Friday, October 31, 2014

76 Immunotherapy

"Remember, it is just a "snapshot" in time....anything can change and anything is possible...."

One of my friends from 5 Day Silent Retreat gave me this amazing message. It seemed impossible at first, but it started to sound convincing as I was gaining back my healthy mind.

I was almost making up my mind what to do next, but just hesitant to declare because it might sound ridiculous and impossible.

The idea was to go to California to cure. I was given this information about Issels Medical Center in Santa Barbara, CA, which is an outpatient facility providing immunotherapy.

As I lost confidence in continuing natural cure, something more concrete sounded good to me, and yet natural approach sounded even better.

And of course the location sounded attractive, although a little far from L.A. where I have many friends, but it is in California! 

Actually I had signed up for my dream workshop by Robert Burridge in Arroyo Grande, which happened to be near Santa Barbara, in early September, and I had already planned a trip. So I could easily add my California stay to make it a healing and art vacation, well if I didn't have to worry about the cost.

I compared in my mind what it would like to be taking further treatments this summer in California or in Tokyo. In California I would drive car to get around in the comfortable California weather, get healthy food easily, staying at healthy friends' who understand my diet, or in Tokyo I would have to walk, take trains to go anywhere, to hospital or to grocery shopping (not healthy enough for me) in the severe summer heat, mainly asking for my sick mom's help, etc.

It's so obvious that I should go to California for cure! 

Sunday, October 26, 2014

75 Pleural fluid build-up

Although I tried to look on the bright side of things, taking healing and treatments to get temporary lull on my health, the pain in my rib cage was apparently getting worse, at the point where I could not lie flat to go to sleep because too painful to get up and lie down, and my shortness of breath was escalating, as I could hardly walk, and climbing stairs was out of the question. 

Once I arrived at work and sat at my desk I felt better finally although I was constantly coughing lightly whenever I tried to speak. I was always tired and sleepy, and my skin was so dry all over.

One day my boss came to me and said, "You look terrible. Please go to see a doctor and have an X-ray." I must have been in denial of decline in my health, because I never thought about taking a leave until I was told that. So I did as told the next day, then was told to go to the hospital immediately because my lungs were filled with fluid.

That was the beginning of July, exactly 2 years after I started working there, and as suddenly as it was, my office work career was over like that.

I called my mother to tell her the situation and asked to look after my daughter, then I admitted myself to the hospital the next day.

From then on, I had to surrender and let go of everything, and let everything in. I had to give up curing all naturally.

I took drainage of pleural space on the right side, to get rid of 2.3L of fluid which had been suffocating me. There were some fluid on the left side, too, however it was decided not to be treated that time.

Then I learned that it was caused by breast cancer. They also detected by CT scan on my lungs that it had spread to my spine, pretty badly.

I could not believe this was happening to me. I was believing that things were going fine, and I was happier and positive, and thought I was careful about my diet. How could that have gone this wrong?

Doctors looked at me just like they were looking at a poor patient who was dying soon. As I declared in the beginning that I did not want further medical treatment for cancer or any medicines related to it, they seemed to be puzzled. But the chief doctor suggested that I should take pleurodesis. Oh no, another medical treatment!

This causes high fever as it takes advantage of the artificial inflammation to make the adhesion work on the pleura. I had to deal with the fever and the heartbreak in my hospital bed.

What will I do now? If what I've been doing turned out this way, what else can I do to heal this?

It seemed hopeless. Then again I remembered one thing I could do: "let go" and "surrender".

Then one early morning a few days later, I woke up feeling refreshed without high fever after night sweat, and noticed that I was so grateful and happy.

I got hit by bliss and could not stop crying for a while, filled with appreciation and love.
I remembered the encouraging messages and words, helpful information I received, and cried. 

Then I thought about my supportive family, and friends who let my daughter stay over to give my mom some rest, and then finally everybody who came into my life in the past, and I felt tremendous love and appreciation to each of them and cried more.

It was funny that I was so happy when I was supposed to be in despair medically. Then after clearing my emotions, I felt something funny next. I felt as if a tiny laughing bag got in my tummy, and it broke up into hundreds of them and spread to my whole body and started laughing. That made me start to giggle. I remembered how funny the guys were at the office, remembering exact conversations and giggled, and other funny things happened before. 

And then I came up with a good idea of healing my body, imagining these little laughing ones go to my infected parts to laugh the cancer cells or bad stuff away.

That day I felt for sure I would be OK.