Crossroad to Confusion

Exodus 4:11-12 (NIV) “The LORD said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’” 

Okay, so here I am reopening my blog writing again and you might be asking yourself why. Well let me tell you my story, yet again. The Big C came into my life on a black horse carrying with it fear and uncertainty. That was January 25th, 2017 when I got the official diagnosis. Now in all of my research, I learned that the C cells were awakened seven to ten years earlier when they were as small as a dust mote and no possible sign of them being seen even with the finest equipment in the 21st century!

I’m not going to rehash the entire story, you can read it here with this link and all of 2017 if you wish but fast-forwarding to 2019, after I was told I was stage 4, that the C cells had metastasized, meaning they spread to my bones, my liver and I have no clue where else. Doctors are funny that way, they tell you snippets of what THEY want in little increments of fear, so you stress and worry yourself, literally to death. But I have something no doctor has and that is FAITH in the Lord my God!

Yes, I know some doctors have faith but I can assure you, they think they are doing God’s work for Him. Maybe they are and maybe they are not, that is not for me to judge. They are NOT the God I listen to. In my heart and my soul, no doctor’s fear penetrates me so much that I override what the Lord tells me and says for me to do.

Around the time of my femur break, I was placed on (OC) Oral Chemo. That is not the same as chemotherapy, being hooked to a machine pumping poison into your system. This poison targets the estrogen positive cells going crazy in my body and attacks the little wanderers in other places.

My markers were extremely high and the doctor really didn’t feel like this OC was going to work but after a month in the hospital, the pills, often not taken on a regular basis until I got home from the hospital, were showing signs of working. The oncologist who visited me in the hospital for the ten days that I was there kept pushing for me to do the port IV Chemo which I AM firmly against. I know it, God knows it, the doctors know it! But Dr. Biscuit, a colleague of my current Onc., was astounded that the little time I was on the OC, my tumor was shrinking and the markers were sliding DOWN the sliding board at record speed!

Markers are blood cell counts. White, red, and C cells. They tell the doctor what is going on inside the body. Dr. Biscuit didn’t want to agree with me that my strict diet adherence is what made my body accept the OC so well when thousands of women across the country were falling sick with vomiting, skin problems, diarrhea, and other side effects. I was an exemplary guinea pig if you will.

Miracle after miracle, my markers, month after month was going down. August-September they were at an all-time high of 2711 dropping to 350 by November. What my doctor failed to tell me was that December and January there was a slight increase in my C cells, not my White and Red ones, so I guess it didn’t draw concern at that time.

During those months I thought I was home free. My current oncologist told me to eat what I wanted to get my weight up and like a fool, I LISTENED to the doctor! As I sit here in February all the junk food, meat, dairy, carbs all toxins I hadn’t had for almost two years were in my body doing a little dance, unbeknownst to me, with my cells! I weigh the same that I weighed when I entered the hospital back in September. So the doctor was wrong in telling me to eat what I want.

I was told to stop my supplements back in September but was allowed my Vitamins A, B12, C, D3, and E. I stopped all supplementation except two that I felt were essential, Green Tea/Curcumin, turmeric/black pepper. The doctor on many occasions LAUGHED at me and made fun of my supplementation. I let it roll off my back because I took jabs at his bald head, so touché.

Also in these months, I’ve been attending Physical Therapy to regain the mobility that I lost when my femur popped out of my leg. Yeah, it was not a simple break, it was a total disaster and they really didn’t think I’d walk again after repairing the damage, but again, miraculously, I PROVED THEM WRONG! I’m walking with a walker and often with just my cane! 

The other day was my oncologist visit. It was the first time they’d seen me NOT in a wheelchair. The one assistant squealed like a little girl in amazement! 

“JONI! What’s this? You’re walking!” Squeals of delight and smiles from the other nurses as I passed and little murmurs of “Way to go!” could be heard as I was led into the docs office. Even the doctor smiled and said, “You’re looking good!”

In the room, the talk began, the banter if you will. Him making fun of me and me listening to his rhetoric on chemotherapy and how people die without it. THIS is when he mentioned my C cells rising. The OC had done its job and can do no more. This is also the time, six months later, that he tells me the OC was only supposed to work for three months. Here I was five-six months out, still looking good for a stage 4 patient. My white and red were ‘plateauing’ as he put it, an evening out.

I got home from the visit sad, not my peppy self when the phone rang as we walked in the door...

“The doctor needs to see you again. Your markers are up.” PA says to me. I said a Wednesday visit would be okay. 

I broke. The tears that had been stored up for a few months all unleashed when the floodgates opened. I had been doing so good, I’ve been soaring, walking, healing, feeling great and BAM! Slap me in the face kind doctor! 

I was angry. For the first time in my spiritual life, I was angry at God! I lost two children and didn’t feel the anger that swelled up inside of me at that very moment. I was not as well as I was led to BELIEVE I was. 

“WHY,” I cried, “why is all of this happening again. I just wanted a break, a reprieve from the stress of healing! I thought I was. I was being misled down a path?” The tears filled the trashcan to overflowing with Kleenex.

That night I did what I always do, I prayed. I apologized first and asked what He’d have me do. No answer. In the morning on Thursday, I prayed as I always do and talked with Him. I had said in jest that if it snows on Wednesday (or snow inhibiting my visit) then my answer was to just say no, to chemo! I looked at the weather and while snow was forecasted for Friday and Saturday, three to four inches, it was sunny and clouds all next week. A deep sigh left me still praying and wondering. What was I to do?

I was told by the docs office to not take any more pills and they called the pharmaceutical place and stopped delivery of further shipments. Great, I’m dangling out here, alone. HA! The jokes on them! I AM NEVER ALONE! I have an Almighty God! An intense faith in my spiritual life! It surpasses anything in this physical realm! I know my friends think I’m crazy, surely the doctor does too, but I have an AMAZING Healer in God! I cannot and will not lose my faith!

I woke Friday morning feeling eerily good. Two days in a row of PT wore me down, the doc visit shredded me to pieces and here I was Friday morning, snow blanketing the fields, and I’m feeling pretty good. Wednesday I tossed the drugs in the trash and resumed right then and there my supplementation. No more meat, back to the strict protocol that OBVIOUSLY worked FOR me and not against me!

On to reading my morning devotional emails. I was going to read ‘Verse of the Day’ first but I inadvertently hit Encouragement for the Day. In it was a story of a woman who had in-vitro fertilization and was told by her doctors that these last four embryos were ‘inferior’. In his YEARS of study, knowledge, and experience told these hope-filled parents that inferior embryos don’t ‘hatch’, so to speak.

She was on the sonogram table listening to THREE HEARTBEATS! From the email: “As I lay on that table, looking at the glowing screen, those three fluttering heartbeats told me what a doctor had labeled “inferior” was exactly the kind of thing God uses to accomplish His will.
Our doctor briskly entered the room, breathless and looking perplexed. “I really don’t know how this happened!” He exclaimed.”

What message was I, little Joni, getting from this? Let’s look at the accompanying scripture and you’ll see/read for yourself.

TRUTH FOR TODAY: Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (NIV)

Exodus 4:12, “Now go! I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say.” (NCV)

I closed down my writing because I thought I was done, I could move on. As you see...God is not done with me yet! A look at next weeks weather? A 70% chance of snow on Tuesday. 

All praise and Glory to a Wonderful and Amazing God! 

Just in case you were wondering, this was the other message received today. Our God is an AWESOME God! From Charles Stanley: In Touch
Pss 23:1-6

One More Thing: The Trio

Philippians 2:14-16 (NIV) “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”

I wanted to share just one more thing before you all move along with your summer activities and get too busy to check up on lil old me. I feel like my most recent posts have been me 'grumbling' about my pain when really I wanted to share with you the reality of my day to day life in the best way possible.

Phil. 2:14-16 (KJV) Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.

The KJVersion of Phil. 2 doesn't say, 'grumblings or arguing' but grumblings is what I feel I've been doing and maybe that shouldn't be so. How can I shine a light of Christ from my soul if all you read is the grumblings of my back pain? There is a light in here and the only reason I share my murmurings are so that you do not get the picture that self-healing is all hunky-dory. It's hard work AND it is pain-filled! THAT is the reality of the situation that I took upon myself and in the end, I will blame no one for my decision but me and by then there will be no purpose in the blame game.

You know the reason for my choice in this route and that is point blank, I don't believe in drugs. I am a RECOVERED drug addict (another self-healing route at a very young age) and the thought of drugs and the process of the tiny pill that is destroying a population to this day scares me to bits! I believe and always have, that God created healing tools here on earth. When He created us, He placed all around us the true nature of healing whether it is physical, mental, or psychological; the earth holds an abundance of healing tools without the necessary means of a laboratory of synthetic drugs to 'miraculously' HEAL you. It just doesn't work that way, in my mind, anyway.

I know what my tumor looked and felt like when I was first diagnosed. After reading and researching I found information that a biopsy (the test that I was FORCED to undergo along with a mammogram and CT scan) were all links to the spreading of this disease. I did not have any idea of this because I ASSUMED that the doctors actually knew what they were doing and that THEY were right; I wrongly trusted them. 

Over the year I watched as the tumor changed shape and color and things were happening that were enough to scare the pants off of me but I held fast to the belief that 'GOD'S GOT THIS' and I settled into accepting things were going to take time. Not MY time but with HIS time. I knew that the biopsy was the damaging test that set all of this in motion. MANY of the women who I've met online in a BC support group have ALL said the same thing, except their outcome, was slightly worse than mine and for that, I'm truly grateful mine wasn't worse.

A lot of these women are not even in their thirties yet. Some are pregnant or have just given birth but all are adamant in treating this illness on their own, of course, against their doctor's wishes. They don't want to be slaughtered cows either and through the same avenues as me, diet and supplements, we are all in this self-healing together! And HEALING is what we are!

Through my grumblings you might not pick up on parts of my healing that I need to share with you, nor do you understand the method of my healing that is taking place but rest assured, I am healing! I don't boast of my hours of prayer and meditation. I don't tell you about the foods I ingest or my long year and a half journey of finding my place in this new world I have in front of me.

The trio: cancer, psoriasis, and arthritis. I've had psoriasis for about forty years (on and off), arthritis I'd say about six years since diagnosis of my lower lumbar joint arthritis, then there is cancer, the cells have been in there all of my life, awakened about eight or nine years ago and only felt and seen in 2015, diagnosed a little over a year ago on diagnosis day 1-25-17. 

The signs:
Cancer:  I saw no signs of cancer except for the lump I felt in 2015. The year my aunt, uncle and, dad died and the year I got married. What a year, huh? That is the very reason I didn't tell my husband of my lump. I had to wait for medical insurance to go through because don't believe what they tell you when they say FREE CANCER SCREENING- mammograms in the month of October. Maybe in YOUR state but this backwoods stuck in the 1800's state of mine, there were no free mammograms, and yes, I looked! I waited for my insurance to go through and I started the doctor visits and the swift cancer diagnosis came without even ONE test, then she put me through THREE tests to verify her assumption. I feel there was an easier route to diagnosing without the threat of spreading my disease, but who am I, just a little woman going up against the 'Big Bad know it all Doctors'.

Psoriasis: Physically visible my skin was as scaly as a fish! I had dry patches on my elbows and knees, my ears, and my back. This is a chronic illness that kept me in jeans and long sleeves for most of my life. There were times that it healed (so I know the signs of the healing) but over the years it has gotten worse. 

Arthritis: This did not surface until the year of the trips to Omaha took place. The too numerous-to-count, to me four-hour trips, that left my back in pain that I'd never known before. It cost me my ability to walk right. While the trips gained my husband his eyesight back, it cost me the ability to walk. I went to an NP (nurse practitioner) who had an office in a little town and she sent me for an x-ray and it was verified I had lower-lumbar-facet-joint-arthritis; an illness the current P.A. (physicians assistant) could not find as a feasible illness. (Shrug me off) But I know different because I am in this broken body. And if truth be told, just because other people have taken trips to Omaha in two-and-a-half hours and can walk, undermines my truth in the reason I can't walk. (Try driving in high winds, two and three times a week to Omaha! Eight-hour round trips.)
{whatever will be will be}

You have the trio, the proof that they exist, and now you need to know the truth that they are healing! I don't know if you've seen the movie, 'What About Bob', if so, you will understand the term baby-steps. I know for a fact that God is in the business of miracles, and I know people who have experienced them (my husband for one, his sight restored) and I know people who think He just blinks them into existence. Let me ask you this, did the miracle of Christ's birth blink into existence? Was it easy for Mary and Joseph? Was the miracle of Christ's death blinked into existence? Was carrying the cross an easy task? You need to seriously read and understand the Bible before you can understand what I say about my healing and it not just 'blinking into existence'. 

Let me first say I trusted God from the very beginning of this diagnosis. I trusted what He was saying and where He was leading. With that, I bring my baby-steps to healing and my continued healing!

Psoriasis: In the beginning when I began this journey my scars were visible and embarrassing, to say the least. Now, my 'sores' look like targets. I have big circles like a ring of fire, where the sore began and the center is in the clearing stages. Smooth skin is resurfacing and yes, it's taking its time, but it IS a work in progress moving FORWARD in healing and not getting worse. No new sores appearing.

Arthritis: The pain subsided for months last year as my tumor seemed to grow. Three levels of healing Psoriasis, Arthritis, and the Big C, all taking turns on the healing journey. The signs ARE there! While the pain may be back for a time...

Big C: The tumor is now in the SHRINKING phase. VISIBLY SHRINKING! I can't say much more without showing you a picture (eww gross) and I only wished I was of this techno world that takes a pic of everything just to document my PROOF. But then again let's go back to the Bible... show me pics as proof. (that is sarcasm, friends) We only have words to go on and as this journey of mine, it's all in my words. 

Go back and read my words from the beginning, it's all there. One day, my family might finally stumble upon my words and they'll finally SEE, CHRIST IN ME! As I take baby-steps toward my healing, I am enjoying each and every breath in the day because let's face it, as we enjoy these summer months, one never knows what the next day has in store. Cherish the day! 

May God bless each and every one of you! Have a beautiful Summer! Godspeed...

1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.