When the rubber meets the road

Hi All, It's been awhile. It is so hard to adequately share all that has been going on. I spent some weeks struggling with what treatments to go with because doctors don't agree and basically, all the options are all a leap of faith. Because I do not have any "B" symptoms of AITL - night sweats, fevers, rashes. And because my lymph nodes are not growing rapidly... I have decided to take the next month for a different kind of healing (love, travel, nature, fresh air) (in addition to about 100 capsules of herbs and supplements a day, 4 tonics, 1 powder, 1 oil, 3 essential oils, ...). Andy has planned this trip for our 30th anniversary and we can't wait to get on the road! We did something similar 31 years ago. We will have a sauna where we are staying most of the time for detox. I will be oil pulling, taking hot baths with Epson Salts and essential oils. Oh yes...don't forget the coffee enemas. I know it sounds gross but it is really no big deal and it s...

A huge blessing from this experience has been my time in the Cancer Center for Healing. There are only a few of us that live locally. Most there are living in hotels or rented homes, far from the comfort and convenience of home. I get down about the huge life changes needed to beat this thing. Then I go in and sit next to these people from all over the world, many of them are so so sick, and I realize that my life is good and whole and pain free. The only problems I have are between my ears. I can either enjoy today, this moment, which is all we really have. Or I can squander it on negative emotions and thoughts. Going into the Center straightens out my head - and I have come to love several people there. Ginger and Gary are friendly, talkative people. When I first met Ginger, she told me the Lord had just blessed her by fixing her teeth. I have since learned that many many of us are walking around with infections caused by root canals done improperly so that bacteria is allowed to g...

Hi There, It's Saturday morning after a confusing and emotional week. It's so hard to describe where I am at. I am so weird socially. I find it hard to "lie" when I am around people but it is also awkward to try to explain what is really going on in our fast paced and "Hi. How are ya?" world. And, as I write this, I feel stupid because, in reality, I have such a nice life. I have been told I have this terrible disease. If I listen to the oncologist here and at City of Hope, I'd better be in treatment. There is a closed Facebook group of people with AITL specifically. As I've said before, it is rare and aggressive. The people on that group warn against waiting before jumping into CHOEP chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. But...as I read their stories, it seems that standard care just starts a future of relapses and new chemo and other drugs. And then death. I'm sorry to be so blatantly dramatic, but that is the reality. I read strings of ...

The facts:  Angioimmunoblastic t-cell lymphoma or Follicular T-cell lymphoma and Peripheral T-cell lymphoma (different pathologists have diagnosed me with all 3 of these) are all very aggressive and rare and hard to treat. They relapse often after chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. They are "nothing to play around with."  I was diagnosed with AITL after a needle biopsy by an ENT about 2 months ago. A biopsy of lymph nodes from 2 areas were then said to be normal. But, once retested, they came up with this t-cell lymphoma, stage 3.  The PET Scan confirmed it.  City of Hope urged us to start 6 rounds of chemo over the next 18 weeks asap and then do a stem cell transplant that scares me to death.  In the meantime, I started on a tonic of roots and herbs from the Horsey Biomedical Clinic in Mexico and worked to understand other options. I put together a regimen that is not easy but is a heck of a lot better than chemo.  I have b...

I've shared before how I hate being a person who vacillates wildly. I temper my emotions routinely so that I don't feel silly or have to explain myself when things change. There are times I know I should be shouting with excitement about something that happens, yet I don't so that I don't feel silly if I want to cry a few minutes later. And vice versa. So I have waded carefully into today and where I am at today. I am so so grateful for a 2nd day in a row when I feel like myself and stable emotionally. I don't want to assert that I will stay here - but I hope I do more and more. And, I am actually excited about it. Today I can see - the blessings of this situation. Basically, I know that God loves me way too much to allow me to miss what He has for me - spiritually most of all. I have been living a great life with many blessings, but I have been sliding into an existence based on convenience, ease, comfort, excitement, distraction, numbness, busyness, rush, want...

It has been a couple of the strangest weeks of my life. It seems I am on an every other day schedule of being fine, feeling as if we have some grasp of what we are doing and that everything will be OK. On the hand, the very next day, like today, I will read something or be faced with some of the realities of this situation and it will take me to a place where I am fighting back tears for the entire day. It's so hard for me because the one thing I've never wanted to be is a person who fluctuates constantly. I've worked hard to be stable. It is something of value. I know it is because I did not feel stability in my childhood and I wanted more than anything for my children  to have a mother that they could count on and that wasn't all over the place emotionally. I have a CT scan scheduled for this afternoon. My mind is all over the place. It is not the same as the PET Scan I had before, so will it really tell us enough to be able to make any decisions with any certainty?...