The Story Continues

John 7: 16-17 "Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

The Story Continues

The story continues. As you know I've been having side effects from Herceptin; pretty major ones too, and I was fearing to go to the doctor. Earlier in the month I had my issues, Hubby had his unending cold/pneumonia, the road crew had their issues with digging up the roads after the flood and my house had its problems with the toilet leaking water all over the floor, in the basement and also the roof needing a major renovation, not having been done in twenty years or so. Then there was the sale of the property and the takeover by the new landlord. Whew, what a month of May, and it isn't even over yet.

The month May blew in with winter still hot on its heels. Yes, winter, meaning 35 degrees at night, meaning heater clicking on during the day, meaning cold in this drafty old house. I don't even know what issue to tackle first. How about small to big? 

The flood. Washed out roads all over Nebraska and we being way on the outskirts of town saw our road dwindle and wash away. The graders who tried to grade the road saw there was nothing to grade so a new plan was in place and that was to the pave the old dirt road after I don't know how many years. I know it's been a wish of mine for some time. That was at the end of March and beginning of April but storms and cold kept them from work. A month later in the middle of May, we're now seeing signs of the paved road and people can almost go back to normal. Almost...still a five-mile detour routes and we wait.

The house sale. Sitting at my desk my husband turned to me from his desk announcing, "Well it looks like it's been sold." I knew he was referring to this, I think it was 124 acres of land, out here for sale with our houses on it. I didn't know whether to be happy or relieved that someone might finally come and take care of the place. 

Let me refresh your memory. There's my neighbor, who has a nice house but seeing she is hoarder, that niceness gets swallowed up by what we might deem as trash. Then there is the trailer she once rented but kept for her, at one time four dogs, which all have passed except for one. But pallets and empty blowing flower pots, cars and trucks ruin that of ever becoming anything but a trash heap. Hopefully, someone saves the dog.

The landlord came and introduced himself a week later and he seemed like a nice enough man with his wife in tow. I'll just call them Jed & Josie. Good Christian folks too. I don't know, there is something about Christians that exude a living God and well by no mention of religion but casually mentioned they attended church on Sunday, I felt they were good people. He said he'd like to have our dilapidated roof looked at right away before it ever becomes a problem. I like him already!

Year after year each time an internet guy went on the roof he informed us to inform the owner of the bad roof, but nothing was ever done. The old landlord would come around and plow the grass after it got waist high, and trim trees, but year after year the grass and trees came back in full force.

Not this year, this year would be a different year! It would be the year of floods, rain, cold, and nothing but my Salvia flowers survived. That's how cold it got, everything froze under there. May 19th finds us rising to 40 degrees with 38 windchills and our small space heater coming in handy. Mind you it was in the eighties all week.

And wouldn't you know it, this was the week that the toilet would leak, through the roof, to the basement and an ensuing mess followed. This landlord was not concerned with a patch job on the toilet, like the previous landlord had been for years, no, he wanted to rip up the floor, have the toilet fixed and new tile laid! He wasted no time!

Now the roof. What should have taken one day to redo, they were met with numerous patch jobs from the previous owner, and had a four-day job on their hands! They were going to come Wednesday but changed it to Thursday. Thursday at six am. they arrived. By afternoon it was quite obvious the job would not be done in a day and by Sunday after much death of plants and destruction of what little garden I had, was now gone.

And to top it off, the owner on Saturday decided to rip down thirty-year-old trees that were breaking up concrete in his huge shed. The trees needed to come down. But on the day of the roofers? My anxiety hit an all-time high and an attack ensued. I was being picky, wasn't I? I had tolerated the barbaric treatment of my garden for three days but this day hubby had to work. 

I was good the other days sleeping through much of the chaos but Saturday, the neighbor who was now roofer, allowed his kids over and the screaming kids and hollering men mixed with hammering, banging, and heavy machinery moving trees, yanking trees out by the roots, and 100lb. me in a wheelchair. The pain was at an all-time high, everything happening blindly overhead and the curtains weres drawn tightly closed so as not to see the animosity surrounding me. Hubby came home around two pm. to make sure I was okay and I wasn't. Full-blown anxiety attack!

I won't share the ugliness of it all but by Sunday I was feeling somewhat better, but guess what, by the end of Sunday it started to rain and they were ALMOST finished. Really just a matter of cleaning their mess which they would tie down and come for on Monday. Monday came...and they didn't.

The owner came Monday, in the rain and had his Bobcat move a lot of the material tied down, and a bucket to the roofers' other piece of equipment. One trailer still smashing my plants and garden ornaments stayed (about twenty-foot long) and another sits out in the middle of the lawn smashing the saturated grass.

Chin up, Joni! Two doctor appointments today and one tomorrow, you NEED your strength for the unfinished paved but muddy roads. The Lord has tossed me a cyclone and I'm making a small tornado out of the situation. I have no choice. I'm sick, the events are upon me and I have to move on. We still have two more days to get through and the weatherman says about two-and-a-half inches of rain before all is said and done, on a state that has already declared flood disaster. Lord be with me NOW!

Prov. 4:10-11 "Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.

25-26 Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.

Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established."

Salvia

Not Good

Pss. 63:3 “Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.”

When people ask me how I’m doing, like everyone else I say fine. They’re happy with that and offer me to ‘keep it up’! I’m not lying I just don’t want to get into the gist of what I feel is a failure. My husband, son, and mother-in-law don’t see it as a failure but I do. I feel like I’ve let myself an everyone else down. I come down pretty hard on myself.

I’m lying to myself more than anything. I want to be fine and believe I’m going to be fine but getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ is a whole different matter. I accepted the easier of the chemo routes meaning not the kind where they slice, dice, and radiate you, then place what they call a ‘port’ under my skin to fester. The port is the loading dock for the poison they’d administer. No, I took lethal injection instead.

It has been nothing but lethal since the first ninety-minute injection where the side effects were tearing me up from the inside. They lied and told me it would get better; the chills and hard pain should subside with each dose and after the third dose I see no change in side effects except them getting worse. Had Allison been more concerned with the patient than the kickbacks from the Femara she kept trying to push, maybe she would have known about the swelling.

The last visit I had was two weeks ago and Allison, whom I think is the doctor’s assistant came in and saw me instead of the Dr. himself. I guess he was too busy and bears the weight of the patient load. For some reason when they ask you how you’re doing, and you tell them, they spin your words. 

“I’m not good. I’m in a lot of pain from side effects,” I say.

“Oh, they get better with time. Some women don’t even know they’re getting chemo. So, why don’t you want Femara?” There it is, the sale of drugs.

“Well, I know I don’t like the side effects, but I’ll push on. Not with Femara though, something milder the doctor offered.” 

The argument. “Chemo has saved millions of lives, you know?”

“I’m not getting into this conversation, it upsets me.” She knows this, I’ve seen her before. She pressed on until I was in tears and she was (unapologetically) apologizing. She knew what she was doing. They push the fear and scare tactic buttons until you’re a hot mess. Needless to say, she didn’t check my heart, my swelling, or my pulse, all that are normal things to check for in a visit. She was too busy trying to sell her drug.

I was going to give this weeks Herceptin a try, so off I went for my thirty-minute poison pump, where they pump the ‘juice’ into my veins. Afterward, at home, I ate and thought all was right with the world, I was feeling good, then the pain came like a freight train barreling down the tracks. I’ll never eat again, is what I said over and over in tears, wrapped in a blanket, and now in bed at five in the afternoon. This was the norm when coming home from the chemo trips.

A couple more days followed suit and it hit me, that since my first treatment what was once a vital woman was now a shell, a crippled woman trying to make it through each day. I was waking sad, sore and depressed. I couldn’t do my exercises that for seven months I’d been doing. I was just wheeling through the house, using my walker too, but the cane… it became a hindrance and I haven’t used it in nine weeks, almost twelve weeks.

Now when people ask how I’m doing I say, “Not good.” I just can’t lie. When I said I was doing okay, I was! I was walking, exercising, cold or not I got out of the house, intermingled with human beings, I was good. WAS being the operative word. Say your not and poof, everyone disappears. They’ll be back when the word is ‘good’ again. Not good is negative (I know) and brings them down. I don’t blame them.

My mother-in-law emailed me last week and asked if she could come out for a visit, bring me some flowers (for the outside) and I said YES!! Need anything? FRESH RIPE tomatoes! Lol So I was getting a visitor besides my son! Wouldn’t you know, we had so much rain the roads are a muddy mess. It was warm that day and she wore shorts and I told her, this week you’ll be bringing the coats back out! We are all in amazement of this crazy weather. Surprising tornadoes in the city of Lincoln, rain, high winds, cold, chill, floods again, if not, washed out roads! Just a mess, just not a frozen solid ground mess.

Then last week the pain hit me hard. I was having adverse reactions and needed to call the doctors office and let them know. I wrote about the ‘normal side effects a few weeks ago, like sleep problems, nausea, muscle pain, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, tiredness and more, so many more. But there were also the bad side effects. I remembered the swelling but needed to look and see what else I had.

Serious Reactions:
bone pain,
increased coughing,
swelling of the hands/ankles/feet, MY ONE FOOT IS SWELLED LIKE A BALLOON
sudden unexplained weight gain,
unusual tiredness, I FEEL SLEEPING TWELVE AND FIFTEEN HOURS IS NOT NORMAL
severe headache,
tingling or numbness, MY LEFT-HAND GOES NUMB/ NECK TINGLY
mental/mood changes,  I THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL MENOPAUSE CRUD
fast or pounding heartbeat, and  YES
easy bruising or bleeding.           YES (WHERE’D THAT COME FROM)

I  called and told the nurse Navigator I was experiencing adverse reactions. She said to rest and put my foot up and see if that helps. It did for a couple of nights but that was it. Only my left foot is swelled. And… and… “I’ll take care of the scrip for ya. Ok, bye.” This malpractice is in their court, not mine!

I’m giving up on Herceptin and to me feels like I failed. But wait I didn’t, the DRUGS did!

I know I didn’t, and everyone will tell me so. I go this week for what the docs office thinks is a Herceptin trip and to their surprise, they’re getting me and all my adverse reactions, FINALLY, but no more Herceptin, on to a new plan, Doc! I hope I make it that far, until Wednesday!

There’s more going on that I need to tell you, I’ll call extenuating circumstances! 

TO BE CONTINUED….

Pss. 119: 78 “Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in thy precepts.”

Pss. 119:17 “Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word.”

God Bless!

Where I Go From Here...

Isa. 41:10 “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

:13 “For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.”

Where I go from here…

If you’re not an expert in the field, then please refrain from judging ME and MY way of healing MY body! Your comments HURT more than help and I am in a very FRAGILE state as I face this cell-biting funk in my body! I’m not here to judge the toxins you put in YOUR body daily, I’m here to judge MY daily intake of toxins.

Expert opinions

“All the so-called natural deaths are nothing but the terminal point of high body acidity,” -- George W. Crile of Cleveland, one of the most renowned surgeons in the world.

“The innumerable names of the diseases are not important, but the fact that they all stem from the basic causes is -- too much acidity in the body.” -- Dr. Theodore A. Baroody, book “Alkalise or die” 

“Increased acidification of the body is the cause of degenerative diseases. If there is an imbalance and the body begins to store toxins and acidity to a greater extent, your body will start to experience diseases “- Dr. Robert O. Young.

Saturday, I unintentionally got knocked down a rung or two by a comment and with my impending new oncologist visit on Monday, it almost knocked me back to square one. A social media fast is in order and if you haven’t bookmarked my blog, then you’ll have no idea I’m continuing to write.

One comment, that’s all it took to get my heart racing and my hands shaking allowing doubt and fear to slither in; albeit unintentional, it kicked me in my fragile butt! Sunday I was a mess, even after a sermon and praise. I don’t like to delete people but at this juncture, I am more focused on MY healing than YOUR feelings. 

Monday morning came and a visit with a new oncologist was in order for the day. My anxiety felt high, but I winged it with a great blood pressure reading and not a tear fell down my cheek!
My GP led me to this doctor last week. This was not HER pick, it was MY pick out of the IBS (IckyBoobSyndrome) doctors available. I looked at the faces, I looked at the eyes and this was whom I chose. Little did I know that he is probably one of the TOP oncologists in the STATE of Nebraska, affiliated with a pretty highly ranked Big C Center. It was worth the forty-five-minute drive to me, to US. 

Someone warned me that this man was pretty adamant about not allowing patients to walk out the door without committing them to Chemotherapy. I was warned so I was ready with what little armor I had (I was weak going in, thanks to the unintentional hurtful comment over the weekend) and the doc was extremely almost forceful (hugging me seven times to sway me?) in making his call of having me commit. He wanted to call my son at home, he demanded I commit now before leaving, or he’d lose me (played the guilt card). Almost two hours of pressure but I walked out, informed, enlightened and aware. This was MUCH better than the first oncologist. And no bruising to show for it today!

What I DID commit to was a PET scan, only for the very reason being, to know if this crud is spreading through my body. I NEED to know as I continue on with my fight. If it is spreading, I may HAVE to do chemo. So I can live. As he put it, without chemo he gives me a year of cancer eating my brains and bones (with my former unhealthy lifestyle, mind you) to live, WITH chemo he was pretty confident an additional fifteen years. He put up a good argument but like I said, I still had my faith and strength in tact! “What’s stopping you?” Doc asked. My hubby, who was in the room with me, spoke up and said, “We need to pray about this! She’s told you her reasons why. Now we need time.” The man was not giving up! 

This is how firm he was. He ordered the PET scan from his office to my local hospital and of all the nerve, he wanted me to visit his office forty-five minutes away after my PET scan to sign up for the chemo!!!! He almost demanded and I said NO! If any of you have had a PET scan you know the twenty-four hour protocol? No eating, no drinking etc.? He needs results before I make ANY sort of commitment because it will change the plan a little that he had set out for me. “Friday, how about Friday?” he demanded. “NO!” I shot back! Pressure! My chest felt a tight pressure closing in on me!

His navigator lady was extremely helpful and very explanatory and also said, “In the end, it is YOUR body! YOUR decision!” I have to remember that I need to stop being a people pleaser for this duration. I only agreed to this visit to appease my GP. I wanted to go back home before entering the office and hubby started the truck and said, “Let’s go!” I told him I NEEDED to hear what this man had to say for my own sanity, good or bad, I NEED to hear it and that I did. 

I left the office with no other commitment but a PET scan on Thursday. He wanted me to schedule a visit for next week but I had to decline so I can see what my husband’s schedule is going to be like. Pressure! Pressing down on me. I do hold in my hand a copy of the results of my tests on January 25, a booklet on the guide to reading those tests and what they mean, and a book ‘Straight Talk about BC’. 

It sure doesn’t feel like MY life and MY decision but I guess this is normal. 
I’d like to add that with each doctor (4) now, they have seen my arsenal of supplements and my new eating habits. I get the feeling they know I’ve done my research and each supplement is targeted at my cells!

I pray that God gives me the strength to hear and follow what He wants me to do and I pray I’m hearing rightly and not blinded by what I want. I need continued prayer from the warriors who’ve been praying. Please don’t let up. Put my name in Prayer requests in all of your churches. PRAY FOR ME! 

Isa. 11:2 “And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;”