Carol Update, Oct 2009

Many of you have been asking for an update on Carol, so here goes…

You can read my previous blog post about our bad weekend and what that led to, but right now I am blessed to say that carol is doing great. We take one day at a time and since my last post she has not only done well but improved. Now let me say that, the situation has not changed, she still has metastatic breast cancer involving more than half of her liver, that’s bad, but right now she is doing really good. Here’s how the story has gone.

After a week of morphine Carol said she was not feeling any pain. I suggested that was because she was on morphine, (not a bad thought I figured…) but she really said that there was no pain where she had pain so she stopped taking the morphine. If you have ever taken morphine you know that it works and that it’s really a nasty drug. She was sick for two days after stopping. Then she started feeling a whole lot better and continued to improve. She felt so much better that by the time we got to Kauai it was like she was never sick. After returning home she spent about 5 days with her parents in SoCal helping them out and just visiting with her parents and my family. There are two reasons why she is feeling better. One obviously is God being gracious and answering our prayers for her. The other is that since we first got the breast cancer diagnosis in June ’08 we have been feeding her a lot of vitamins and supplements to offset the terrible effects of the chemo. Some of the things we wanted to do we had to delay to prevent any conflict with chemo or some blood thinning drugs she had to take for a short time.

Now, since she is not doing any chemo or any other medical treatment we have gone whole hog with the vitamin attack. We have done some homework and have been greatly helped by others who have done more homework than we ever could in this area. We are focusing on immune system boosters and other stuff that will help support good liver function, amongst other things. Here is a list of what she is taking daily; both the item itself and the daily dose, and we are mega-dosing on some of these. This is spread out over the day, typically with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• COQ10 (Ubiquinol, not Ubiqunone): 600mg
• Magnesium: 500mg
• Vitamin D: 3000mg
• Curcumin: 2400mg
• Potassium: 600mg
• Green Tea: 3000mg
• N-Acetyl Cysteine: 1800mg
• AHCC: 600mg
• Maitake Extract: 100mg
• Goji Berry: 4000mg
• Rejuvenzyme (Proteolytic Enzymes): 1 a day right now

Along with this regimen are a number of supplements mixed with juice or water like whey protein and some vegetable extracts concentrated in powder form. She is also juicing fresh vegetables and fruits every day, sometimes twice a day. She has also had a couple treatments of acupuncture. (The Chinese have been doing this for thousands of years; there must be something to it!) Add to all this the occasional trip to In-N-Out and she is in fine form. While she was doing a lot of this during chemo, she has really ratcheted up the amounts and as far as we can read, there are no toxic levels on these items that we are concerned about.

All that being said, God is certainly blessing her right now. If you ran into her on the street (“ouch, my nose…”) you would never think anything was wrong at all. She looks as fabulous as always, maybe a bit fabulous. As far as we know the cancer is still there, she can feel it and it does cause occasional discomfort, but nothing Advil can’t handle.

So that’s the latest from here. Keep the prayers coming, we trust God completely in this. He knows what our desire is here and we keep pressing forward. (Philippians 3:13-14)

BTW, I’m okay too…

Grace to all in Christ,
Brian