update

one drain just out, the second to follow on Christmas Day...

I will be fully updating my accounts here once I'm back to my office... tapping out posts on a phone is too tedious for me at the moment. I expect to be back at work Monday 6 January... my recovery continues to outpace the average thanks to homeopathy and divinely-inspired movement work... I say divinely-inspired as I long ago turned controls over from brain to body intuition, the portal for grace in our lives... listening to the body has become my main passion and the adventure of a lifetime... 

more soon, happy holidays, remember to put the accent on what you can give, what opens the heart, and forget about the rest... :)

new ideas...

"With three major papers in three major journals after my first year of research, I felt I'd arrived. The world has a way of cutting you down to size, however, and in the science game the method is known as citation. No matter how important your paper is, it doesn't mean anything unless it's cited as a reference in new papers by others and you get a respectable number of requests for reprints. On both counts, I was a failure. I was learning how science treats new ideas that conflict with old ones." [Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric]

I've been blessed by beautiful workmanship...!

tremendous success!!!

my godsend of a surgeon did a simply fabulous job, this little community hospital was spot on every step of the way...! I was on my feet after only a few hours, surprising the nurses, thank arnica and a positive attitude for that. now is time for lots of rest, gentle but persistent physio, and a recharge of my batteries for a wonderful new year ahead!!!! 

early bird...

just got the call, my little design modification is scheduled for 630a tomorrow... I'm dosing on arnica pre and post and will be eager to return to Toronto as soon as I'm able to resume the last of the hyperbaric and IV supports I have left on my tab, and to do more green juice fasting for the first few weeks... onwards! :)

angels!

I found a surgeon tucked away in small town Ontario who speaks my language and put an entirely different spin on my surgical prognosis... as I suspected I was being presented with fear-spin in order to make my compliance with chemo mafioso more likely... I'm having the operation tomorrow, so excited!!!! victory boing-boing-boing!!!!!!

update...

white team found my CT scan, to their surprise, clear. except for the massive tumour in my breast and a lymph node. this cancer is known to aggressively spread from its first location but my body is holding it off quite spectacularly. what they call a reprieve i call a lot of hard work against many forms of opposition, a minor miracle that's also eating my heart out. they reacted in restrained disbelief that I would seek surgery at this point as it would be very risky for nonhealing, create a large wound and involve a skin graft. the pinhole drain on the breast healed over last night and I felt a day of rest was in order for it. it continued to swell during the day and by the time I got to hospital it was quite enlarged again, looking like a massive tumour... I reiterated a few times that what was presenting here was at least a third fluid... they weren't buying it. the oncologist made chemo treatment sound like a temporary inconvenience limited to a few bad days a week. I explained I wasn't avoiding chemo because I'm afraid of the profound secondary effects, the whole interventionist notion of interfering with and suppressing symptoms instead of cultivating natural laws makes zero sense to me. I'm going out of town tomorrow to consult green team surgeon, see what he has to tell me.

tests...

bone scan came back all clear which means I'm still beating the odds on this cancer's spread. today I have a CT scan and consult with white team who wish to urgently persuade me again that chemo and radiation are necessary before any surgical intervention.... I'm always open to their presentations and still determined to travel tomorrow to see what green team surgeon has to say.... and if things look good, I'm going for it... have stopped taking pain meds altogether... :)

great news...

the breast continues to drain more than it replenishes and I've been successful in keeping the work of caring for it sterile, comfortable and infection-free.... I haven't even taken a damnable painkiller yet today which is such a relief... it has collapsed to the degree you can't tell I have an affected breast at all anymore!

but the best part, the general surgeon out of town has looked at my charts and agreed to see me on Friday at noon... all things being equal he will operate that night or on the weekend... this is music to my ears!!! the less time I have to run the risk of critical infection, the better... part of me still wants to see how much farther I can neutralize this cancer on my own, but so far I've kept it from brain, bone, or lung and this is a distinct advantage.... and if I play my cards right post-op I can wipe out what remains after surgery and achieve my ambition... a return to health governed by natural laws and minimum intervention... onwards!!! 

healing...

the reason I've chosen to allow a natural drain to form when a surgical one was denied me, if you look at surgical episiotomies versus natural tears you'll see wide variance in healing time and scarification or other complications with the natural tear far superior in outcome compared with the surgical intervention... this fact is often used in other procedures where manual tears are used in lieu of incisions.

busy bee...

on the basis that I've been a restless busy bee, irritable with the less active and experiencing the typical Apis swellings of the eyes, face and this seroma in the breast, I've taken a dose of 6c Apis (that's a low potency)... Apis is also on my constitutional tree as an infant. having dosed I can do my movement practice without any discomfort so far and I haven't taken any painkillers yet today... :) it's during my mat work that I can enjoy how much the breast has reduced... where it was an obstruction I have freedom again... amazing!

thanks for the drain...

doing at home what the surgeons wouldn't try since they didn't believe the ultrasound... from my report this morning to green team... "the breast stopped draining a few hours after we spoke yesterday and partially refilled w fluid overnight so this morning reapplied cabbage leaves and it started to drain again almost immediately... manually expressed as much as could be painlessly squeezed out, more than 2 cups worth... no pain really but my left under eye was puffy translucent and swollen where the sinus is when I woke up...."

there is no evidence of anything being attached to the chest wall and the breast is almost half the size it used to be with the one spot of hard mass clearly distinguished from the rest of the soft drained tissues... the colour looks good and I feel relief but I'm not entirely comfortable with my risk of secondary infection... made more phone calls and hoping for headway. if not, I'll just have to keep making my own way under adverse conditions and without complaint... MANTRA: everything that's happening is helping me take the road most suited to learning and healing....!

waters have broken...

after getting politely shut out of all three main hospitals I approached for surgical relief of local symptoms on account of my position on chemo, I decided this is a good thing... all through this I've taken position that body knows best when it comes to healing... the breast is already hugely reduced with all the serous fluid that's drained once it finally broke through earlier today... I'm keeping vigilant with sterile protocols, hot compresses, cabbage leaves and diluted hydrogen peroxide sprays... I will get ozone and hyperbaric once the acute phase of the drain is over... I remain optimistic I will get the surgery I need if I really need it... certainly they won't be able to argue that its too large a mass to proceed in spite of my insistence this was at least half fluid... 

Lao-tzu...

"As the soft yield of water cleaves obstinate stone,

So to yield with life solves the insoluble.

It is said, 'There's a way where there's a will,'

But let life ripen and then fall,

Will is not the way at all:

Deny the way of life and you are dead."

first observation...

on inspection last night the pockets of protrusion on the lateral and underside of the breast were almost black with visible dark blood within and only the thinest membrane enclosing them... very close to becoming broken abscesses... following overnight plussing of homeopathic arnica the areas were pink this morning with only a small black dot in each... this is a very promising sign that arnica may be an agent I can use to reabsorb the hematoma, however I can't rule out that the clearing was brought on by a few hours rest on my back overnight, so I will need to see more improvement before I claim success... enjoying the chanting at this retreat, its another form of vibrational medicine that can't be beat...! 

continuing to take matters into my own hands...

the report generated by the radiologist of the ultrasound i had a few days ago seems to rule out the presence of a simple seroma, and in fact his suggestive interpretations lead me to some different conclusions than the surgeons and physicians i've seen.

he describes the lesion as now 12cm in size, but how much of this is tumour and how much is cystic components remains for a CT scan to indicate. what he was able to describe was "a central cystic component with solid circumferential soft tissue..."

he goes on to conclude that without other imaging he can't be sure if this represents "necrotic tumour, a combination of tumour and infection, or tumour and hematoma."

the dream i had almost 15 years ago which presaged this event in my life saw me feeling an uncontrollable urge to manually express the contents of a mass in the right breast. when i began to milk it out the side, the mass was painlessly evacuated and produced a mixture of old blood and pus... pus, of course, is an immune-system reaction, and since the start of this adventure i've been using a variety of treatment methods to cue up my immune system and alert it to the need for action against the invader.

its obvious to me that what has been producing the increase in size these last few weeks is not tumour growth, but rather a dramatic reaction produced by the death of this primary tumour.... that's what the radiologist meant when he suggested this result could be necrotic tumour activity and i note that this was the first of his suggestions.

i decided this time around to really take my time and meet with all three of the cancer teams local to me... mount sinai, princess margaret, and sunnybrook.

without an appointment, the surgeon at mt sinai took one look at the copies of all my tests and diagnostics and immediately made time to see me and without making me wait at all. an esteemed gentleman with decades of experience and much recommended by former patients, he was very tolerant at the outset with respect to the choices i've made, but he would not concede that the dramatic increase in size this month could be part of the body's healing process, or that this tumour necrosis (the breast center, after all, is filled with fluid, not tumour, the remaining tumour has been pushed to the circumference, and this is in keeping with how tumours die, from the inside out...) was an indicator that in fact what i've been doing _is_ working. he preferred to sum up that i've wasted 6 months and by just looking at the size of my jane mansfield it hasn't worked. this was fine and expected, i don't consult with specialists because i want them to approbate the direction i've taken, rather i rely on the oppositional view as an impetus for further study, learning, questioning, and to help me refine and define my choices.

he was not open to the idea of surgery without neo-adjuvant chemo (4 months) and then post-modified radical mastectomy another year of chemo and radiation. he advised that because there's no normal breast parenchyma visible, he couldn't save the skin of the breast, which makes the surgery, recovery, and the remaining scar a more complex proposition.

we also know from the cursory investigation of axillary lymph during the ultrasound that metastasis is currently not limited to the one palpable lymphoma, but rather involves "multiple abnormal axillary lymph nodes, ranging in size up to 3cm... some lymph nodes have no fatty hila and look highly suspicious."

thusly the surgeon would be aiming to remove all my axillary lymph as well. every instinct i have continues to want to avoid this, and in fact, any major surgery. instead, i still want to explore every possibility of our body's innate powers to reverse disease and repattern tissues. i've read too many accounts of verified examples of such healing to be curtailed.

i have consults with two other surgeons next week, CT and bone scans, and meetings with oncologists and radiologists. i've researched the standard chemo regime in this country for TNBC and am getting up to speed on the questions i will have for these specialists. its not sufficient to my purposes anymore to simply refuse chemo and radiation, i need to be able to present the evidence i find persuasive, allow for their reply and hope for real dialogue. not because i intend to capitulate, i just want a complete experience.

still, there is no question, if i can't source by my own powers a method of reducing the size of this balloon-of-a-breast in pretty short order, i'll have to have surgery. whether i can find a surgeon willing to work with me outside the chemo radiation arena remains to be seen, but if i want what i want i'll have to find one. i'll be following up on monday with a tip to a general surgeon out of the city who may be willing to play ball, and if he's game, this will be a great backup plan to have at the ready. my green team would be able to travel to me post-op to give me additional recovery support in the form of IVs and ozone and once i'm local again, i'll be able to do a week of intensive double-diving in the hyperbaric chamber as this form of oxygen under pressure is notoriously effective in wound healing.

in the meantime i had a flash of inspiration into something so obvious i almost missed it. homeopathic arnica is brilliant for reducing hematomas and reabsorbing extravasated blood. it's also on my constitutional tree from childhood when i was quite characterized by its leading qualities. starting tonight i'll begin taking arnica in low potency, plussing, and if it feels necessary, i'll move up the potency scale first to an LM and then 1M to 10M and see how it affects the lesion.

i'm also looking much forward to a retreat this weekend at the dharma center that couldn't be more well-timed or topically relevant....

Buddha ShakyaMuni's descent from the Joyful Land Tushita

Prayer to Buddha ShakyaMuni and the Great Thousand-hand Thousand-eye Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig). Tsog offering which helps to create merits and restore degenerated spiritual vows and commitment. Dharma teaching “The Heart Sutra” and meditation.

mount sinai, 28 november 2013

my jane mansfield...

a few weeks ago i felt the urge to conduct a little experiment on account of the advent of small protruding sacs of fluid on the lateral side of the breast... i would darken the bathroom and take a flashlight to area, and to my surprise it illuminated in a way that made me wonder if this growth spurt was all or at least part edema? maybe this wasn't a massive tumour signaling its dominance over my efforts to constrain and ultimately neutralize it, maybe the buoyancy i felt when handling it and the other indicators suggested something else. i love playing detective!

white team was confident it was all tumour and thusly set in motion a 'palliative' mastectomy, but i'm in no rush. i asked for an ultrasound in the meantime and was incredibly relieved when my sonographer turned out to be a lovely eastern-european lady (sorry to generalize, but, on average, eastern-europeans tend to be more open to natural medicine than their western counterparts) who listened carefully to my account as to why i'd asked for the ultrasound and how i was hoping she could shed further light on my observations... she was fascinated by my jane mansfield and got totally absorbed in the task of how to depict it for the radiologist. both of her probes weren't big enough for my boob-of-art so she spent double the usual consult time to fully capture all the information possible. she kept repeating she'd never seen anything like this before.... there's still a tumour visible against the chest wall (i will get dimensions and better info once we have the radiologists report) but the bulk of my jane mansfield is all......... FLUID!

this has many implications. it could be that what's left of the tumour is obstructing the normal drainage channels of the breast, it could also be that my body has been using the fluid to protect itself from the trauma of the invasive growth. it could also be a reaction to something else, a supplement, a mineral imbalance, there's much that still needs to be discovered!

yesterday when i was lying in the dark watching the sonographer's screen there were too many occasions when i could swear i was seeing the outline of a fetus in its amniotic sac. the resemblance was uncanny and made me feel in the presence of something truly profound. that's one of the many facets of this living symbol i'm carrying. the difference between a symbol and a sign, it bears repeating, is that a sign refers to only one possible meaning, whereas a symbol is complex and dynamic enough to contain many possible inferences within the beguiling gauze of its net.

regardless of the physical 'cause' to be uncovered in the next few weeks, from a symbologist's point of view, this tumour has created its own womb, its own amniotic sac, all in an effort to get through to me. i even recall a few days ago thinking to myself, if jane mansfield keeps growing like this, the skin will break and i'll have cause to announce that my water has broken. this struck me as the start of a ripening irony.

i've asked white team to research if there is a minimally invasive procedure that could drain the breast, but just to have all my options on deck... recall the situ when dealing with a blister. its always recommended to avoid, even with a sterile needle etc, the pricking and draining of the fluid since you risk infection and incomplete healing. my preference will be to leave jane alone and figure out some novel, natural way to reduce her size. its her size and the strain on my fascia and nerve net that has me on percocets which i dislike immensely.

green team has some ideas as well, they're also trying to help me spread the treatments i have left out over as much time as possible since there's no money left for anything... i've started coming into 'work' everyday at a satellite green clinic in the country just a short drive from toronto so that i can have peace and solitude to continue my studies and writing and to offer the seva of housekeeping alongside some ideas i have to help build the business up at this location. its an amazing opportunity to create a role and immerse myself in a workplace environment that's in accord with my aptitudes and interests and that allows me to every day develop my knowledge and apply it in the service of the wellbeing of others.

onwards!

frontiers and follies look the same...

In the last couple days I've entered new territory, I now have to be taking narcotic painkillers which means I'm under their influence when I do my practice of breathwork, spontaneous movement and shaking interspersed with slow asana-based fascial stretching. Without the meds I have more limited range, so while on them I'm taking advantage in this game of chicken... I'm pressing forward into deeper practices because I believe in the therapeutic powers of breath, awareness, and the raising of prana or qi. It's not for no reason these practices have persisted in human culture, in their doing they take us beyond and before the degradation of sense civilization has inflicted on us. It permits that return to the first Edenic garden of at-one-ment with Mother Earth, and while I'm alive I intend to resurrect it and know it.

pandimex....

another present that came my way thanks to mum, today I got my first bottle of pandimex... with all the previous oxygen treatments, my body is prepped and ready and slurping it up! excited! I also got more test results that show remarkable pictures of health. I lost a little more body fat but put on a couple pounds of pure muscle!!! thank you yoga!!! not only that, the bio impedance test says I'm suddenly retaining a large amount of water that wasn't there last month!!! wonder where???? for the first time in weeks there was no increase in the lesion size this morning and I stopped taking painkillers... all because I broke a spell last night. onwards!

"Pandimex is a product that is created from a preparation of ginseng. Several anti-malignant mechanisms of Pandimex have been eluicdated at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada, documented case studies, and clinical studies are giving significant evidence for the use of certain ginsenosides in the treatment of cancer. This therapy has been approved as a chemotherapeutic agent in the republic of Georgia and clinical trials in hospital settings are underway. Pandimex contains several different ginsenosides or components of the ginseng extract to exhibit a collective range of anti-malignant effects which include:

• Induction of Differentiation- When differentiation is induced in malignant cells, they start to resemble normal cels along with their normal replication rate and cell cycle.
  
• Apoptosis of Cancer cells Through Different Mechanisms-  Apoptosis means programmed cell death and is a main goal in the treatment of cancer. when multiple pathways for the signaling of cell death in cancer cells utilized, tumors become more targeted and susceptible to the therapy. As malignant cells and responses to agents can vary within the same tumor, a multi-faceted approach can be very beneficial. This is why more than on chemotherapeutic drug is often used in therapy.
  
• Multi-Drug Resistance (MDR) Reversal- One component of Pandimex called dammarange spogenins has the ability to inhibit a protein pump found on MDR cancer cells. By inhibiting this pump MDR cancer cells become more susceptible to naturopathic and conventional chemotherapeutics. Evidence suggests synergistic action with conventional chemotherapies and clinical trials are assessing concurrent administration. In clinical trials reported adverse effects of Pandimex have been minimal.

plan b...

the bloodwork drawn at the start of november showed some abnormalities consistent with a high inflammation state in the body, but it also showed a near miraculous return to perfect health in liver, kidney and thyroid function. white team wants to perform a palliative mastectomy right away as the lesion has raced ahead of me. i have initiated that road as a backup plan to some other strategies i'm putting into practice as we speak. i told green team i have a three-strikes you're out attitude to the things i try and each time we did local injections near the site the response was incredible pain, dramatic growth and/or some kind of swelling, perhaps consistent with the immune response we're looking for, its hard to say. in order to avoid becoming reliant on narcotics for pain, i decided to go back to injecting in the hip fat.

i remember hearing the case of a woman who had a terrible skiing accident in europe. the wound went gangrene and the doctors wanted the amputate. the woman refused, started bruising the leaves of cabbage, wrapping the affected area and eating large amounts of raw cabbage. the wound healed rapidly. i believe the body might have a better idea how to get rid of this than any surgeon and i'm prepared to go quite far off the beaten track before i opt for plan b.

the michelle show...

... is really beginning to get on my nerves. and my tits!

at least this was what i was feeling yesterday. increasingly i'm able to observe myself from a tertiary point, neither in the dream of life, nor out of it, but at a third vantage that encompasses both. and yesterday i could feel it all, as the song goes. on the one hand i was watching the calculated efforts of the idealized ego, where we feel all our goodness, beauty and truth resides. its the part of the self that knows how to pace a good conversation, how to really be there for another person so that the alchemy of narrative can work its golden magic. i can't tell you how many people i've met at the clinic have exclaimed at some point that they don't know why they're telling me these things... they're things they don't readily tell people even in their intimate circles. i point out its often easiest to unburden yourself to a stranger, what i don't say is that people are extraordinarily drawn to those walking the edge between death and life. they intuitively piggyback on the inflection we reflect back to the world, a certain frame on looking... it benefits everyone to look at experience with a nod to its fleeting nature, its unitarian innocence, and our potential to rotate every moment away from ignorant suffering into presents of joy, love, and nonviolence. from this vantage you can no longer harm yourself anymore than you could another. you're no longer perplexed by the many forms and visages and circumstances that light up and darken the theater of experience, you experience the ugly-beautiful ineffable animating it all. nobody owns inspiration, nobody owns knowledge, nobody owns matter except a mind that makes it so.

i noticed yesterday that i was watching myself more cynically so that i could be released of my idealizations... watching how i perform the michelle show in order to control the room and to draw attention to myself whether i am speaking or silent, whether i'm aware of this or not... i haven't really been aware of this until i saw it in an abrupt shift of view yesterday. i have no other channel on my TV set and i have to let go of this habit as it's draining me of energy. what a refreshment to be able to see this, acknowledge it, and let it go!

i've started wanting to be alone. particularly the more pain i'm in, the more i spin my wheels without getting breakthroughs, the more i feel drawn away from giving of my energy to others. not all forces to which we are subject are righteous, some of them must be neutralized into a more moderate approach.

when i woke this morning i realized i must resist putting my needs at center or withdrawing from my habit of talking with anyone who engages me. it will not help or make anything better. it would actually lead to pure frustration, especially during a saturn transit to a natal sun square mars aspect. our dealings with other people are the classroom of our lives, its how we take the edges off or sharpen them up. people who cut with their edges, being abrasive with anger and rhetoric, they've always been a constant presence in my life, from parents forward. from them i've acquired the on-going art of neutralizing, and to them i owe a debt of gratitude. but not my life.

ice cream...

i've been having this recurrent and to me perplexing dream of coming awake finding myself deep into the act of eating burnt caramel ice cream or some other dessert, something so decadent and rich in its nightime sleepland creation that i can not only still taste it, i can confirm in myself a true detachment from any desire for those kinds of overly saturated short gain deep gouge pleasures. anyway i come to awareness eating this ice cream and realize to my horror that my actions are giving death an edge by feeding the cancer inside me. i enter this dual state where i think i've doomed myself, so what's the point anyway, might as well eat the ice cream... but since i'm also having the dream, i start influencing its course, i'm the awareness that understands i'm being spoken to directly about being able to practice the art of refraining.

for weeks i've been tormenting myself thinking the message was dietary, driving myself nuts (pun intended) but after exhaustive research and experimentation i finally realized the ice cream of my dream isn't in my diet at all.

poly-mva

turns out my family never called the investment in my treatment a waste. i learned a good lesson about relying on primary sources from now on because i caused myself a lot of unnecessary pain over nothing. lessons lessons lessons on how to stop being that proxy voodoo doll! i am now back on track with IV materials and hyperbarics provided for until january. that's all there is and will be so its really now or never. the rest is up to me. started a course of poly-mva today and i reacted quite strongly. it was only these last few weeks that i've had occasion to take a couple percocets for breakthru pain, i was ever so grateful for them tonight.

anyway, this is me pressing on because that's just what you do when the fire of life still burns bright in you... onwards!