Day 3 -- Everything Under Way

The routine here is well underway. I waited 48 hours for the RaphaChlor chlorophyll capsules to lodge in my system, and now I am receiving all of the therapies:

• full-body hyperthermia (pictured above -- how do you like the pig-in-the-blanket look?)

• Indiba hyperthermia: one heated metal pad is underneath my body, and a heated meta disc is rubbed slowly over all the areas where I have tumors.

The main treatment that I've come for is the sonodynamic therapy, which comes in three parts:

• photodynamic therapy: part of the chlorophyll is activated near the surface of my body by a bed of daylight fluorescent bulbs hanging six inches above me -- I stay under these for an hour.

• laser therapy: a small laser wand is slowly rubbed over all affected areas of my body, and inserted rectally to activate my prostate (oooh!). This reaches more deeply than the visible light lengths can reach on their own and lasts about half an hour.

• ultrasound therapy: I lie in a tub of water, and an ultrasound wand is slowly passed over the affected areas of body for about 45 minutes. (pictured above with one of the great nurses here helping out.)
  

We also get three square meals a day of lovingly-prepared vegetarian food, and fruit & vegetable juices three times a day in between meals. But the most healing part of the routine so far are the doctors and nurses here -- I feel so completely taken care of! Everyone is a complete sweetheart, and they are extremely patient with my rudimentary Spanish.

hope at the Pine Street Clinic

I had a great visit at the Pine Street Clinic this afternoon (the perfect antidote to having my bone scan interpreted earlier today!!)

The practitioner reviewed my supplement list with me today, and gave me a great compliment: he said the supplements and herbs that I'd put together through my research (and the advice of other practitioners) was better than most herbalists could have put together!

But of course, the supplements haven't stopped the cancer -- so clearly, something else is needed. He recommended balancing what I'm doing now -- which is *passive*, just taking pills (even though it's over 70 pills a day) -- with *active* treatments for the cancer. By this he means diet, exercise, and specifically Qi Gong exercises tailored for cancer.

He also recommends finding a much more aggressive main treatment -- either through clinical trials of experimental drugs, or through another alternative treatment. I'll be investigating those in the next week and will report back.

Life update!

Since so much has transpired since I last wrote or updated my blog, I thought it would be a good time to say hello again!

(I've put all the details of the treatments I've been taking in a separate post if you're interested. That way the narrative flows unimpeded by science!)

By late May, I knew that I had to change something drastically with my situation in Austin. My treatment regimen was running upwards of $2500 per month, and my 3-day a week job was paying much less than that. Fortunately, at just that moment, my friend Heather told me about a well-paying temp job at UC Berkeley that I could hop into if I came out quickly -- so I did! Liz was wonderfully supportive of my move, and my employers at UT were incredibly gracious about letting me leave with only one day's notice. The job at UC Berkeley has worked out great and I am still there. (Most amazingly, it also offered fabulous health benefits!) The people are nice to work with, the workload isn't stressful, and I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I can handle a normal 40-hour week. My energy is still up and down depending on the day, but I have overall been feeling great.

With the job in place, I started to piece together a life here in Berkeley. Liz came out for a month and was an unbelievable help. She found us a sublet right in downtown Berkeley with her old friends the Schneiders, and we had a great time living in their third-floor loft space. I've lived in the Bay Area for years, and Liz grew up in San Jose, so the terrain was familiar to us. We enjoyed discovering the delights of Berkeley and the East Bay, and the unmatchable diversity of California plants and flowers. After looking at several apartments, Liz and I finally signed a lease two weeks ago for a beautiful place in an old Victorian in South Berkeley. It's just a few blocks from the BART train, shopping, and the meditation ashram we go to.

My health has been pretty good for most of the time out here. Last month I had the great good fortune of discovering a Center for ayurvedic healing in the area, and am currently on a treatment regimen that I can sustain financially and will carry me through the long term. (details in the next post) Through this program I am already feeling a lot stronger and more confident.

Although my PSA had been rising somewhat, my semi-annual bone scan in July showed that my bone metastases were stable or smaller than they had been in January. The oncologist (Dr. Swift) wanted to check out a few details and did so with an x-ray this Monday. Unfortunately, it showed a large ("ping-pong ball sized") growth on top of my right femur, and several smaller spots in my mid-pelvis. Although this is troubling, Dr. Swift says I'm in no current danger of fracture and will keep an eye on things. My monthly Zometa infusions will help to keep this from growing quickly. To be honest, I had seen this coming a few weeks previously. When the bone metastases start growing, they dump a huge amount of excess calcium into my system (hypercalcemia), which I have been experiencing as really unbelievable constipation. I also "threw out my hip" for a week and found it difficult to walk -- which I now recognize as a symptom of the growth on my femur. (walking is perfectly fine now, tho -- I can still feel that "something" is going on, but it's in the background.)

Although I am hardly excited by this news, I'm maintaining a pretty even keel about it. It certainly has my attention, and I'm looking for a way to accelerate my ayurvedic treatment so that its effect will kick in sooner than planned. I also am evaluating all of my "Plan B" treatments (pancreatic enzymes, mega-supplements, and immunotherapy in Germany) to activate them at the appropriate time. I will definitely keep you all posted!

I am so grateful for all of the good wishes that you all have sent. I am also grateful beyond words for all of the amazing support from Liz -- she has been a real trouper through all of this, and has not had an easy time of it. She is back in Austin now disassembling our previous apartment, and working on paintings for her new show "Big Heads" that will be at the Bay Six Gallery in October. You can see some of her great recent work at www.lizpenniman.com, or send her words of support at lizpenniman AT yahoo dot com. I also want to send a big thank you to Heather and Michael and Philip, and everyone else who has helped us out along the way -- thank you!

lots of love and best wishes for all of your endeavors!

New Treatment Regimen

It took a while, but I've sifted out the new information I got at the Schacter Center, and combined it with what I want to keep from the previous enzyme therapy and other supplements.

What I'm doing: I'm still on a diet, detox and supplement therapy. My goal is to heal myself while I'm maintaining as normal a life as possible, and within our current financial constraints.

diet: a low-glycemic diet, alkalizing  with no sugar, white flour, white rice, dairy or soy.  No meat except for salmon a couple of times a week.  No coffee or alcohol.  No fruits except for berries.  Lots of vegetables in salads and  juices and wherever else I can get them.  A 14-grain raw mush (soaked in apple juice) every morning, and as much raw food as I can get.  Organic everything to avoid toxic chemicals.

detox: coffee enemas and saunas at least once each day.  Skin brushing and lots of (reverse-osmosis-filtered) water. Avoid aluminum and teflon cookware, filter on shower head, exercise and meditation every day. Monthly liver or intestinal cleanses.

supplements: a core of general vitamins and minerals, with a number of specific prostate cancer-fighting compounds (details in a separate post):

○ pancreas enzymes (as much as system will tolerate)

○ Pao V FM

○ Myomin

○ PeakImmune 4

○ ProstaSol

○ Curcumin

○ Five Mushroom extract

○ Avemar

○ modified citrus pectin

The hardest part of moving to this regimen wasn't researching and choosing the specifics (that's the fun part!)  It was finding the courage to leave behind the complete therapy package that Pamela had prescribed for me.  This was just as hard as it was to leave behind Herr Dr. Thaller's treatment regimen a few months ago.  I battle feelings that I'm doing the wrong thing, that I'm risking my life based on my layperson's knowledge, etc. etc. -- but in the final analysis, the lesson from this process has been consistent: I have to be the director of my own treatment.  I have to trust my own body, my own intuition, my own judgment -- no one else can do it for me.

A Day in the Life -- Part 1

Here's a quick outline of the procedure I go through every morning to keep things rolling for my enzyme treatment.

6:30am -- Turn on near-infrared sauna so it can warm up to 110 degrees.

Meditate for (at least) 20 minutes.

6:50am -- Take 5 chlorella tablets. Enter sauna for 20 minutes. (It's like a rotisserie -- I bake each side for 5 minutes, then rotate 90 degrees!)

7:15am -- take 2 tablespoons of post-sauna electrolytes.

Take AM supplements (20 tablets total, plus tinctures):

• aloe vera extract
• blue-green algae
• Cytozyme-THY (thymus gland extract)
• Immune System Activator (beta-glucan)
• Coriolus PSP
• 5 Mushroom Extract tincture
• Bach Flower remedy (Gentian, Rescue Remedy, Chestnut Bud, Scleranthus)
• Caprobiotics (probiotics)
• PanAlone (pancreatic enzymes)
• ProstaSol (herbal hormones -- see http://www.clearfeed.com/pfeifer/prostate-cancer.html )
• Prostabel (pao pereira + rauwolfia vomitoria extracts -- see http://www.beljanski.com/eng/beljanski.html)

7:25am -- start coffee enema (prepared the night before)

8:35am -- eat 14-grain raw cereal + fruit (prepared the night before)

9:15am -- take post-breakfast supplements (29 tablets total)

• Perque2 Life Guard (multivitamin + mineral)
• Perque Bone Guard (calcium + other minerals for bone supplementation)
• Strontium (for bones)
• gingko biloba
• Vitamin D3
• Vitamin C
• alpha lipoic acid
• Master Amino Acid Pattern
• Omega-3
• Montiff Liver Protec (silymarin + d-alpha tocopheryl succinate + quercitin)
• PanAlone (pancreatic enzymes)

…and that's it for the morning! I'm ready to head off to work for a few hours.

(procedure to be continued!)

Treatment Update

Hi everyone -- I'm still here! Things are going well -- I'm starting the second month of my pancreatic enzyme treatment, my last PSA reading was below 3, and I feel great most days.

This has been a *very* wild month -- the pancreatic enzyme treatment is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought. Parts of it are easy and parts are definitely not. In the next post I'll give a sketch of what the treatment looks like on a daily basis. (As my nutrition coach, Pamela, says: "it's a full-time job!")

I just wanted to check in and wish all of you a happy Texas Independence Day (March 2nd) Enjoy!

Another Viewpoint

Yesterday I had my weekly appointment with Francis, a local healer that several people have recommended very highly. He's humble, non-descript, Scottish, and has a definite spiritual power. I've felt things move during his sessions with me. And I'm a big fan of synthesizing several approaches, so I see him regularly.

I've always been with him in groups, but yesterday I started out the session with him on my own. He asked me about my Gleason score (a particular way of measuring the extent of the cancer), and asked what I was doing to treat it. I explained Dr. Thaller's procedures briefly.

Then he asked me if I had become vegetarian. "No," I said, "I've cut out red meat but still eat chicken and fish." He launched into a very articulate defense of not eating meat because of the death it necessarily entails. He was strong and pretty relentless. "There's no happy pill you can take to cure your cancer," he said. "Nothing will really happen until you take responsibility for curing your own cancer by eating the right things, and by helping heal the pancreas -- when you have cancer you don't have a proper supply of pancreatin. It's your own choice, of course, but that's what you're looking at."

I was pretty taken aback -- not just because of his firm tone, or the fact that this was the first time he had spoken more than a couple of words to me. It was the synchronicity at work. What he described was almost exactly the same treatment that Dr. Gonzalez recommends, and that I've been reading extensively about. Chalk it up as one more strong clue from the universe.