oils. Occasionally I've made salves for specific clients, as well. So it seems completely appropriate that my cancer treatment this time will include herbs -- the medicines God made when He created earth.

I came across a small book written by a German man named Rudolph Breuss called "The Breuss Cancer Cure." He wasn't a doctor. He always wanted to be but couldn't afford medical school, so he read everything he could get his hands on -- almost to the day he died in 1991, at the age of 92. He came up with a combination of herbs and root vegetable juice that healed tens of thousands of people in Europe in the 1950's thru the 1980's. Someone translated his work into English, and I came across it in a health food store in little ol' Bozeman, Montana.

Intrigued, I knew I had to try it, so I began a search for the herbs he prescribed. Some I already had, but several were completely unknown to me. (Stands to reason, as he would've been working with herbs that grow in Europe, not necessarily in the U.S.) On Etsy, I found a store that had nearly everything I needed, and in stock! The down-side was -- it was in Bulgaria.  I went ahead and ordered everything, and my herbs were on the way within hours.  Then they got stuck. In Customs. In Louisville, Kentucky. Round and round they went, being scanned as incoming, then being scanned as cleared, then incoming again. It would seem they've been on a merry-go-round in Kentucky, USA since September 12! If they ever do arrive, they'll probably be powder.

I found an American source for a few of the most important herbs, and they were here within days, so I decided to go ahead and get started.  I had blocked out three days at work because I knew the first few days of this regimen would be brutal, so I couldn't wait any longer.  Yesterday was Day 1. 

I'm basically doing a 42-day fast, but with a cup or two of root vegetable juice (strained to get out any sediment), and four different herbal teas. He doesn't say this, but it seems to me it will be giving my whole digestive tract a reset, as well.

Here's what I'll be drinking sipping for the next six weeks:

Kidney Tea  (contains horsetail, stinging nettle, knotgrass and St. Johnswort)
(1/4 cup cold tea sipped slowly, three times per day for three weeks only)

Root Vegetable Juice (max 2 cups/day)
- 3 parts beet root
- 1 part carrots
- 1 part celeriac (celery root)
- 1/3 part black radish
- an egg-sized piece of potato
These are juiced and strained thru a dish towel to remove all sediment. Sipped slowly, 1-2 cups/day.

Sage Tea (contains sage, St Johnswort, peppermint and lemon balm)
(as much as I want, sipped slowly)

Cranesbill Tea (herb Robert aka Geranium robertianum aka red cranesbill)
(slowly sip 1/2 cup cold tea per day)

Breast Cancer Tea (contains Silvery Lady's Mantle and White Dead Nettle)
(slowly sip 1/2 cup cold tea per day)

Because I don't have all the herbs yet, I've been able to make only the Sage tea and the juice. Both are quite tasty.

In addition, I can make an onion broth with a vegetable bouillon cube stirred in. Yummy!

With this regimen, he figures on starving the cancer while giving the body the minerals and nutrients it needs from the root vegetable juice. He says that *any* sediment feeds the cancer; hence, the careful straining thru cloth.

He stresses the point of sipping everything slowly, holding it in your mouth and mixing with saliva before swallowing. He doesn't say why this is important, but it brings to mind something I read years ago about how eating without chewing our food very well has health consequences, as it makes the stomach work harder and the food stays in the stomach longer (causing heartburn). Everything he prescribes is liquid, so that can hardly be a concern; but maybe there are other factors we don't know about?  (shrug)

I'm also intrigued with why he has a person drinking all the teas cold (I assume room temperature). In Chinese medicine, this would be to avoid bringing heat into the body when it's already over-warm from inflammation. No idea if that was in his thinking or not.

I can assure you this juicing/straining thing is messy. I can't imagine how I'll be able to do it when I go back to work in a few days, so when I found the exact Breuss juice ready-made in Switzerland, for sale on Amazon . . . well, it'll be here in a few days, and I'll let you know how it tastes. It's kind of expensive, but the amount of work and mess that goes into it makes it not so pricey, in my mind. Plus, I won't have to buy veggies (10 lbs of beets, 3-1/2 lbs of carrots, 3-1/2 lbs of celeriac, 1 lb of black radish, and a few potatoes per week) x 6 weeks = a lot of shopping!). I think the Amazon juice just gained a few more points in its favor ;-)

So that's what I'll be doing for the next six weeks. I figured I'd have a killer headache from caffeine withdrawal (and I did), but other than that, this seems very do-able to me. I mean, a person can do most anything for six weeks, right?  What I haven't determined yet is how I'll know if it worked.  We'll see.

Here We Go Again . . . Fighting Cancer With Food v. 2.0

The end of July, I noticed a dimple in my right breast. This is often caused by a growth inside pulling on the skin, and usually indicates cancer.  Because my primary care physician retired, I had to find a new one that could give me a referral for imaging -- i.e. ultrasound, and probably mammogram.  The imaging finally happened September 17, and I found myself once again feeling like I needed to reassure the mammography tech (and the student watching), the sonographer (and the student watching), and the radiologist that this was not a big shock, and that they needn't feel bad about it.  It felt like old times 😉

It's quite a bit more advanced than last time -- more cysts have become tumors, a few lymph nodes are involved, and there are suspicious blobs in the left breast as well. The term is "metastatic," though I don't *feel* like I have something foreign growing in me. I haven't decided yet whether or not to get biopsies of the lumps in the left breast, but I'm okay with figuring that the ones in the right breast are the same as last time. It isn't common to have cancer in both breasts (Google says 2-11% of the time), but it really doesn't matter because like last time, I will be treating the whole body, mind, and spirit, not individual lumps.

I can hear a few questions now, so I'll address them here:

- Yes, I did have a mammogram, and yes, we did both breasts. It's been 12 years since the last one, so I felt comfortable with it. And asking a radiologist to do his job with only an ultrasound is like asking me to do a massage using only one hand. If I want the information he can give, I have to let him do his job the way he needs to do it.  I didn't get to visit with him very long afterwards because I had a client waiting, so I'm hoping to make another appt where he can show me what he's seeing in the pictures.  I'd like to be able to visualize what's going on in there.

- Yes, I'm still glad I didn't go the conventional treatment route of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. It's been 12 years since my last diagnosis, and 11 years since my last ultrasound where they couldn't find anything. During that time, I spent zero days recuperating from surgery, having a swollen arm from lymph nodes being removed, being sick from chemo, or dealing with radiation burn. People who go the conventional route cope with all of that, and often have return of cancer at about five years. So yes, I'm very glad.

- Yes, I do have some pretty good ideas of why my cancer returned. More on that in future posts.

- Yes, I do have an idea of how I will be treating myself this time. More on that in future posts, as well.

If you'd like to know when I add new installments, you'll need to subscribe to this blog, because I don't plan to post announcements on Facebook like I did last time. It's not a secret, but I also don't feel inclined to broadcast it to the world.  Until next time . . .