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.