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! 

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.

74 Giving advice to a cancer colleague

Recently, a co-worker took a long sick leave. After a month she came back and said she had to take another one. Turned out, she had ovarian cancer and had hystero-oophorectomy, and after the biopsy, she was diagnosed as cell cancer. 

She was sitting close to me when I started working, observing me how I set up my work station with two thermos full of raw veggie juice and a couple of bins of Dr. Schulze's herb extracts, and curiously studied my lunch-box full of raw veggies and fruit, with weird powder (for colon cleansing).

I told her my story, and she was all interested and told me she was hoping to find a solution without chemical treatments, as she was supposed to decide how to proceed with chemo therapy soon.

I didn't mean to brain-wash her, but couldn't help to tell her that there are many options other than chemical treatments. In her case, she didn't know anything about natural healing or spirituality, but interestingly, she found that her dentist could perform energy healing just because she told him about her situation and the fear for the damage by chemo therapy. She said he was the first one to agree with her and told her there would be options, too. 

Whatever she chooses is best for her, so I decided not to push anything on her. She has been searching for her own path, started looking within as well as outside for help, such as energy healing.

So now I have someone at work that I can share my thoughts and experiences with. 

73 Series of coincidences

I'm familiar with coincidence and manifestation, but it's always exciting if it happens, and more exciting if it keeps happening.

This series happened during the mid week of May. It started from a small manifestation.

Recently I was thinking of buying a good salt, as a health conscious person replacing most things in the kitchen shelf with organic ones but salt. I realized it's because I was not supposed to take salt when I first I started Dr. Schulze's diet, and I was still living in the past.

Then I thought of this salt, Fleur de Sel (salt flower) of Camargue, France, which used to be my favorite. I was visiting south of France frequently during 1999-2002, and it was one of the must item from the era. 

 I love the package design, the cork lid, and of course the salt itself. "Just a pinch of it makes any food taste better like a magic", said a friend in Paris, who was a great cook, as introducing me this magic salt.  Later on I had a chance to visit Camargue when studying in Avignon, and loved the idyllic scene, just like the painting on its package.

Anyway, displaying this salt in my kitchen reminds me of good life, the days when I was free and healthy, didn't worry about illness or money, but purely enjoyed good food. Sad to say I only care what's less harmful and inexpensive nowadays.

Then a few weeks later when I came home, this salt was sitting on our dining table!

I got flabbergasted and asked my daughter how in the world this salt got here. She said that it was given by her friend's Mom. Yes...they recently moved back from Paris. But did I ask her to get that specific item for me? No. It's a pure coincidence. I felt blessed.

Another surprise was, my mom brought me a part of my long-lost memorabilia. When I moved out from my parents' house, I selected my old photos, letters, awards and stuff from the childhood to pack in a stock box, and later I was told that it disappeared. I was so upset about it, and even suspected that it must have been thrown away on purpose by my brother who still lived there and had hoarding disorder.

Sure enough, my brother, all of a sudden pulled out dusty things from his piles and told Mom to return to me. Obviously they were the part  of my lost things, but not in the box any longer, and awfully dusty and moldy.

It was such a happy surprise, but at the same time with a little bit of anger to him for not telling me about this all this time, and not apologizing. And also invasion of privacy...

But I dared say nothing but thanked him. He said, "good thing they still existed." unapologetically.

At the time I cut down the items to as less as possible, torn up inside to throw away so many things with memory, but now I looked at them, I don't have attachment to most of them. I once gave up on those, too, and I have much less attachment to things in general.

Lastly, I kept bumping into people on the train. But the funniest one is, I bumped into someone, which was like the odds of winning the lottery. A Silent-retreater friend posted on Facebook saying his partner would be visiting Tokyo for the first time, with a photo. Well, when I was working late and about to get on the train, a familiar looking guy just stepped out, with the same exact costume that I'd seen on FB. I called to him right away and shook hands. (Later on we got together for a fun and healthy lunch)

72 Aural fullness

Speaking of physical issues, aural fullness has been bothering me for about 3months. It happens every morning on the way to work, then it disappears when I don't notice during the day. Obviously it got to do with stress at work, since it only happens during the week without fail,  although it sometimes happened on weekends, when I went out taking a train in the morning (probably conditioned reflex).

It is strange because I don't feel stressed going to work. Actually I like my work. But my left ear becomes stuffy, which seems to imply that "I don't want to hear" maybe someone sitting on my left? Nevertheless,  the gentleman on my left is very nice and keeps good company with me.

Anyway, I observe the moment it happens every morning, and look forward to the day it won't happen. Sometimes it started even I before I left home, or sometimes it didn't start until I transferred to the last train to work. (I usually take 3 trains).

And finally the day has finally arrived! I appreciated so much that I started work with clear hearing. How comfortable it was! How wonderful it feels if body functions normal! 

It must be the Yoga class I attended last night. Besides swimming, Yoga was one of the things I've been wanting to do but never made the extra efforts to make it happen for years. Now that I'm supposed to exercise to reduce pain in my ribs among other physical issues, and my family is supporting me for the luxury after work.

71 Pain in the ribs

So dry skin and short breath issue are solved already, theoretically. Now a new issue took over, which is the intense pain around my rib cage.

It started around last December, after Bon Jovi concert, so I casually thought I had a muscle ache from jumping around too much during the show. But it never went away, and the painful parts changed around. I couldn't cough or laugh, or sneeze because it hurt to do any of them.

It's actually strange that I haven't sneezed for months because my body automatically stops sneeze from happening.

I suspected intercostal neuralgia, or doubted if my breast cancer metastasized to lungs or bones. But none of the symptoms I searched  on the internet rang the bell.

When my healer friend visited Tokyo from Vancouver, she introduced me to her great healer friend, Kevin, and his healing place, and also the New Scan Therapy which is one of the therapies they offer.

I coincidentally found that a long lost friend is currently the number one disciple to Kevin! Soon I found out that the three of us, Kevin, my old friend, and I share the same birthday. 

Kevin is actually a big figure and busy traveling to heal people, throw seminars, etc., but kindly offered me a healing the next day.

During the healing, he told me that my cancer was benign and it didn't have to be removed in the first place, and my body is greatly strained from the surgery. And the pains in the rib is owing to weakened muscles, so he recommended that I should walk a lot.

That  may be true, because I had not been walking much because of the shortness of the breath and fatigue. I used to walk 90 minutes a day last year.

Although the healing was very quick, the next day I felt the difference. The mean pain in my right shoulder (told it was at the beginning stage of frozen shoulder) became easy, and my hair didn't shed much in the shower (been noticed that my hair shed too much lately).

But..the pain in the rib still remains.

70 Extreme dry skin and shortness of breath

Meanwhile, as I noted in earlier post, extreme dry-skin issue has been troubling me on and off. I didn't make it a big concern on purpose and tried to be friends with it, but with a little bit of fear deep down, to be honest.

The skin trouble subsided several times temporarily. One time the flaky skin got very smooth after a nice long bath in a hot spring after Forest Adventure, or another time when I stayed away from wheat on top of veganism. Or when I was told that it might be a symptom of  menopause, which was an eye-opener and a reliever. 

Finally, I found out that I had anemia in a fairly bad stage. So funny I didn't even suspect that. A doctor friend asked me to pull my eyelid down. And wow how white it looked!
That made sense, because besides dry skin, I've been having shortness of breath, and it was getting worse that I could hardly climb stairs these days, which I presumed another menopausal symptom. Now Anemia could cause those symptoms!

And after 7 months of resisting that "I should be fine",  finally I dropped/let go my ego and made an action to try a new treatment.

A good friend of mine who is a healer based in Canada, during her visit to Tokyo, she introduced me to a conventional therapy.

It uses infrasonic sound via a bone-conduction headphone to check frequency in almost 600 organs in the body to project how they are vibrating in 6 levels on the computer monitor, linked to anatomical graphics which could match closest to each patient's data from1600M data consisting of variety of ages and physical conditions, etc. 

And what it's so great about it is that it can also perform treatment in-situ, while the patient sits in front of the screen and observes it.

"New Scan Therapy", that is what it's called over here, was originally invented in Russia for checking astronauts's health before their departure into space.

From the therapy, in addition to where I already guessed to have problems, I found that I had some problems in my uterus and bladder. And by just one or two clicks, I could see the parts getting improved, from the level 5 to 2. (And I noticed the treatment effect the next morning. I didn't feel the urge to go to the bathroom first thing I woke up, and I had much less discharge.)

Coincidentally, at the healing place, I reconnected with an old friend who I had not seen for 20 years. He is one of the top healers there!