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Archery

10/25/2014

Nathan and Nicole have been such troupers lately - with Nathan helping to chauffeur kids around and Nicole helping me make meals and both of them helping me juice and being amazingly helpful in every way - we just wanted to do something special for them. So yesterday, while Nicholas was in school and Noah was at work, we took them to an Archery Range and the 4 of us had a blast! Since it was a Friday morning we had the range completely to ourselves! And finally I have some pictures to post! Here they are:

We took them to Wendy's afterwards for salads, and I just hope they were able to feel how much we appreciate them!
Today was another busy Saturday, but unlike last Saturday where I handled the busyness well, I did not handle today's busyness well at all - I let stress rule me today. Argh! I took a break around 4pm and sat in the garage with the door open and the cool breeze blowing in while I drank some carrot juice and Nathan walked in after mowing his assigned portion of the yard. We started talking about things he was dealing with and the stress I was under and he suggested we pray for each other. What a huge blessing! The rest of my day was SO much better after that!

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Negative #2!!!

10/22/2014

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My doctor himself just called me to let me know my second cytology test came back negative! He sounded as excited as I am! He said he doesn't feel like he needs a 3rd test after all and so we talked about dates for the biopsy. He said he felt I could wait until December if I wanted to, but I think I would like to just get it over with. He's going to have his scheduling nurse call me and give me some available dates and then we'll figure out what works best. But I just wanted to share the good news!!! Woohoo!

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Happy Sunday to you!

10/19/2014

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I had a basically normal busy day yesterday, and it felt pretty good! But let's back up - my doctor's appointment on Thursday went well. I just had to pee in a cup and then speak with the doctor - he is super nice. I asked him for a copy of the negative cytology report and I just kept reading the phrase 'negative for carcinoma' as I walked to my car with it - I think I want to frame it! :-) Before I left the doctor's office, his nurse (whose mom beat cancer naturally) came in and gave me a hug and encouraged me. So that was nice. Friday I spent virtually all day in the kitchen from like 11:30am - 11:30pm - juicing and making some raw organic dishes. So then yesterday I was normal busy - I went to the farmer's market in downtown Tampa with my friend, Marie, in the morning. I came home, did some record coupon clipping, took Nicole to a birthday party, went shopping at Dollar General, came home and had lunch, went shopping at Publix (spent $80 saved $80 - booyah!), came home grabbed a shower, started exchanging old hangars in my closet for new ones, finished getting ready and then went out to dinner with our friends, the Perrella's (to a raw vegan restaurant in St. Pete - no guilt!), got home around 10:30ish, spent some time with the kids, then stayed up until 1:30am finishing the putting my clothes on new hangars - loving my closet now!

The major news to report from last night was that we were almost to St. Pete when Nathan called us to let us know the town & country had a flat tire! He and the boys were supposed to go pick Nicole up from her birthday party, drop her off at a girls' bible study, and then they were going to a boys' bible study. Thankfully, we had added Nathan to our AAA membership so we called AAA to come out to change the tire. Nathan didn't realize it but Noah decided he was going to change the tire himself, so he went out to there and jacked up the car and got the spare out but couldn't get the lug nuts off, so when the guy from AAA arrived it took him no time to change it since Noah had done most of the work for him! So the boys went ahead and went to their bible study a little late while Nicole stayed with her friend, and they just picked her up on the way back home. I guess our kids are growing up!

Today has been really nice - 11:00am service at church about not worrying (very appropriate) - lunch when we got home - ping pong and rummy with Nathan - then we had a time like we used to do that we called 'little church' - we all brought a passage of scripture that meant something to us and the overwhelming theme of the verses was LOVE! Gotta LOVE it! :-) It was really a special time - lots of laughs and some tears and some great discussion.

Speaking of discussion - in my search of others on the web who have beat cancer naturally I stumbled upon Cortney Campbell's blog this week - greendrinkdiaries.com, and a discussion of a homeopathic deodorant she discovered. It is 1/4 Cup organic corn starch, 1/4 Cup organic baking soda, and 7-8 Tbsp organic coconut oil. I halved the recipe because I was quite skeptical of it working, but I'm LOVING IT (just staying with the LOVE theme here). :-) I highly encourage everyone to ditch the toxic deodorant and antiperspirant and try this! My kids say I'm sounding like a hippy these days - maybe I am - but I'm telling you, I think I should start a campaign - Ditch the Deordorant! Everyone else is campaigning these days - why not? Well, mainly because I don't have the time right now - but some day you may see a campaign from me on this - and I would totally approve of my message!

OK - enough of that - it's been too long since I've been in the kitchen, so I guess I'll go make dinner! Hope everyone's having a great weekend! Loving this weather! Blessings to all. :-)

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Quick Update

10/13/2014

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I spoke with my urologist's nurse after my appointment with that Moffitt cancer doctor last week. She was surprised at how my appointment had gone with him because she said he is normally much more responsive to patients, so that was good to hear. He must have just been having a very busy day and wasn't on his A game. She was also very encouraging about what I'm doing and told me her mom had beat cancer naturally as well, with no chemo! She went ahead and scheduled me for my next urine sample so they can perform another cytology test on it for this Thursday, so I'm very glad for that! Please be praying for another negative report!

This past Friday was my Dad's birthday, so I went down to Port Charlotte to visit him. I spent 11 hours in the kitchen on Thursday so that I could have everything I needed to go visit him, spend the night, and stay until after lunch on Saturday, plus I deep cleaned my juicer parts to help it hold up under all this juicing, and I helped Nicole fix dinner since it was her night to make dinner and I just hadn't been in the kitchen enough! :-) I just kept saying to myself, "tomorrow you can rest!". And rest I did! My Dad and I basically just sat on the couch and talked the whole time! I was supposed to take him out for lunch, but he just wanted take out pizza, so we stopped by a health food store a couple blocks from the Pizza Hut and I got a veggie wrap, and then we picked up his pizza, and came back home to the couch! :-) My eyelids grew heavy a few times, so I took a couple of short naps - what a luxury! I told him it felt like MY birthday!! It was SO easy to stay on my diet schedule - it was awesome! Normally I'm behind, like today I wound up being 3 1/2 hours behind so I had to cut out a couple things (1 juice and 1 D flax B dose) in order to get the rest of everything in. I just get too busy and can't do it all - but sitting on the couch was AWESOME! :-) And we just had a great time talking about EVERYTHING! It was really nice.

I drove home Saturday afternoon, walked in the door and immediately started juicing again. I've been juicing a 25 pound bag of carrots (along with spinach and kale and celery and beets) every other day for the most part, so today I juiced a bag and a half (thanks to help from Nicole and Nathan and especially Tim!!). I'm thinking that I shouldn't have to juice again until Thursday!! I won't know what to do with myself! :-) Hope everyone is having a great week so far! Blessings!

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The Doctor's visit

10/8/2014

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So we visited the Moffitt cancer doctor yesterday. I've never been to Moffitt before - and our appointment was early so the place wasn't all that intimidating. But I have to say, as we left, I saw hundreds of people streaming in and out of there - I can have no other words to describe how I felt but one - sadness. So back to the doctor's visit. He walked in and introduced himself, opened up my file and started reading out loud my test results (he didn't have a copy of my negative cytology report that was supposed to have been sent over). Anyway, after he read everything he told me what they were going to do with me. He said, "We're going to have you go through 6 rounds of BCG chemo" I interrupted at that point and said that I was told I was supposed to have Mytomicin because BCG was unavailable in the United States. He said they received 50 vials last week and are supposed to have more this week and he feels it is more effective than Mytomicin. He continued with the regimen they were going to put me on. He said they would do the first 6 rounds and then take a break (maybe biopsy me? I can't remember) and then do another 6 rounds and then biopsy me, and then a maintenance therapy that consisted of another 3 rounds in 3 months repeating the 3 rounds at 6 months and 9 months and 1 year and out to 3 years. He said the possible side effects are frequency, urgency, burning, high temps in the 104 degree range, fatigue, and malaise. He said the toxicity is cumulative with the symptoms getting worse towards the latter end of treatment. The high fever sometimes requires hospitalization with IV antibiotics. He mentioned that the efficacy of maintenance treatments in preventing progression is debatable but they believe it does, and therefore recommend it.

I felt I was in that old Maxell commercial with my hair being blown back. It was obvious he and I had two completely different agendas. When it was apparent he was done and was going to leave I finally found my voice and announced that I had come to him because I had several questions I was hoping he could answer. I started asking about his experience with treatment of the cancer through diet, and he immediately replied that there are no clinical trials to support that. I told him I understood that, but I was asking about his experience - had anyone else tried that and been successful? He never really answered the question and just said that there could have been people who experienced remission but that he had a guy right now who was treatable a year ago and did nothing and now they're going to have to remove his bladder (which to me was not answering the question and not at all what I am doing - I am not doing nothing!). Anyway, I asked him if something I read was true - that the cells in the bladder regenerate every 7 weeks, and he just said that all cells regenerate (didn't answer my question). So I said that my thinking is that if my cells are regenerating and I'm providing them good fuel so that they regenerate with good cells, and I understand there are no clinical trials to support this most likely because telling a patient to eat raw organic food doesn't pay well, couldn't that be helpful? He just said he didn't know. I told him I didn't want to be stupid about this, but my thought was to give it 2 months (for which I am almost 1 month in) and then do a biopsy and if the biopsy shows cancer then I do the chemo. Because to me, treating with chemo is just treating the symptom but I'm trying to treat the cause. I asked him if he thought that waiting another month was too long, and he said no, that shouldn't be too long. So as he got up to leave he began telling the nurse practitioner to call upstairs to see if they could get a BCG treatment ready for me so I could go from his office upstairs and begin treatment. It got quiet in the room and then he looked at me and said, "oh - you're going to follow up with your original doctor", and then shook my hand and said it was nice to meet me and left the room.

I can't say it was a complete waste of time because I did get the answer that I'm not waiting too long to do chemo if I give this diet a 2 month chance to work. But I must say I am a little shocked that doctors don't seem to put ANY stock in what we put into our bodies, or even want to talk about possible causes. You hear about foods that are 'known carcinogens' or 'cancer inhibitors' - so are those true statements or just marketing? So, maybe I'm just on this diet to get my body in peak performance to tolerate chemo? Or maybe our bodies can heal when given the right fuel? I don't know. But I do know that I so appreciate your prayers for wisdom for us! Sorry this was so long. I hope everyone is having a great week so far! Blessings!

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Negative report!

10/6/2014

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So, I was supposed to receive the results from the cytology report last Monday because the doctor's office said it normally takes 5 business days for the results to come back. You may remember my last doctor's visit was 2 weeks ago from tomorrow which is when they gathered the urine sample to run the cytology report on. Well, I never heard back from anyone, and I wasn't all that sure I wanted to hear the results so I never called to ask, thinking that they would be calling any day now anyway. But finally today curiosity got the best of me so I called, and they said they still didn't have the results! What? It's been almost 2 weeks! So they said they would check on it, and a couple hours later I received a call back stating that the results were negative! Woo hoo! They are going to fax those results over to the doctor at Moffitt Cancer Center that we are seeing tomorrow so he'll have that and all the paperwork from the other tests they've done on me, so that's good. But I have to say that was quite a great boost to hear the word negative come back on a report. My doctor told us that he wouldn't feel comfortable calling me cancer free unless he had 3 negative cytology reports and then a negative biopsy. So 1 down, 3 to go! :-) I want to say thank you SO much to everyone who is praying for me!

I went to a church service Saturday night at Hollyhead's church because that used to be my church 17 years ago, and they were having a celebration service to commemorate the pastor's 25th anniversary. Well, there were tons of people who came from all over for the service, so I was able to connect with a bunch of people I knew from back then. I can't tell you how many people came up to me and said they were praying for me - I had no idea! It was SO incredibly encouraging!! So once again - I just want to thank everyone for their prayers! Blessings!

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Happy Friday!

10/3/2014

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So I had a bad day yesterday. And today wasn't a whole lot better. Wanna know why? OK, I'll tell you why. I did a really dumb thing - Yesterday morning I brought carrot juice into my bedroom to drink it but instead spilled 1/2 of it on my bed!!! Argh!! Thanks to my cat like reflexes it only got a few drops on the sheets and the carpet, but I was pretty sure the comforter was ruined. So, I took it out to the kitchen sink and tried scrubbing the stains out there. It was not working. I was getting some of them but with the darkness of our comforter when it is wet I couldn't see the other stains until I took it outside in the sunlight and then I saw a bunch of them. So I wrestled it back and forth a few times (that thing is HEAVY!) and finally realized this was not going to work. So I left it in a heap on the kitchen floor so I could go attack the sheets (that we had just washed the night before! Ugh!). That turned out to be relatively painless, so I moved on to the carpet. Thank God for multi-colored carpet! It cleaned up perfectly - can't see the stains at all!

So now it was time to attack to the comforter again. I tried putting it in my large capacity front loader wash machine, and it is just too big for that. We had just taken it to the laundromat a couple weeks ago when the cat peed on it, and it cost close to $20 there that I just didn't want to spend again so soon. So now what do I do? Thankfully, my friend Hollyhead called me after my hail Mary text to her and she suggested I soak it in the bathtub! Genius!! I put some Oxi-Clean in there, and then left it there for the rest of the day because I just didn't want to deal with it.

But I had asked her, how in the heck am I going to dry it? I have nowhere outside to hang it and it's too big for my dryer. Know what her solution was? Put it on top of the car!! Genius again! So now all I had to do was wash the car. Her recommendation was that I take the car to a car wash. But no, I'm not wasting money on my mistake - I'll do it myself! So I this morning I traipsed outside and turned the hose on and it was leaking (well spraying) a bunch of water where it connected to the faucet, but it still worked well coming out of the hose, so I used it anyway. I washed the car very thoroughly and dried it, and then I went to the bathtub, rinsed the comforter and dragged it out to the car and laid it on top and waited. I waited about 3 hours and then Tim came in and from picking Nicholas up from school and said the comforter had blown off the car and was laying in the driveway, and oh by the way, the side of the garage is flooded because I never turned the hose off!!! So then it was all hands on deck as all 6 of us moved the wooden bed frames and mattresses that we had stacked up on that side of the garage out to the driveway to dry. What a fiasco! We are the first house in the neighborhood and there we were the rest of the day with stuff strewn all over our driveway letting the sun dry it. How embarrassing! We went back out there at about 7:30 tonight and moved it all back in. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Tim spent a couple of hours today on our broken garage door and fixed it! Yay, Tim! And while we were moving things back in the garage one of the light switches got knocked and broken which caused the fuse to blow which was the same fuse that our garage door was on, so Tim had to replace the light switch because the fuse kept immediately blowing when we tried to reset it until he replaced it and then we could finally put the garage door down!

But how crazy is that? The fuse blew because we were putting things back in the garage and knocked the light switch because the garage had flooded because I left the leaking/spraying faucet on because I used the hose to wash the car so I could put the comforter out to dry on the car because I had to wash it in the bathtub because I had spilled carrot juice on it!! Whew!

So, how did the comforter turn out? It looks FANTASTIC! No stain to be seen anywhere!! Days like these make me realize how much could go wrong every day, so I'm even more thankful for the good days! Hopefully this made you feel better about your day! Blessings!

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Tim & Jodie

Tim and Jodie have been married since Nov. 5, 1988. Tim is a retired Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and retired city of Tampa Firefighter. Jodie is a happily laid off IBM/AT&T 21 yr veteran employee. So I guess you can say they're both retired, but still super busy! They have four wonderful children: triplets Nathan, Nicole, and Noah born 11/16/97 and Nicholas born 5/16/99. Nathan is at Trinity College, Noah is at Florida Polytechnic University, and Nicole is at USF. Nicholas is an EDM (electronic dance music) creator and hoping to make a living from that! We love and are so proud of our kids!

Archery

Negative #2!!!

Happy Sunday to you!

Quick Update

The Doctor's visit

Negative report!

Happy Friday!

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Tim & Jodie

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