I made an appointment for Trent today, to get his 12 month vaccinations that we are a little tardy in getting. I guess it hasn’t been a huge priority for me the past few months, with everything going on. The bigger part of it, though, is that I just hate doing them. I hate sitting there with my smiling child staring up at me, wondering why I’m holding him on some cold, crinkly paper on a table.Sooo trusting, and then poke (insert BIG scream and crocodile tears). I hate it!! The other thing that is troublesome is the controversy we always hear about, surrounding vaccines. I’m supportive of vaccinations, but I hate that they put things like mercury in them. You always see stories on the news about vaccinations linked to autism, etc…because of the mercury. I found this excerpt today:By age two, American children have received 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone, which far exceeds current EPA “safe” levels of .1mcg/kg. per day. That’s one-tenth of a microgram, not one microgram.Why would I subject my child to that danger? Do the benefits outweigh the risks? I would have to say….yes. BUT, this is what I’m going to offset the potential risks that come with the mercury exposure. Since these vaccinations are high in mercury and a young, growing brain absorbs that mercury more than any other part of their body, I’m going to load my child’ssippy cup up with vitamins, juice and some powdered chlorella. Check this out: Experiments conducted in numerous countries have shown that the indigestible cellulose of chlorella’s cell wall attracts and binds with heavy-metal poisons such as lead, mercury and cadmium and with hydrocarbon pesticides and Insecticides such as DDT. PCB’S andkepone , carrying them out of the body. These environmental poisons are thought to be major contributors to free radical activity, resulting in cancer, brain damage, liver and kidney failure and many other serious, life-threatening conditions. Chlorella’s ability to rid the body of these Increasingly common toxic pollutants is one more feature that sets it apart from other ‘green’ supplements.
Chlorella is a powder that you can get at your local health food store or online. It has a very mild taste. My kids have never noticed it in their juice, before. So there you go. Problem solved!

Anti-biotics is always another hot issue. If you ever have to go on anti-biotics, please chase it with a pro-biotic! Do you ever hear about how common it is for people who are on anti-biotics to develop things like yeast infection, thrush, etc…? These are all yeast/fungal overgrowths. The anti-biotics job is to strip your body of bacteria. It doesn’t know how to distinguish between good and bad bacteria, so it takes it all, in an effort to fight off the infection that exists in your body. But our bodies naturally are lined with good bacteria, so when it’s taken out, it needs to be put back in. This good bacteria is responsible for going through your body on a daily basis, eating up any germs, fungus, bacteria, etc….to assist your immune system in fighting off disease. So that’s why patients on anti-biotics experience those yeast side-effects. Your body cannot re-create this bacteria by itself, once it has been taken away. You have to replenish it. These come in powdered forms, as well, that is in children’s strength. You can add that to thesippy cup, too. I do it everyday for my boys. Adults, check out Dr. Ohirra’s probiotics at www.iherb.com. I think probiotics are a must have addition to your daily multi-vitamin. Our diets are full of sugar and junk. These will help your body to offset the harmful effects of what we feed it.

I know this is random, but the issue of vaccinations was on my sister-in-law’s blog the other day and we’re getting ready to get them, so I thought I would share some tips on how to feel good about them. ..

Ok, folks. Here are some excerpts to back up my belief that cancer and fungus can be intimately intertwined. If you have cancer, or just want to be preventitive, PLEASE adopt an anti-fungal lifestyle, and if you’re sick, take some natural anti-fungals. Check it out:

Carrots and garlic are the most potent anti-fungal foods on the planet. Check out this article from sciencedaily.com. You can google this information, too, and you will find a million other medical publications about the same thing:

1. Scientists have given us another reason to eat carrots - a compound found in the popular root vegetable has been found to have an effect on the development of cancer. Falcarinol protects carrots from fungal diseases, such as liquorice rot that causes black spots on the roots during storage. The scientists investigated the compound after a previous published study suggested it could prevent the development of cancer. The team found that, after 18 weeks, rats who ate carrots (the popular orange variety) along with their ordinary feed and the group which consumed falcarinol with their feed - in a quantity equal to that contained in the carrots - were one third less likely to develop full-scale tumours than the rats in the control group.
2. In a recent study published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science paired the active ingredient of a garden remedy with advanced bio-technology to deliver a powerful punch against cancer. The cancer killing effectiveness lies in their technique of arming a cancer-targeting antibody with the destructive potential of the dietary molecule otherwise known as “allicin.” Allicin is the product of an interaction between an enzyme, alliinase, and the small chemical alliin, which occurs naturally in plants such as garlic and onion as a defense mechanism against soil fungi, bacteria and parasites. Within three days, almost all of the human lymphoma cancer cells were destroyed in those mice treated with the conjugate and alliin, while hardly any cancer cell destruction occurred in the control mice who received the conjugate alone. This excerpt is from www.medicalnewstoday.com: Swapan Ray, Ph.D.(MUSC Neurosciences/Neurology associate professor), Naren Banik, Ph.D. (MUSC Neurosciences/Neurology professor), and Arabinda Das, Ph.D. (MUSC Neurosciences/Neurology post-doctoral fellow) studied three pure organo-sulfur compounds (DAS, DADS, and DATS) from garlic and the interaction with human glioblastoma (Grade 4 of my tumor) cells. All three compounds demonstrated efficacy in eradicating brain cancer cells, but DATS proved to be the most effective. The study will be published in the September issue of the American Cancer Society’s journal, Cancer. Cancer cells have a high metabolism and require much energy for rapid growth. In this study, garlic compounds produced reactive oxygen species in brain cancer cells, essentially gorging them to death with activation of multiple death cascades.”This research highlights the great promise of plant-originated compounds as natural medicine for controlling the malignant growth of human brain tumor cells.
3. You know all of the hype that you hear about how red wine can protect/fight against cancer? The ingredient in red wine that is being studied is called Resveratrol. Here is an excerpt from Clinical Cancer Research: Resveratrol is produced by grapes and other plants to protect the plant against fungus, and disease. Conclusions: Resveratrol caused significant glioma (brain cancer) cell cytotoxicity and apoptosis, exerted antitumor effects on the s.c. and intracerebral gliomas, and inhibited angiogenesis in s.c. gliomas. Thus, resveratrol might be considered a possible treatment strategy for gliomas.

This is just a tiny bit of information about this topic. If you do your homework, you will learn that most chemotherapies were plant-derived, until the last 10-15 years. Many of these chemotherapeutic plants that were used, have been used in ancient medicine because of their anti-fungal properties. Pharmeceutical companies have just created synthetic chemicals that function in a similar, but extremely toxic, manner. You can’t make billions of dollars on a nursery full of Periwinkle plants. Periwinkles can’t be patented.

Ok, I’ve rambled on long enough. I hope that gives people a little bit of insight, and some encouragement to realize that you really can take your health into your own hands. Conventional medicine is a gift from God and I’m not trying to bash it whatsoever (Big Pharma…different story)…I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for all of the doctors who have helped me along the way, the medications that kept me from having seizures on a daily basis, etc. I’m just saying that you need to be careful not to believe everything you are told, read and watch on a daily basis. Be an informed consumer. We need to know that we are responsible for our own bodies. A pill isn’t going to address the underlying cause of why we are sick. Sure, it will mask our symptoms, but as one of my favorite sayings goes “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten”….Change it up!

Check this out:

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that the same ingredient used in dandruff shampoos to fight the burning, itching and flaking on your head also can calm overexcited nerve cells inside your head, making it a potential treatment for seizures. Results of the study can be found online in Nature Chemical Biology.

That ingredient they are talking about is called Zinc Pyrithione, which is an anti-fungal.  Wikipedia defines dandruff as this:  Common older literature cites the fungus Malassezia furfur (previously known as Pityrosporum ovale) as the cause of dandruff. While this fungus is found naturally on the skin surface of both healthy people and those with dandruff, it was discovered that a scalp specific fungus, Malassezia globosa, is the responsible agent.

So could fungus be one of the causes of epilepsy?  My epilepsy is obviously caused by my brain tumor, but how exciting is this for somebody that has epilepsy, but no structural cause can be determined?  If Johns Hopkins says that an anti-fungal shampoo can help with my seizures, not only am I going to start using dandruff shampoo, but I’m going on an anti-fungal diet, as well, to see if that will help control my seizures.  Why wouldn’t I??  As many of you know, seizures have plagued me throughout the past several years.  We are hoping that this surgery will take care of those, but it’s very possible that it won’t, so I’m going to do what I can to prevent them. 

More on the cancer and fungus link to come….

OK. So I emailed her back to ask her about starting chemo, rather than radiation. Here is what she said: This is a very good question. Our neuro-oncologists recommended starting with radiation, but I know some neuro-oncologists at other centers would advocate starting with Temodar first. There’s no clear “right” or “wrong” answer, in terms of which you should do first. I think it would be a good idea for you to get a consultation from your local oncologists at OHSU and see what they would recommend. Because your tumor was really a borderline grade II/III, I don’t think you necessarily need to start treatment immediately. Go ahead and enjoy your trip to Maui, get a follow-up MRI scan in May, then we can decide on your treatment plan after that.
So, needless to say, we are very happy about that!! That gives me a couple of months to stay on my diet, and hopefully shrink the remaining tumor down to nothing. Go immune system!!  Things are going very well here. Marvin is back to work, which is so great for him to be back in a routine. I’ve been able to get back to work, almost as many hours as I was doing before surgery, so that is soooo wonderful. We got our papers to sign Tyler up for Kindergarten next fall, and Trent is into everything. Life is good.

So, that should be it on the health updates for now. I’m going to make an appointment with a neuro-oncologist at OHSU in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully he will concur with Dr. Liau in the being able to wait until after Maui to start any form of treatment. Please pray that this tumor remains stable, or better yet, SHRINKS!! I love you all. Thank you so much for your continued love and prayers….

Here is exactly what she said:  Yes, we discussed your case at our brain tumor board meeting earlier today.  The final pathology was officially read as a Grade III oligastrocytoma.   The pathologist said that the majority of the specimen was a grade II, but there were some small areas with a somewhat higher proliferation index. He said that this was likely on the border of a grade II transforming to a grade III.Our tumor board recommendation was that you proceed with radiation therapy at this point. Radiation therapy is relatively standard, so I would just suggest that you find a good radiation oncologist close to your home. The treatments are daily for 6 weeks, so you don’t want to have to travel long distances for it. You should then get a follow-up MRI scan about 3 weeks after radiation. At that point, we can decide whether or not to proceed with chemotherapy after the radiation.

We weren’t exactly expecting the recommendation of radiation right away. This is a troubling decision for us, because you can only do radiation one time. So if this tumor were ever to recur and upgrade, once again, we wouldn’t have this option down the road, even though it’s not going to come back as I’m killing it with wholesome goodness. So we have some big decisions to make. I have questioned her about trying the chemo option first, but have yet to hear back. She’s in surgery today, so hopefully tonight. We are going to Maui in May, so all of this will need to get going sooner than later, or else we’ll overlap that trip, and I’m pretty sure we will all need that trip at that time. So please pray for wisdom and guidance, to know what our next step shall be. If my tumor excretes enough protein, which we’ll know in a couple of weeks, then I might qualify for the brain tumor vaccine. What this is, is that my tumor cells are cultivated with my white blood cells, and then re-injected into my body over a period of time. They have had great success with this, mostly with patients who have a higher grade tumor, though. So please pray that that might be an option, too. Until then, happy healthy eating. I can beat this beast!! Otherwise, all is well here. Thank you so much for your comments of love and encouragement, and especially for all of your prayers. We covet them all!! We’ll keep you informed…

    The stitches are out!!  All 58 of them came out today, along with 1 staple.  After my last surgery, there were several random staples on parts of my head.  I’m not exactly sure what purpose the holes served, but it was an interesting task for my doctor to try and find them all.  This time, there was just one random hole.  I’m glad, too, because that one did not want to come out…

Many are asking, so here is a summary of what my diet looks like right now, while I’m trying to deal with this remaining tumor in my head.

Breakfast - Fruit Smoothie  (1/2 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup blackberries, 1/2 cup strawberries, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup Organic plain yogurt, 1/4 cup flaxseed oil, 1/4 cup of  Garden of Life Perfect Food (greens powder))

Everyday, I juice a combined 20 ounces of the following: Carrots, celery, garlic, 1 green apple.  I add 1/2 cup of Garden of Life Perfect Food to this, as well.  I split this into 3 different servings.  One usually at lunch time, one mid-afternoon, and one at dinner.  Spreading it out helps my body to assimilate all of the nutrients I’m giving it, at the time.  When you give your body too much, all at once, it will pass it through your body because it doesn’t need it all at the same time.

Snacks - Dehydrated apple rings, roasted almonds.  If you don’t own a food dehydrator, I  highly recommend getting one!!  I dehydrate apple rings on a regular basis.  They are the most amazing snack, especially when you have a sweet tooth.   Get a good apple variety(Sonata apples are my new favorite), peel them with an apple corer/slicer (they’re like $10!!), sprinkle some cinnamon, cloves, etc… on them, and throw them on the dehydrator.  I have about 20 quart bags of them in my freezer.  They are so good frozen, as well, but just pull out a bag and let them thaw, when needed.  I roast my own almonds.  Costco has a huge bag of raw almonds that you can buy.  I lightly coat those in olive oil.  I sprinkle sea salt and garlic powder on them, to taste.  I then spread them out on a cookie sheet and roast them in the oven on 200 degrees for around 3 hours.  The key is to not put too much oil on them or they won’t dry, and keep the heat down so that they don’t burn.  Low and slow is best.  They are a very filling snack and they are loaded with Co-Q10, which is a great cancer fighter.  Olive oil is an Omega 3 fatty acid, which is an even greater cancer fighter.

Dinner - Some kind of meat and vegetable.  I’m trying not to eat a lot of calories, so I will eat some of whatever kind of meat I make for dinner, along with whatever vegetable I’ve made.

Beverages - Aside from the juice I make, I now keep a pitcher full of green/white/peppermint tea combo (Long Life Tea brand…mmm….) in the fridge.  I try to drink several glasses a day of that.  I will also drink that tea hot, at least once.  I also drink a lot of water with freshly squeezed lemon in it.  Lemon water is great for flushing out your system and has an alkaline effect on the cellular PH of your body.  And it’s just amazingly refreshing!!

So that is my diet.  Recent studies have shown that dietary caloric restriction has been shown to control brain cancer.  Check it out:  http://www2.bc.edu/~seyfridt/braincancer.html

So, because of this, I try and keep my caloric intake somewhat limited.  This does not mean I am depriving my body of calories.  Quite the opposite.  I feed it less, but what I do feed it is nutrient-dense in every way, so I’m better nourished than I was before. 
Still awaiting that pathology…..thanks for your prayers!!  Good night…