o I will start today’s post looking at yesterday.

Yesterday was hard.

I may have mentioned that two weeks ago, at the end of the last juice fast I thought I had cracked it.  I thought that healing was just a hairs breadth away.  I thought I had reached the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning, or whatever.

I went onto raw food full of hope and optimism.  Over the days I started to get suspicious.  The tumours, although being very sneaky about it, seemed to be growing.  I started taking photos.  I started measuring.  Sure enough there was some growth.

This was very hard to take, and broke me down.  To have been trying so much for so long, to think I had got it sorted, only to be right back to where I started was devastating.  Over the last week of the raw food I have been increasingly emotional.  Breaking down repeatedly over the days.  Writing emotional blog posts about loneliness :P.  I am totally for allowing emotions out so I was glad of the release, however it was indication of a hard time.

It all came to the fore last night. To paint a picture that will hopefully entertain you, Imagine a man engaging in a coffee enema.  If you are sceptical about such an approach, consider the entertaining gullibility the man exhibits in putting such a tasty beverage in the wrong part of the body.   Now place him on the floor of the bedroom he grew up in, lying on a towel for safety (I’m sure you understand.)  Finally picture the man crying uncontrollably.  An entertaining prospect I assure you.  Like they say, if you can’t laugh at yourself… (long time readers will maybe have seen through my clever cover of referring to myself in the third person.)

After crying during my enema and around 30 minutes after I was due at an old friends for dinner.  On the way over there I was crying in the car (a song came on the radio that set me off.)  This went beyond the general car teary-ness.  Sobs wracked me, the sounds of desperation escaping my mouth scared even me.  

But then things improved. Dinner was very nice, the conversation was stimulating and the general atmosphere conducive to mood improvement. And so I was set up for today, which has been a very interesting day indeed.

So it started with a “journey process” session with Amelia. I will blog about this process soon, basically it is a way of trying to access emotions which, for whatever reason, you did not deal with in the past. We have done this process once before and I am not sure whether it has results or not. Certainly afterwards on my drive to my psychologist appointment I felt very emotional. I guess on some level I was working with my emotions.

Then there was the psychologist appointment, and that also was very interesting. About halfway through I mentioned that this whole process was like groping blindly in a dark room. To demonstrate I started grabbing at the air in front of me with my hands. I did this for a few seconds, only to discover that I couldn’t stop. I just kept fidgeting and exploring the space around me with my hands. Confessing this to the psychologist we discussed how I should just go with it. It went on for the rest of the session. It was discussed that it might be a comfort things from childhood, or feelings of helplessness also coming up from that time. Certainly whatever it was it was very interesting, and felt strangely safe.

Then I checked out a link that had been sent to me by a family friend. It was on something called the Marshall protocol. I won’t go into it too much now as it deserves a blog of its own (I am building quite the list of blog topics) but some of the main points are as follows.

• There are many more organisms within all our cells than we knew about until the recent use of gene sequences opened up our cells to investigation.
• These organisms can cause problems, especially in the operation of a protein group known and VDR (vitamin D receptor). This group, as well as dealing with vitamin d function (which many of you know has started to be bandied around as important for cancer) synthesises some compounds that fight these often nasty organisms within the cells.
• The Marshall protocol aims to stimulate the VDR group rather than supplementing vitamin D as many other people promote. Indeed it claims that in high doses vitamin D is an immune suppressant.

Now I have not yet looked into this is great detail but it seems to me that it is very solid. It is looking at the cause of the disease not the symptoms as is too often done this days. It looks to improve the health of the cells effected by chronic disease which can only be good. This focus on restoring health within the cell is similar to a lot of alternate approaches to cancer. However where many other protocols look to introduce something into the cell that fights the organisms that shouldn’t be there the Marshal protocol looks to stimulate the body to restart its own defences. It has mainly been used on auto immune diseases so far but there is some evidence it helps with breast cancer. Cancer and auto immune diseases have a lot in common, basically an immune system not quite kicking it as is should. Not a great overview but I will write on it again when I know and understand more.

Then I went to get acupuncture…

That was an experience. Firstly I had to go down to Tuggeranong, which any Canberran will tell you (well all those that live on the north side) is to be avoided at all costs. Then walking into a room that smelled strongly like burning herbs I was asked about my condition. They were very sympathetic and got me to lie down on the bed. Checked my pulse for a couple of minutes as Chinese medicine practitioners are known to do then put around 20 needles in different places. They then put the burning herbs (the source of the smell) onto the needles, creating a warm sensation through the punctured areas. I felt very strange. A bit like I couldn’t move. The needles in my abdomen would send lightning nerve impulses of pain throughout my belly. It is fair to say that I was glad when the session was over, but lucky me, I am going back this Friday. The couple I went to really where very kind, they only charged me $25 for the session which went for over an hour.

And so how do I feel now. Well excited. Such an interesting day is rare, and although it was not necessarily all enjoyable it has given me a lot to think about and a lot to be hopeful of. Tomorrow I start another juice fast (sigh) and will finally work out if the tumours do act better on just juices. If they do then I will reintroduce foods more slowly and monitor progress and work out what I really can eat. All in all excited covers how I feel quite well. Sadly though my leg is also quite sore. However I figure that getting things moving in that area is bound to be painful so I bear it with a smile on my face 

Tomorrow is another day, and although I will be consuming only juice I am surrounded by people I love and the future is full of possibilities.