The last week has felt somewhat normal. Since we put everything on hold while we wait to go on vacation life has felt somewhat normal. The evenings are when Ash feels the effects of the cancer most. She gets tired and has some pain, but she is able to mange things.
In so many ways we feel blessed that the Doctor told Ash she was able to wait a bit to start treatment. That has provided the time and space to step back from the devastation and try to gather our thoughts. We have been able to look deeper into diet and alternative treatments. We have looked at so many interesting options, and Ash is choosing to do many of them.
Her diet is probably taking the most to get use to. She is trying to eat a very high alkaline diet. That mostly consists of green veggies, and weird recipes. She is slowly getting use to it, and luckily my mom Sherri is very familiar with the diet and prepares most of her meals. I look in the fridge and usually just shut it, because I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to her diet...Hopefully I can get better with it.
One of the biggest lessons we have learned in the last 3 or so weeks is a humbling lesson on Perspective. When someone tells you that you might lose you life, or that your best friend, wife, and mother of your kids might be taken prematurely everything changes...literally in 1 second everything changes. You don't care about the stupid things you once did, the things you thought were so important all the sudden really don't matter. What matters is your family, your friends, the people you care about and the all those people who really do care about you.
One of my best friends always tell their kids "People matter, not things." It really is just that simple. We all come from the same place. At the end of the day, we truly are brothers and sisters and part of something much bigger. We have learned such simple yet meaningful truths in less than a month. The most important one being that when we need the most love, support and help...we can know we have an army of people we can count on.
The love and support that we have seem is nothing that either of us have ever experienced, and truly nothing short of a miracle. Seemingly endless amounts of people from everywhere have been willing to give their time, talents, expertise, money, knowledge, and experiences to us to try and help solve this challenge. We have been brought to tears daily.
The road hasn't changed, and the mountain hasn't gotten any less steep, but our perspective has changed. Many of us will face challenges that may appear to be too hard to overcome, and the truth is we may not always be able to overcome them. So we must not worry about what we can't control, and focus on what we can do. What we can do is get through today, and do our best to make it a good day. We can hope that tomorrow and everyday after that will be an even better day...but for now we are just trying to follow the words of Pres. Uchtdorf and "Treat each day as a gift from the Lord."
Thanks for the post. A perspective adjustment is always a good thing! Fingers crossed and prayers your way!
ReplyDeleteI went through something similar about a year and a half ago. I guess it started about 2 years ago when I was pregnant with my 5th child. I was exercising a lot and had just ran a 5K. I was eating healthier than anyone I knew. But I started having crazy pains in my side. They worsened in intensity through the pregnancy and were so bad by the end that I was vomiting and had to be hospitalized for pain management. The doctors thought it was just a large ovarian cyst. We decided to do a c-section and remove the cyst at the same time. But it was worse than a 10 cm cyst. It was a 13 cm tumor with countless other tumors spread throughout my abdomen. They told me that I had stage 4 uterine leiomyosarcoma. They gave me a complete hysterectomy, appendectomy, and tumor de-bulking. I was told by a specialist that I had a year to live. I was told that this type of cancer does not respond to radiation and chemo would extend my life only 3-6 months. I was terrified. I wanted to be alive to raise my 5 kids. I prayed. A lot. God started leading me to certain people that gave me hope in a different kind of treatment. I started juicing and following an alkaline diet. We chose to not do chemo since it didn't pose any kind of benefit to me. In hindsight, it was the best decision we made. I found a naturopathic physician that did a lot of tests to find the underlying cause. He gave me intravenous treatments of high dose vitamin C, hydrogen peroxide, ozone therapy, and UV irradiation. Within 6 months my scans showed I had no cancer. It was amazing. I believe God worked a miracle in my life. But miracles take a lot of faith and as we know in the book of James, "faith without works is dead, being alone." It will take a lot of faith and a lot of work to be healed. But it is not impossible. I met two people recently who were diagnosed with colon cancer. Both went through dietary changes, juicing, and only one did treatments. Both are now cancer free. Check out Chrisbeatcancer.com and look up Kris Carr. Both were influential in educating me how to beat my cancer. I know of a naturopathic physician in the Salt Lake City area who follows similar treatments to my doctor here in Phoenix. He is Dr. Thad Jacobs of Summit Integrative Medicine in Draper. It sounds like you are on the alternative treatment plan. I just wanted to share my story to inspire hope when it may feel like there is none. I've been there. Remember that the opposite of faith is fear. Don't be afraid. If you want to call me for more details or information my number is 860-834-1299.
ReplyDelete