Short update on tumor markers. I got yesterday's blood work results back this morning, and my markers had fallen to 73! That's a drop of more than 40 points, and if that happens again during this week, I will be in the normal range. Please keep praying.

Selin and Emre - Thanks for getting in touch. I was excited to see your post. Hope you're well and life is pleasant in Turkey. Thanks so much for your kind thoughts.

Fruits and Nuts

We couldn't have chosen a better place to be for cancer treatment during the winter. We have been enjoying the balmy spring-type weather here in Phoenix for most of our stay. There have been a couple of cold spells, but the kids didn't realize it was considered cold and they ran around outside barefoot. The desert nights are always chilly, but the weather during the day is beautiful.

Last Saturday we picked oranges and grapefruits at a friend's house, and have been enjoying making fresh juice since then. The kids hardly recognized the juice as the same stuff we normally buy in frozen concentrate. I use lemons regularly in my green juice, and we've been blessed with huge lemons from trees around here too. The treatment center has several pecan trees that are dropping nuts all over the yard, so I've been picking up pecans too. And do you have any idea how much better pecans are straight off the tree than the nuts you can buy in bins or bags? There is simply no comparison. I took a small bag of nuts into the treatment center one day and several of us patients cracked them and shared the meat around. It was the first time most of the folks there had tasted a truly fresh pecan.

We were invited to an interesting potluck dinner last week - all raw, vegan, non-processed food. It was hosted by a family who goes to the church we've been attending since we've been down here. I was having a hard time imagining a smorgasbord of raw food. It was difficult to visualize people walking around with plates piled high with carrot sticks and tomato slices. To my surprise, there must have been about 70 people there, and the array of food was lavish - wraps, fruit salads, nut salads, green salads, cold soups, dips, crackers, and wonderful desserts. Our plates really were heaped, and it looked every bit like a normal potluck. My favorite was a chocolate-strawberry pie, which I shouldn't have eaten since it wasn't IPT day, and my blood sugar wasn't lowered. I only had a small piece, and it was worth the step out of the boundaries. I truly enjoyed almost everything I tried that evening. I even contributed a raw apple pie which I made myself with only a little help from a recipe. (Recipes are only suggestions.) It was a very positive raw food experience.

I have been enjoying my food so much more lately. Thanks to all of you who prayed about that. I made my first cheese sauce out of cashews, garlic, lemon, and a little bit of red bell pepper last night, and tonight I enjoyed it on sprouted grain tortillas with red bell peppers, tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, onions, and (cooked) marinara sauce. It tasted very much like a little pizza, especially after I warmed it somewhat in the oven. Oh, well...it started out raw, anyway.

My white blood cells have been behaving wonderfully, and it's been nearly two weeks since I've needed a Neupagen shot. The counts are falling, and I will need a shot again by next Monday probably, but I'm doing so very much better than I was.

My tumor markers fell this week to 119. We are praying that that number will plummet into the normal range very quickly (30 or below) so that we can all go home. We'd sure appreciate your praying about that too. It's been so encouraging to us to see how the Lord has answered your prayers for us. In case you have wondered, getting the tumor markers into the normal range is really only the beginning of this battle, but it is a very significant part. The challenge is to keep the tumors from growing again once they have been destroyed. That is what the strict diet is expected to help with, as well as a period of maintenance treatments.

Results

I met with Dr. Lodi yesterday to review the results of my PET scan from last Friday. Almost all of my tumors and lesions have shrunk by about half. Their metabolic uptake has also decreased by about half. (That's the amount of sugar that these cancerous areas are appropriating). The smallest tumor decreased by only 1/3 in both measurements, but that's still an improvement. The previous PET scan in October had showed two areas of concern, but were not positively identified as metastisized cancer - my ovaries and thymus. Both of those areas are completely clear of whatever was causing them to show up on the PET scan. So that was all good news. Dr. Lodi said that if we could compare this to a baseball game, we are on third base. With two outs. So don't give up praying for me. This is still a battle for my life, and perhaps the analogy to a game was a little light for this situation.

I was discouraged when I found out that during the week's break from the IPT treatments my tumor markers climbed to 143. Dr. Lodi told me not to let that get me down, since tumor markers are only a very narrow indicator of how things are going and will almost certainly fall again once treatment resumes - which, by the way, was yesterday.

We discussed future treatments, and I was not surprised that Dr. Lodi recommended I complete a full 12 weeks of treatment. Although I long to go home, I would hate to stop in the middle and lose the progress we've made. The goal is to get my tumor markers down to normal, and then continue with maintanance treatments for approximately a year to a year-and-a-half. Dr. Lodi is reasonably certain that this is an achievable goal over the next month. If my markers continue to fall at the pace they'd been falling before last week, we would be within 10 points of normal at the end of the treatment routine. Tumor markers are not necessarily predictable, though. Please be in prayer about that.

My white blood cells are doing better, and I would appreciate prayers that those cells will keep up with me. I'm feeling a lot better now. The cold symptoms have been rapidly clearing up since last Saturday. And I've been enjoying my food a great deal more. So your prayers are being answered. Thanks very, very much.

Progress and Regress

My white blood cells have been giving me trouble again, and I'm on preventative antibiotics as well as nearly daily Neupagen shots again. I will not be having the IPT chemo treatments until my counts go up and stay there on their own. The doctor hopes that will happen quickly - about a week, but please pray about that. I'd also appreciate prayer that this bug I've been fighting will clear up. Every few days, the symptoms worsen again, and I'm getting worn out from these physical ups and downs. The combination of the chemo and flu bugs is not good.

Yesterday we got more good news about my tumor markers. In the last week they have fallen to 125! Please pray that my break from chemo will not seriously interfere with this progress. I will continue with all my other regular treatments.

One more prayer request. I've been having a hard time enjoying my food lately. Strange, since I loved it at first. Maybe the Christmas season got to me, but I've been pitching internal fits (and one or two that weren't) about not being able to eat the normal things that appeal to me. I threatened to eat a whole plate of pork roast on Sunday, but my supportive husband refused to be intimidated by my tantrum, and patiently reminded me why I'm doing this treatment regimen. All of you who have contributed to help pay for this option are also keeping me accountable. I sure don't want to waste your investment in me. In the last few days I started praying that the Lord would help my to enjoy me food and be thankful for it.

I want to tell you one very encouraging story from another patient. This man is a doctor who was recently diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. (Pancreatic cancer has only about a 5% survival rate.) His oncologist recommended to him, doctor to doctor, that he decline the standard treatment and prepare to die. He came here about a month ago, and although this world of alternative medical treatment was a real challenge to his training, he decided to embrace it. His tumor markers very rapidly fell into the normal range and his PET scan over the weekend showed absolutely no unusual metabolic activity. He is one grateful man. It was funny to me, after all my food struggles lately, when he told me today that he is asking God to help him enjoy the food he has now committed to eating for the rest of his life.

Happy New Year

I had treatment today, but I'm home now and enjoying an evening with the family. We were very excited to find out that my tumor markers have fallen to 153 now. A normal tumor marker is 30 or less, so we still have a way to go, but the progress so far is remarkable. On January 7, I will be flying back to Denver for a PET scan so we can get a visual of the progress. I will have completed 7 weeks of treatment by then, and the scan will provided the information we need to decide how to continue. I was initially told I should expect to stay here for 8 to 12 weeks. From what I understand, how long I should continue here will depend on how many more bi-weekly IPT treatments I will need. Once I get beyond needing these treatments 2 times a week, I can go home, continue with most of the other treatments in the Denver area with various providers, and fly back here periodically for maintenance treatments over a period of a year or so. ....a year or so... That sounds pretty good. We were thinking a few weeks ago that my life could be over in 6 months. Now we're cautiously looking out over the next year and making treatment plans.

I've needed 2 more Neupagen shots since Monday, but finally today my white blood cell count rose to a healthier level. I also began feeling significantly better today, although I'm still very tired. My wbc's dropped low enough that I needed 3 days of IV antibiotics to prevent the onset of bacterial infections. I sure hope this does not become an ongoing problem and would appreciate your prayers concerning that.

If you want to know more about the kind of chemo treatment I'm receiving, click here. I do have a word of caution before you read this site's explanation. There is a glowing report that a patient can receive this therapy with little or no side effects. You might begin to wonder what went wrong in my case. If someone has never received any chemotherapy before, the lack of side effects from IPT therapy is remarkable. But most of us who are seeking out such non-conventional therapy are doing so because we've already had standard therapies and the cancer has returned. So most of us do have side effects similar to those we had with our standard treatments. They are usually delayed and often less severe, but those effects are still there.

IPT therapy is only one of the many therapies I do on a weekly basis. To answer the questions of several folks, the diet I am doing is very similar to that used in the Gerson therapy. The common thread through almost all alternative cancer treatments is a mostly raw, vegetarian or vegan diet. When my doctor was asked this week by a fellow patient why he uses any type of chemo at all, he explained that most of the patients he deals with (reccurrent stage IV cancer patients) do not have the time left to them to deal with their cancers with diet alone. So he attempts to stop the aggressive cancer growth with IPT, and then rebuild healthy cells with the other therapies, including the raw diet. And I am thankful to the Lord, that so far, this approach is showing success for me.

Merry Christmas

I hope all of you had a very pleasant Christmas. We sure did. The kids have received many thoughtful gifts from lots of people. This has probably been their "biggest" Christmas ever. Several of them had asked me what we were going to do for Christmas. They understood that this year would be quite different from the norm, and they were worried they would have to forgo presents altogether. But many of you made sure their Christmas was beyond their dreams. They've had so much fun.

The review of my ongoing blood tests a few days ago brought good news. My tumor markers have begun to fall again. As of a week ago, they had fallen to 175. So we're still making progress. My PET scan is scheduled for January 7, and that will give a picture of how much things have changed.

Although the chemo I'm receiving at this treatment center is a world different from standard chemotherapy (it's only about 10% of the standard chemo dose for one thing), it still has side effects that tend to accumulate. I had lots of trouble with red blood cell counts during my first round of cancer and chemo, but this time, it has gone much better. Probably that's because of all the green juice as well as the regular chlorophyll supplements I've been taking. My white blood cells, on the other hand, have been presenting a problem. I've had to have weekly Neupogen shots to boost my white blood cell production. Last week, I began fighting a severe cold which evidently complicated matters even more because I had to have 3 Neupogen shots in 6 days. I hope the need for that diminishes. That's an expensive shot - $400.00. At least I'm not being prescribed Neulasta which is what I was given for white blood cells in 2009. That shot costs $4,000 per dose.

I have also begun losing my hair again. It's not coming out fast and furiously like it did the first time around, but I'm definitely losing much more than is normal. People who choose this treatment option with the first occurrence of cancer do not tend to lose their hair. But since I've already lost mine once, hair loss is much more likely to happen again. At least I've already been there, and I know the positive aspects of being bald.

The Lord has been so dear to me during all this. He has given me a true anticipation for whatever path he chooses to take me down. Trusting him completely is such a burden-reliever. And he doesn't let us down.