My recent pet scan

Where do I begin...

With hopes set high, Mariah, Doug and I set out to Philly on Thursday and my petscan was in the afternoon. We patiently waited for our results and even tried to change our schedule on Friday with the Doctor to earlier, but we had missed the call. So sitting down with the doctor he had explained my cancer was back in my back, a spot on my liver and a middle lymph node in my chest. This was very disheartening, frustrating and unbelievably hurtful to hear the news. I am still in a little bit of shock and would appreciate all prayers. We started treatment the same day and i have been through 1/3 of a round of chemo and it is already kicking my butt. I am trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle to be able to bounce back from this upset next year. I am doing four complete rounds of chemo in fractionated doses. It is different chemo drugs than what I was using before so it is having a profound effect on me. Since I am getting fractionated doses (less side effects and just as effective) we are having to go to Philly every weekend until December.

This is where the fun comes in, we need help watching my daughter during these weekends and I am not sure where to begin to ask for help. It is all so overwhelming right now. Any suggestions and ideas and positive thoughts would be appreciated.

We have been blessed to be able to make it through the beginning of the year in treatment and help from church family, and it dawns on us again that we need help and lots of prayers for healing.

Thank you.

Avemar for cancer

Talking with a few physicians about my after-care treatment after being told I am in x-ray remission, Avemar was one of the things recommended to me. After some prayerful consideration and research, I decided to try it for one month.

Avemar is said to be more effective at inhibiting (restrain) cancer cell growth than tamoxifen. Tamoxifen is prescribed mostly for breast cancer patients, in which I have been one. Doctors are not allowed in their profession to prescribe natural alternatives, therefore; their scope is highly limited in my opinion.

So anyway, my package came today after ordering it two days ago, which I thought was great after only paying $5 for shipping. It came with a freezer bag in the box to keep it cool/cold. I took it out of its packaging, not expecting to find stinky black fermented wheat germ. It looks like black rock crystals. I'm glad they flavored it with something, because otherwise I don't think I'd be able to get it down! I mixed it today with coconut water, bleh!

The taste was really gross, but the supposed benefit was well worth it, so I continued to gag it down. You are not supposed to eat 1 hour prior or after taking it, as well as no supplements for 2 hours before or after taking it. I guess this is to gain the maximum effect. It has been five minutes since it is in my system, and it is already doing something. I got a slight head pain from it already, it gave me a headache for only a minute. I'll keep the results posted on any unusual activity.

Here's to better health!

The next day...

I became a little bloated, but I guess that's what happens with grains, will try again today and take in between lunch and dinner. I will try mixing it with something that tastes a little better with it than coconut water!

A couple weeks later...

Wow! I am impressed, no more minor headaches like i was getting when I first took it. I had really bad metal mouth for two weeks taking this stuff. I think it was detoxing the chemo so fast out of my body, it was bringing it all to the surface. I had some garlic bread, slightly burnt and plastic silverware everywhere i went and this helped tremendously while dealing with the metallic tastes. Water was also a big help, sipping on water all the time helped to keep the effect of the metal down whenever i ate. Also tried to stay away from cooking in any kind of metal pans.

The metal taste has since gone and I can say that Avemar is honestly helping me get back on track with my life after chemo. I am now learning how to make my own fermented wheat germ in hopes of saving some money that the monopoly of this product has come to be. It also gives me energy and a new lease on life!

Colon-cleansing homemade Granola Recipe

After posting my colon health status on facebook, I attributed it to the foods I was eating and supplements I am on currently. Here is the recipe I used for my colon-cleansing granola. I used the dump and pour method so I will try to put this into servings for everyone, but usually you can just eye it to see if there is enough of something. First I took some nuts, you can use whatever you have around. Everything I'm using is organic. First get a large mixing bowl for all your ingredients:

• 1/2 c pistachio nuts
• 1/2 c walnuts
• 1/2 c almonds

Lightly chop these up in a processor, before it gets to flour consistency, you want chopped nuts. Throw them in your bowl, next add:

• 1 1/2 c Irish Steel Oats (you can use whatever oatmeal you have, i love the Irish steel oats)
• 1/2 c dried blueberries
• 1/2 c dried cranberries (gives it a bitter taste, i only included it for my urinary tract health, but in the future will leave these out)
• 1/2 c raisins
• 1 c shredded coconut (dried)
• 1 c coconut flakes (dried)
• dash of vanilla or coconut extract

Now to mix all your ingredients together you will need honey, agave or molasses, i used a little bit of all 3 because I didn't want too much molasses or honey in there. Mix everything together. If you haven't added enough 'glue', add more until it is a clumpy consistency. It is not going to totally stick until you cook or dehydrate it. If you do not have a dehydrator, cook on low 300 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.

If you have a dehydrator, stick on teflex sheet and dry overnight for at least 15 hours, and that's it! This recipe yielded two dehydrator sheets. Yummy! Granola that is sure to get your bowels moving, great for hiking or breakfast cereal! Goes great with homemade nut milk! Experiment with the berries and nuts you have for different flavors. I love coconut which is why i added the flakes and shreds of it. Hope this is helpful! God bless. :)

Ear fluidity, are you swimming without being in water?

Today we finished a greek lesson with Rosetta stone, educational, but exhausting, phew my brain hurts!

Mariah had a soccer game today, we were in charge of snacks and got to bring carved apples that look like faces!

Yesterday my ears felt like I was underwater and it became worse over the course of a few hours. This lead to my learning about cleaning out the nasal passages with a netti pot or in my case a nose dropper filled with hot water, sea salt, eucalyptus oil, and menthol oil while tilting my head and blowing my nose as hard as i could while plugging my nose to unplug my ears and get the oils in my ears for a bit to clean them out. This was supposed to completely help me, it helped a little, but not like I had hoped.

I had just been given antibiotics, that I am okay taking for a urinary tract infection. I thought that if my detox was going the way it should be, that i wasn't drinking enough water and the toxins got stuck in my bladder, so I am taking probiotics with my antibiotics, but it was my ear problem that allowed me to take the antibiotics with hopes of also clearing up my ear problem.

We were debating on going to the E.R., but thought I would try one more thing. I have seen a 6 year old girl do this so I thought i definitely can; eat some garlic and honey. So I chopped up a garlic clove in as small of pieces as I could and scooped my spoon in honey. My 'honey' then held the spoon while i put the garlic on the honey and down the gullet it went. I went to bed, satisfied that I had tried everything I could, and if I wasn't better by morning, I would go to the hospital so they could help me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDavvGuwoRE&playnext_from=TL&videos=ETygmJHziI0

Upon waking, I asked my husband to talk to see if the sound would be muffled in my head, to my amazement and surprise, I could hear him just fine. There was no muffled sound like I was swimming underwater anymore, my hearing had been restored to what it was prior to my problem. What would have caused this? Well with my small research that was done yesterday, I believe it was a food allergy. I am not sure exactly what, but it was my lunch and there was cheese with it. If it wasn't organic cheese than that would definitely have caused something of this magnitude to happen.

There are substitutes for cheese if you are lactose intolerant or dairy sensitive like me. I am learning to make a 'cheese' cracker that even my 6 year old daughter enjoys. The recipe is as follows:

• 2 bell peppers (preferrably yellow)
• 1 c. macadamia nuts
• dash of cayenne pepper
• dash of salt

blend in highspeed blender (i have the blendtec with the 3 qt (96oz) caraffe), once blended this can be used as a dip or put on the dehydrator to be made into crackers using the teflex sheets.

Detoxing with Oil Pulling & Dehydrated Cracker Recipe

There are so many things I want to write about. If not just to get it all out for my own good, who knows how many will read this. I am going through a week of detox. A few of the things I have done so far include:

• epsom salt bath
• bentonite clay bath
• taking zeolite 3x a day
• colostrum (reformatting the immune system)
• juicing
• eating mostly raw
• liver, colon cleanse, fiber, superfoods (spirulina, cholorphyll)
• barley greens, and
• sesame seed oil pulling

I want to talk about my sesame seed oil pulling done this morning. I put about 1 oz. of sesame oil in my mouth and swished it around for about 15 minutes. I listened to videos about oil pulling in the process. After about 10 minutes I could feel the mucous in my throat start to release from the lining. After 15 minutes, i spit it in the toilet and brushed my teeth. My mouth should be sore from all the chemo in my body if it is really pulling toxins to the forefront in my mouth, and indeed it is. I can tell it is working after only one time! This is a great sensation when something is working and you know your body well enough to notice change.

I have been working on making a few things in my new dehydrator and my quest for a mostly raw diet. I have a 5-tray excaliber that I purchased from rawfoodworld.com There is everything I could ever want on that website, but not totally without the means to buy everything that I necessarily want. So my purchases are kept to a minimum.

my flax cracker recipe consisted of:

1. 2 organic green bell peppers
2. 1 cup of cilantro
3. 4 cloves of garlic
4. 1 cup of soaked flax seeds

This is not an entirely tasty recipe for the cracker as it turned out, usually yellow bell peppers are more attractive for eating, i am excited to try my recipe for my 'cheezy' crackers. I do not have a lot of yellow peppers in which to work, but i do have baby bell peppers in different colors. Add to that mixture macadamia nuts and cayenne pepper and a dash of salt and throw it in the dehydrator on a teflex sheet.

I dehydrated pears, apples and a banana with my cracker mix to fill all 5 trays that I have and the fruit turned out grand, although how do you mess up fruit? It's already delicious. :)