a love note from a friend...

Chaplin: “As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worrying about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know “THAT IS LIFE”!”
― Charles Chaplin

back in the saddle again...

my energy continues to come back, the tumour continues to grow, albeit not at all at the same pace of a few weeks ago. the lung symptoms have abated as i've focused more and more on pranayam and psycho-neuro-immunological techniques designed to protect my core... metastases are driven by what candace pert called the molecules of emotion, not mere biochemic syzygies. thusly, i've partnered with my body to draw a line in the sand, which, in turn, has led to new and interesting encounters with people. i can speak my mind without anxiety or neuroticisms. it no longer feels safe to mask my reactions or hide my true feelings and so even tho it feels somewhat alien at times, i keep sticking more toes out from behind the curtain so to speak. if it doesn't come out right because i'm not used to being direct or forward or punchy, that's okay. i've thrown out all the score cards, adjudication sheets and tests. i'm only interested in experience and having a good time of it all, no matter the speed bumps or sink holes along the way.


to note, i'm still taking curcumin, B17, B15, selenium, magnesium malate, D3, glutathione, L-cysteine, alpha lipoic acid, and a liver support... my vicosan (mistletoe) injections arrived from germany, we started them monday and they increase in potency every day... its three weeks of daily vials. i'm also taking little shots of chaga powder mixed with water and lipospheric vitamin c (it reduces the molecular weight of the chaga water, making it more bioavailable - thanks Truth Calkins) to increase my natural killer cells.... then i'm still doing oxygen therapy, infared, the daily IVs, the zapping, the magnet therapy and the ketogenic diet.... this is such an aggressive cancer, a slower acting one would never ever survive the onslaught of all this!

work at the level of spirit and soul is where i'm spending most of my time. there's no pill, supplement, diet, treatment, or protocol to carry the day, i now understand that, and its thrilling and terrifying only because there's no particular manual for how to do this..... so i decided, that's great actually! i can't cock it up or ruin it since i'm writing a novel reply to a problem never faced before! even better, i can _choose_ to make it fun and rewarding and exciting because it can be so why suffer?  now i relax, i balance doing my research and homework with learning to ask the body to talk by learning how to play with life again, using the irrational senses, letting intuition lead, not trying to get what needs to be done each day perfect, just completely done with my full presence and heartopen attitude...

and finally, wow, exciting exciting day! not only is it the start of the 10 day Cure to Cancer Summit which i'll be listening to online, thanks to a tip in Suzanne Somers' KNOCKOUT and our poor, groaning credit card, i'll be getting some macrovision oversight and counsel about the treatment plan i've created for myself from the valiant Burton Goldberg, "Burton Goldberg is the voice of alternative medicine and has traveled the world in search of the top therapies and treatments available from the fields of natural healthcare and alternative, integrative, and conventional medicine...." from what i can tell, there aren't many women with TNBC willing to pioneer a completely holistic strategy so i'm looking forward to corresponding, learning and refining not just my ableness to manage this cancer, but maybe luck will have it that i'll pick up some cues from Mr. Goldberg about how to establish and protect people's freedom of access and choice in care right here in Canada...

new German medicine...

"We're only as sick as our secrets." [Hamer]

hamer...

all last week i was struggling with much pain, getting weaker and weaker while the cancer grows stronger and spreads. yet, as i found out yesterday afternoon, my blood work is near perfect, save for a couple liver enzymes. even my cancer markers are low.

my body doesn't have cancer. the emotional reality i constructed from the crumbs i thought i deserved does....

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."

-- Khalil Gibran

Twenty years ago, Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, a German doctor with his own practice in Rome, Italy, received a call in the middle of the night. His 17-year old son had been shot while on holiday in the Mediterranean. Three months later, Dirk died and shortly after, Dr. Hamer, who had been healthy all his life, but who was utterly devastated by this catastrophe, found he had testicular cancer. Rather suspicious about this coincidence, he set about doing research on the personal histories of cancer patients to see whether they had suffered some shock, distress or trauma before their illness.

In time, after extensive research of thousands of patients, Dr. Hamer was finally able to conclude that disease is only brought about by a shock for which we are totally unprepared. This last point is very important. If we can in any way be prepared for the shocking event, we will not become ill. In fact, Dr. Hamer does not like to say ‘cancer’. Rather, it is a special biological response to an unusual situation, and when the ‘shock’ situation is resolved, the body sets about returning to normality....

Read more.... http://www.newmedicine.ca/breast.php

"There is no cancer that has not been survived by someone, regardless of how advanced it was. If even one person has succeeded in healing his cancer, there must be a mechanism for it, just as there is a mechanism for creating cancer. [Andreas Moritz]

upping the game...

upping the game is something i can never rest from doing nor take for granted, certainly not while i'm still racing to catch this thing. tomorrow i add in a homeopathic protocol (ramakrishnan) that will see me energetically plussing a remedy on a daily basis for 2 months, alternating each week between my constitutional of the moment, and a nosode... i'll also be taking Toxina de Alacran, a scorpion remedy coming out of a veritable homeopathic renaissance happening in cuba... i've started mixing chaga powder in water with lypospheric vitamin c and drinking that a couple times a day, having heard it will raise my natural killer cells by 300-400% in just one week... and finally, after two months of hunting, frustration and often muddling confusion, i found a qualified practitioner who will give me the intensive daily IV treatments and injections that i've been waiting for and in a manner individualized to my blood panels, not just shots in the dark.

i'll be on daily drips starting monday for a couple months at least... this is the begin of another rally, another big push. i've regained enough strength to be ready and primed for it... onwards!

not so fast, mourners....

I got so much bad advice this week, its been a fun job navigating and having the courage of my convictions.... the tumour is not my litmus, my recovery of health is. three months with cancer and I have never felt better in my life! and one more thing, if you don't have love and positivity to share just now, i understand... just please leave me in peace while I'm busy doing what so many say can't be done... onwards!!!

self portrait 5 september 2013, TNBC metastatic, terminal diagnosis, pffft!

teacher...

the great thing about having a palpable tumour, if i can use such a turn of phrase, is the immediate biofeedback. by this mechanism i've learned what holds it steady and what can spurt it into a period of uncontrollable growth that takes me days to curb. at this point, steady state is my golden mean, mistakes cost me dearly. like a few days ago i was feeling better and better and thought of how much more i could do with a little more food in my system. i added a single egg to my plate for three days before i realized i'd fed a growth spurt. i took a probiotic just to test my reactivity to dairy protein last night, and fed a growth spurt.

yes. this teacher who took up shop so intimately inside of me is a strict task master on a do-it-or-die mission. if i don't unlock the code in time, it will get the upper hand and destroy me. but, and this is what's so fucking tantalizing, if i unlock the code, i'll be able to deliver not just myself, but new knowledge...!

in this adventure there are times when its like being pulled along by wild horses, trying to find the calm in the heart of the storm that brings things to heel. these next few days are exactly such a time.

i'll be taking another round of measures that tend towards some unpleasantries to be borne, but i'm also dancing like nobody's looking for the first time in my life. onwards!

an august sunny muggy day...

when i left trisha's this morning i decided to walk the annex, see how long i could manage on my feet... not only did i last six hours in the heat (!!), the two times i needed a rest a bench would magically appear or someone would get up on the bus. no suffering...! not only that, the tumour stopped growing three days ago and my pain is reduced... onwards!

current...

The tumour has been in steady state for two days now.

why hyperbaric oxygen?

Most people who die of cancer die from the metastatic process, rather than from the tumor itself. There's really no treatment or cure for metastatic cancer. Dr. D'Agostino's team has demonstrated that the ketogenic diet by itself can extend survival in animal models of metastatic cancer, but when it's combined with hyperbaric oxygen therapy three times per week, there is an additive effect².

"You get a significant reduction in tumor growth, decrease in tumor size, and significant extension of life when the therapeutic ketosis achieved through the ketogenic diet is combined with hyperbaric oxygen," he says.

"Tumors thrive in a low-oxygen environment. As a tumor grows, it exceeds its ability to supply oxygen to the center of the tumor. That low level of oxygen, called hypoxia, further activates the oncogenes; cancer promoting genes. It activates things like HIF-1-alpha and VEGF. IGF-1 signaling goes up. Hyperbaric oxygen can reverse tumor hypoxia intermittently. In doing that, it can actually turn off the oncogenes. There are published reports on this.

... [T]he tumor thrives in a low-oxygen environment, and it's adapted to that low-oxygen environment. When you saturate a tumor with oxygen, because the mitochondria are damaged, it overproduces oxygen free radicals in the form of superoxide anion. This oxygen-induced increase in free radicals can actually cause the tumor to kill itself."

Read more here... http://bit.ly/19R0TCA

Abstract

Introduction

Abnormal cancer metabolism creates a glycolytic-dependency which can be exploited by lowering glucose availability to the tumor. The ketogenic diet (KD) is a low carbohydrate, high fat diet which decreases blood glucose and elevates blood ketones and has been shown to slow cancer progression in animals and humans. Abnormal tumor vasculature creates hypoxic pockets which promote cancer progression and further increase the glycolytic-dependency of cancers. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO₂T) saturates tumors with oxygen, reversing the cancer promoting effects of tumor hypoxia. Since these non-toxic therapies exploit overlapping metabolic deficiencies of cancer, we tested their combined effects on cancer progression in a natural model of metastatic disease.

Methods

We used the firefly luciferase-tagged VM-M3 mouse model of metastatic cancer to compare tumor progression and survival in mice fed standard or KD ad libitum with or without HBO₂T (2.5 ATM absolute, 90 min, 3x/week). Tumor growth was monitored by in vivo bioluminescent imaging.

Results

KD alone significantly decreased blood glucose, slowed tumor growth, and increased mean survival time by 56.7% in mice with systemic metastatic cancer. While HBO₂T alone did not influence cancer progression, combining the KD with HBO₂T elicited a significant decrease in blood glucose, tumor growth rate, and 77.9% increase in mean survival time compared to controls.

Conclusions

KD and HBO₂T produce significant anti-cancer effects when combined in a natural model of systemic metastatic cancer. Our evidence suggests that these therapies should be further investigated as potential non-toxic treatments or adjuvant therapies to standard care for patients with systemic metastatic disease.

Read more... http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0065522

test results...

while i've written elsewhere why i don't subscribe to a gene-based view of cancer but prefer a metabolic/emotional one, i did consent to having my genes tested as part of a new program at the hospital. the result are in and i don't have the damaged BRCA1/2 genes, which means that even from a medical point of view, this cancer is not genetically driven (which they expected it to be), but a product of context... the perfect storm i contributed to these last twenty years which produced this singular, life-altering event.

this means, in short, i have no greater risk of developing a cancer than the average person and if i can beat this first effulgence of my frustrated body energies, there's no reason to think i'm at risk for subsequent cancers. they said it, not me.

onwards!

side effects...

first i must report the extent to which i seem to be in holy flow. i can't enter traffic without it turning into stressless courtesy everywhere i look. parking spots magically appear, i'm running into people in dramatic, synchronous ways, everything feels so soft, and open, and warm. information and tools find me right at the last minute every time.... and they keep finding me, even when i don't know enough to know i'm woefully misinformed, doing the wrong thing, or not doing what needs done. that's a big one.

but here is the second whammy thing. i knew going into the start of the oxygen treatment that one of the reasons clinics like this exist and can thrive even at current prohibitive prices is that they're rapidly gaining renown as a very effective treatment for autism spectrum disorders. i'm an aspy and i can report after just three sessions some very dramatic changes i would never have expected.

i'm no longer as scattered mentally as i usually am. i seem to have inherited a sudden dose of social intelligence. i don't interrupt people and talk a blue streak but rather give and take in conversation, in fact, i can really hear what people are saying to me. its as if inside my head there's a new space that wasn't there before that allows me to relax when people speak. i'm not shuttling between their words and my own inner ticker tape. in fact i can see myself and my circumstances from the outside looking in, in a way i never experienced before and its acting as a natural inhibitor of these problematic patterns of behaviour (which i never really recognized as such). i don't get as lost in circuitous overprocessed inner conversation. i can speak more simply and say what i really feel without any hangups.

what's more, i suddenly can't stand to do what i've done for almost twenty years. content to hide from life and either loose myself in my mind and its books or fritter away my talents at a desk out of the game's circulation, taunting life with what i _could_ do if only....

now that i have to leave base camp to head to the north of the city for my HBOT every day i have a launching pad that i've started using to return myself to social life, to effort to see the people who i love and appreciate and who love and support me and make me feel good, to do the things that put me in new situations around new people so that i can improve my ability to interact with others. i was always good at making friends, but i lost most of them to neglect and just always never coming when called. i suddenly can no longer keep doing this.

in this way and by these strange means, i'm just letting myself become a bumble bee, moving from honey pot to honey pot wherever i go.... like woody allen said, 70% of success in life is showing up. suddenly i'm showing up. people are getting phone calls from me. i'm actually answering the phone. people are getting visits from me and during them i'm not screwing things up so much by anxiously projecting myself forward or getting bogged down, endlessly reprocessing hurts from the past. stupid things that are true but not best to voice don't fly out my mouth. that is a HUGE one that has led to so much unnecessary social tension. what i don't understand is that these seem to all be judgment issues, so why would oxygen lend me better social awareness, listening skills, and judgement? its not. its resolving the aspy adaptive habits i built over the years that have come to represent the peanut gallery within me that has made finding happiness and healing such a challenge.

onwards!

HBOT update...

i didn't sleep at all after the first treatment, i was coasting on an astonishing energy for two days and well into last night as well. the tumour, however, keeps swelling.* after the second treatment i felt my first reduction in pain and actually slept without tossing and turning for the first time in weeks. when i woke up this morning it was softer and had been subtly reducing overnight (easily adduced as the tumour has only been in reduction phase twice and the feeling is unmistakable), but as soon as i got mobile it started increasing again. its almost taken the breast over and now encroaches the thorax in all directions. yes. aggressive is the word. but the key thing is, i'm overall feeling better, stronger, and more grounded. its interesting that i'm receiving a treatment for cancer that is used to treat autism spectrum disorders (i'm an aspy). i'm noting already some changes and profiting from them greatly.

so. i'm keeping to the parts of the program that seem to help and focused on my goal. when changes become necessary i'm doing my best, some of the changes are intimidating, yet i feel right now that anything is possible, that i'm completely equipped and capable of making something out of this that can honour what i've learned, and get it into play and distribution finally.

its always nice to add to a body of human culture, but i long to touch people's hearts somehow. man is a wolf to man, the roman catallus wrote. the things we do to each other are barbaric and persistently so, but we're only ever one spark leaping across a synapse away from more ennobled understandings and the ableness to embrace dynamic natural laws.

i'm walking a tightrope for the next few weeks. i know in my condition it only takes a couple bad turns to find oneself in a pickle so i'm motivated to get back to work. its important i keep two books, as they say. one that acknowledges the mortality play at work, and one that believes in magic.

onwards!

*its important to note, in presence of conditions leading to the neutralization of disease, symptoms will aggravate or appear to worsen before rapid improvement sets in. it's always darkest before the dawn.

correspondences...

interesting as HBOT comes into my world: part of the arrangement in tonight's blue moon finds the moon's north node on scorpio 11... the sabian symbol for which reads, 

"A Drowning Man Is Being Rescued...."
Keywords: Resuscitation. Regaining one’s breath. Finding life renewed. Asthma, bronchitis, breathing difficulties. Finding help in moments of crisis. Needing a hand. Being rescued. Salvation on any level. Ventilators. Breathing equipment. Oxygen. Dependence. Last minute reprieves. [Lynda Hill]

full moon contact high...

when i treat cancer like a foe, it defeats me, but when i work with it as coach, advisor, psychologist, and beloved, it helps me move in the direction of healing, at once unfurling and letting go, unfurling and letting go....

as far as i can tell it wants to tell me a story that will lead me out of the swampy wood and into the sunshine. i've recently taken up dictation.

lazarus moment...

it took some doing but i managed to put together the financing for hyberbaric oxygen and ozone treatment. i started the HBOT today and it really is no exaggeration to call it the kiss of life.

it would be too tedious _just_ at the moment to start detailing the many things i'm doing right now to neutralize this cancer, suffice it to say wherever i go and whomever i speak with, i'm getting straight As for the comprehensiveness of my protocol, my hustle, multi-tasking, and spunk. ironically, the two words i've heard most these last three days are, 'glowing,' 'radiant...' it seems cancer agrees with me! perhaps that's why the tumour is so reluctant to let me go.

in the meantime it keeps playing its dramatic moves (they don't call TNBC 'aggressive' for no reason, i discovered...) and i keep countering with mine. i can't go into the details, but suffice to say i'm changing so completely, tuning in so exquisitely to the ecstatic channels of life, i barely recognize myself... and the more decisions i make guided by what is true for me (instead of contorting myself to comply to what is false for me)... by feeling in the dark for my womanness, by grounding in the limitless potential of each NEW moment, the more unpredictable and exciting life becomes. aho!

there are no ultimate securities, i've always known that. so why build a life around playacting a collective denial of this truth when there is such a more vital and beautiful world to uncover leaning into uncertainty and change.... and the impossible!

ONWARDS!

snake woman...

Horned Women series III: Snake Woman of the (women's) Motokiks ceremonial society, Kainai Nation ("Blood," a branch of the Siksika or Blackfeet), somewhere in Montana or Alberta. She is a pipeholder, wearing the Scabby Buffalo headdress.  [courtesy women's repressed histories]

lakulisha kundalini yoga...

i was discussing with my friends that i've been spending a lot of time in ecstatic movement, playing with gesture and posture as a conduit for generating and discharging energy, and the effect its having on me and i was gifted this information, for which i'm very grateful.

(fr Words Fr the Soul) According to the Pashupata Sutra and the Ganakarika Sutra (Collins, 1988, p. 137-38), the Lakulisha kundalini yoga sect practiced an ecstatic ritual including wild laughter, sacred singing, "dancing consisting of [all possible] motions of the hands and feet: upward, downward, inward, outward and shaking motion," a sacred "sound produced by the contact of the tongue-tip with the palate...after the dance when the devotee has again sat down and is still meditating on Siva" an "inner worship," and “prayer” (p. 137). 

I suggest that such dancing and singing were sahaja or charismatic manifestations and not ordinary volitional merriment that were later codified from shrutis (in-the- moment revelatory utterances) into smritis (remembered scripture), formalized from sahaja manifestations into standardized asanas and the myriad prescribed and detailed gestures of certain classicalized Indian dance forms. 

The Pashupata sect spread massively throughout Hindu, Buddhist and Jain India for some 600 years, producing one of the greatest outpourings of temple construction in human history. The sect was noteworthy in Indian history in its scorn of rigidification and other corruptions of the otherwise, moderately fluid caste (varna, “human variance”) system and its belief in a deity capable of bestowing redemptive grace beyond the causal dictates of karma. 

Lakulisha and his followers believed (as did the original Franciscan cult) that, as forest-dwelling (“counter-cultural?”) kundalini yogis, they transformed the strife of city-dwellers by absorbing social ridicule or by receiving homage and bestowing shaktipat blessings upon the populace. Indeed, the prejudices of caste and other animosities evaporated during their shaktipat rituals that were attended to a remarkable degree by all levels of society. As with the appearance of many other saints throughout history, heaven lived on earth, and those within its fold were, for a time, redeemed into fully dharmic life.

i have found a modest place to start holding this kind of space and sound open for others as i do my own exploration and practice.

timely lessons...

when you have roughly twelve days to shrink a tumour by your own powers, you secretly hope that you'll learn what can go wrong early on so that being caught unawares as to the rules of the game later won't handicapp you when to be handicapped would really hurt or even throw the game.

on the day that my tumour palpably shrank i was out in the world, being called into new and vital situations, and exercising my personality. i'd tweaked my dietary work and was feeling the way i always do when i have new understandings to incorporate, robustly improved... i had the chance to get out for a full day that began with a hot 90 minute moksha flow and ended in an evening of wild body shaking. it was through this shaking, something i'd never tried before, that i could experiment with letting myself surrender to sound and movement impulses, plus, understanding the unique opportunity being presented - a coming together of people who wanted to shake and not stand in the way of whatever experience arrived for the occasion - i let myself be transported from the moment they said go!

and go i went!

i didn't return home until quite late and i when i did i was in the genuine afterglow of a very powerful metaphysical physical experience.

that night and the next morning i could feel the tumour shrinking. i also was on the receiving end of a whole new set of communications from my body.

then it came time to travel to another city to celebrate my mother's 84th birthday. here i suddenly transited to a different world, one of strain and negativity. i know the routine with my mother very well. she will always begin any encounter in a soured mood. something is not to her liking, it becomes the circumference of her point of view, and she can't _not_ dwell on it or lead with it. in short, its the end of the world. she ate voraciously at lunch which relieved us all of the need for too much in the way of conversation but nontheless the usual soap opera dynamic fell like a shroud over our table. i knew there'd be not much there that i could eat, but i figured it would be safe if i ate some chilled cooked jumbo shrimp. in a result that was baffling to me, i overate, a fact i only realized after i had done it, and confirmed it when i had an attack of yawning which happens when i've eaten too much or the wrong thing.

i'd been moderating very successfully what i eat and when so as to maximize reduction of the cancer (eating later in the day and then only twice and during a 6-8 hour period so that i'm spending most of my day in fasting mode...) yet, to my dismay i realized as we were leaving that i really should only have had a very few shrimp, but that in fact i had three servings of them. i dressed them with lemon, sea salt flakes and cayenne, they looked and tasted extremely fresh and were well-cleaned, and i really got a lot of enjoyment from them.

when it was all over and we sang her happy birthday i brought out one of my paintings, the one of the old holy man, and told her i was giving her this painting of mine to look out for her, to protect her, to make sure she was always all right. it was pretty clear its wasn't exactly to her liking and she even tried a fast one that night when i came up to her room to hang it. i'd already figured on where to put it, above and behind her favorite chair... this way she would know it was there but not have to look it in the eye every time she sat down. just as we got to her door she stopped in the doorway and asked if i was going to take the painting back home? i said, 'of course not mum, i'm coming in to hang it on the wall for you, its my birthday present for you remember?' she said, 'oh." i know she would have preferred it to go away simply because she didn't understand it. i'm not sure why but i didn't take her up on her cue but hung it up anyway. why didn't i just roll with the punches and cheerfully take it back with me?

by the time we returned to toronto i could feel the tumour was big again and even slightly larger than when it was last at its largest. all of my testable values were far away from where i need them to be and they remained in this unhelpful zone through the next morning. it took me a few hours to piece together "what i'd done wrong" ... canceling out and even making worse the small achievement i'd worked so hard to create by lapsing as i did into an old identity and emotional state that empowers the cancer... i understand this stumble was an extremely fortunate one, one designed to show me my automatic behaviours, the behaviours that have to go to make space for a reborning self.

the moment i made that connection i was overjoyed. i'm at the point where i'm seriously ready to renegotiate my roles and how i show up in the world and what i'm aiming to accomplish, which means that i'm ready to transform before all else my family role. i need to put an end to anything that's brings me to harm.

i can't emphasize enough how getting such a gross result, one that clearly demonstrates the sharp contrast between worlds before me, those that are healing, those that are destroying, is an absolute gift of highest magnitude.

i was blessed with time on my own today. for the first time in months, i put on my music and started moving around and working with my way of chanting... i call it sonic yoga and it's intent is to stimulate and raise the energies just like shaking does, but through the ears and other places we perceive vibration.... as i started moving around and making sounds i understood in a flash i'd just stumbled up my salvation...! the thing that feels precisely like what i should be doing with my life and energies right now... moving, sound-making, letting the energy out.

ecstatic sound and ecstatic movement have a long lineage and are notoriously healing and transcendent for the human. i intend to create opportunities to lead groups in experiencing these therapeutic and healing sonic energies and their invitations to move....

today i'm getting my ship righted and my values back in the zone. it involves minimum input and maximum expression... i've been taking a few mouthfuls of turmeric slaw when my body asks for it, but otherwise i'm fasting, hydrating with the right teas, and i'm working with movement and the technique of getting myself into right mind for the work.

now that i know what works for me versus what doesn't, i will just be single-minded about following the right practices and paths... i can't afford a bad day that gives this cancer an edge. i have to really call on any resources of warriorship i have, and plan on filling in whatever missing pieces by sheer pluck alone...

medicinal raw slaw...

CANCER HATES THIS, I LOVE IT: raw turmeric slaw...  

why take pills and tinctures when you can go straight to the source? believe it or not, this slaw is super delish! the secret? shred raw turmeric, ginger and garlic and dress in liberal amounts of fresh lemon juice and hemp oil seasoned with sea salt and lots of smoked paprika. add cubed onion, or cucumber if desired... tonight i added some local garlic scapes cut on the bias and finished it with a shake of spirulina and a drizzle olive oil...

for more information about this fabulous tuber that everyone can benefit from... http://organicindia.mercola.com/herbal-supplements/turmeric.aspx

busy day...

i've made some tweaks to my own protocols and got further information from the hospital about time frame and it looks like i have until 12 july, which is when the first chemo treatment is scheduled for.

i continue to have grave reservations about the chemo and am still working to be able to decline it, but at the same time i must find out the causes behind the limited results i've had with my own approaches or be patient and have faith that what i'm doing will start reducing the tumour dramatically very soon.

one bit of good advice i got was to get some blood work done ASAP so that i will have the results before any question of carrying thru with chemo arises. these basic blood tests will tell us the condition of my liver and kidneys, WBCs, RBCs, and Tcells.... i couldn't reach my GP so decided to contact the very helpful receptionist who talked me through latest arrangements this morning. i was surprised that she was not only on the ball and helpful with my sense of urgency on all this, but i even got the impression that it seemed common sense to her that i would be asking for these kinds of tests. it looked for a while that she was going to get the breast clinic nurse to just write up the requisition for me so that i could get the blood work done early next week, but the oncologist stepped in and said no, that i have to come on the 11th as scheduled and that blood work would be done then and be available for us to discuss on the first day of chemo. this is not to my liking as its consistent with control and pressure tactics designed not to give me any time in advance to consider my options, so i will have to be resourceful next week and see what i can come up with.

i'm sure when an oncologist consults with a patient presenting a stage three aggressive cancer, peripheral considerations are cast aside and focus is limited to the area of their specialization. i understand that. but if there are any problems or weaknesses hiding in my liver or kidney, their chemotherapy could kill me as much as the cancer could.

i'm also going to be asking next week for a second MRI to be scheduled for me just prior to the chemo on the outside chance it might show a decrease in the tumour which could give me a leg to stand on.

i have to provisionally report that not only do i continue to feel good everyday with what i'm doing, by the end of my day yesterday which involved a 90minute hot yoga class followed by an evening experience with shaking medicine, for the first time i felt that the tumour was ever so slightly smaller! and mark this was no on account of sweat loss, the change is in the dimensionalities of the mass, including its distance from my chest wall.

i'm willing to keep two books here... to keep complying with the hospital just in case i have no choice, but in the meantime i'm working to usurp those plans at the last minute with clear evidence that what i'm doing is working... i WILL gamble with my life if i see the slightest indication that even against this most aggressive form of cancer, metabolic controls, holistic adjuvants and emotional/spiritual/energetic work can be successfully employed to cure....!

in keeping with this, i felt last night at the shaking, which was a revelatory event and one i took to like a duck to water, that another community and another road in life is opening up to me... i intend to be just as fearless walking towards it as i am in facing this cancer.........!

test results...

i was called into the hospital today for my test results. i have a very aggressive stage 3 ductal carcinoma called triple negative breast cancer.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks expression of the estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/EGFR2), is an aggressive breast cancer phenotype with a poor prognosis.

the surgeon and oncologist both tell me i have very little time, perhaps 2-4 weeks, before it spreads to either lung, liver, brain or bone. they also tell me this cancer is one of the few cancers that is very responsive to chemotherapy. they want me to begin a course a week from monday, and tell me that i would be on chemo for perhaps up to 3 months. there's a 40% chance the chemo will reduce the tumour enough to permit surgery and lead to what they call a complete cure. if i can wipe out the cancer now and get through the next five years my prognosis is very good to excellent, unlike the slower acting cancers where there's high risk of recurrence. they emphasized the fact, however, that i have a very small window for treatment here and that once it's gone and it spreads as aggressively as its reputation, i'm, in short, a goner. there's of course a chance that the chemo won't work or that it's already spreading at a level these tests can't register yet, but there's no point dwelling on that.

i've been doing more research and am redoubling my own treatment efforts between now and the scheduled first chemo session with the hope that i can demonstrate results that in turn would permit me to decline their treatment recommendations. i never thought in my life i would ever even _consider_ getting chemotherapy, but given the rare type of cancer i have and the risks involved, i'm not sure how lucky i feel.... would you give a natural treatment a couple more weeks to work if those couple more weeks could kill you?

all parties agree that what i'm doing certainly can't hurt and that with this kind of adversary a multi-dimensional approach should really work for me... starving it metabolically as i am, inducing apoptosis through natural means and possibly chemo, and resection of the affected parts to prevent metastasis.

mindful of recent research that has proven curcumin's ability to kill TNBC cells, i'm increasing how much raw tumeric i'm ingesting... i peel the raw tuber and shred it into my food and got some advice as to how much i can get away with eating this way. i also picked up some bee propolis tincture at the organic farmers market which also has reputed anti-TNBC effects. an herbalist i talked to today suggested i try adding suma root to my medicinal teas so i bought a small bag to try, and while i was in the apothecary i noticed he had a jar of rose petals. i know they have no medicinal value to me at the moment but i really felt a longing for them and the idea of having some rose petal tea and so asked for a small amount. he gave them to me at no charge. i was really moved by his kindness and could hardly contain my delight when telling him that coincidentally there is a rose in my name...

witch hunts...

i've been reflecting these last few days on the strange and unusual confluence of events that birthed us science and its allied white coat medicine, "the printing press, steeply rising literacy rates, religious wars, and the witch craze..."

might not the vestiges of these be observed to present day in women's diseases of prominence and their treatments? for these are not so distant in tactic or spirit from the tortures meted out to wise and innocent women during the period in which science "came into its own..."

breasts were the frequent target of inquisitors who used hot pincers to tear them apart or knives to cut them away, and burning at the stake brings to mind radiation treatments and chemotherapies that literally burn you from the inside out.

breast cancers have been around since recorded history but never afflicting such a high percentage of women as in the current era. the physical world of which we now partake has been exclusively defined by thousands of years of patriarchical folly that now returns us to its root creation myth... having excluded the feminine to its detriment, and under the illusion of contemporary women's rights which conditions women to become modified men more than fully emancipated women, we're increasingly invaded by the cancerous miasm of a world out of balance and expected to submit to a contra naturam monopoly not unlike the witch hunts of old...

a radical statement yes, but i feel a delicious quickening when i let myself consider this possibility since it promises a kind of new emancipation, and since it's hardly represented or explored in the culture, i find it irresistible to explore and consider further.

"In earlier times, men and women alike acknowledged the skills of female shamans. The wise woman had tucked in her bag of tricks both ergot root for inducing abortion, and belladonna for preventing miscarriage. Many men readily acknowledged the superiority of the medicine practiced by women healers. Paracelsus (1493-1541), the greatest physician of his age, acknowledged that he 'had learned from the Sorceress all that he knew.' The male chauvinist philosopher Thomas Hobbes admitted that, personally, he would rather take 'the advice or physic from an experienced old woman' than see a Harley Street physician..."

"Science provided people with an alternative explanation to the one espoused by religion. The world is governed by natural laws, scientists proclaimed, and God gave humans the gift of intelligence to discover what they are. With each new mathematically proven revelation, science chipped away at the power of the ecclesiastics. The volume of discord between credos (ie. Protestant vs Catholic) diminished as literacy gained its proper context.

"Unfortunately, science, the prim, non-excitable child of the left brain, did not like women. Evolving from the all-male priesthood that had preceded it, the early scientific community allowed no women within its hallowed halls. Science did not have much use for beauty, either, and it treated nature as an enemy. Francis Bacon, author of the scientific masterpiece Novum Organum, consistently used metaphors derived from the witch hunt torture chambers to describe how scientists should force nature to relinquish her secrets. In the most powerful demonstration of the new scientific paradigm, Nicolaus Copernicus displaced Mother Earth from the center of the universe and replaced her with Father Sun. Copernicus consigned the planet that was once the hub of wheeling constellations to a lonely orbit with only her barren lunar satellite to pay her homage. Science dismissed spirituality, disdained discussions of ethics and philosophy, and demonstrated a disturbing tendency to ally itself with contemporary hunter-killers - the military." 

[Leonard Shlain: The Alphabet versus the Goddess]