Keeping up with Cancer - May 17th, 2010

Oy vey, I just got this comment from Lynne F., who runs the breastcancerchoices.org website as well as the "Think Tank" Yahoo discussion group for women with breast cancer who want to find healing protocols that go beyond the standard, conventional treatments (which doesn't mean that they never use standard treatments; it just means that they believe we can and should find out about all the many OTHER treatments that we aren't told about, that our doctors don't recommend or prescribe, that may be offered in other parts of the world but not here in the U.S., etc.). Lynne's comment (in response to my post of May 14th, which is at the very top of this page):

Oh, Jane. I wish you well but I will miss all the excellent information women learned from your experience. The amount of detail is extraordinary and very helpful. Is there any way you could compile your Greatests Hits album of breast cancer information and put it in one place?

Someone recently wrote a book about their experience and learning about the nonstandard route but it doesn't have a fraction of your details or insights.One of the problems with blogging is that the pearls become ephemeral in the journey. Can you find a way to save your Greatest Hits on a web page we could link to? 

I'm flattered and touched by Lynne's comment, and it makes me reconsider my pronouncement about radically slowing down on this blog. But the thing is, I feel so incredibly overwhelmed by all that I have to do in my life right now. And I'm thinking at this very moment, Gee, I can't even remember if there's an e on the end of Lynne's name, and I've known her for five years. And I can't figure out how to make this font smaller, even though the first graph's font is smaller than this graph's font. Why won't the font settings work consistently? Christ almighty! I don't have time to figure it out!

And then there's that book Lynne sent to me because I said I would read and review it for the other members of the Think Tank. That was probably over a year ago. Maybe two. I did read it, but I never reviewed it. Finally, a couple of months ago, Lynne wrote and politely asked me if I could send the book back so that SHE could review it. I felt terrible, and since I was once again in the throes of worrying about hormone stuff, I told her I would re-read it and review it, for sure. I re-read part of it and marked the whole thing up with comments in the margins, underlining, etc. in ink. Then I just got so overwhelmed again, I couldn't make myself do the review. But I hate to send her back a book that is totally scribbled all over!

But maybe the reality is simply that I will again crank up the blog as soon as my next Big Scare comes barreling around the corner. It may very well be that you won't have to wait long for that, given that I've not been feeling well the last couple of weeks, and the area where my liver resides is aching and sore. Of course I looked up "Liver Pain" on google, and of course one of the dozen possible causes is liver cancer.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the results of my tumor marker tests, which were done ten days ago. If the results aren't good, maybe I will throw myself back into this blog as I flounder and freak out and wonder what is coming next, and how to deal with it.

I've been saving all kinds of bits and pieces of "cancer fighting" info. in a bunch of email folders, ranging from homeopathic remedies to cannabis oil remedies to oxidative therapies to simple milk thistle capsules. But that's all I've had time to do: drag the info. into folders and do nothing about any of it. I'm totally not prepared for, say, liver cancer. Or high circulating tumor cell marker numbers.

And I think, Why am I taking this time to blog, when I should be driving over to Rainbow to buy milk thistle? Or making more Bieler's Broth? Or ordering the supplements that I'm out of? Or figuring out the best lab to order bioidentical hormones from? And those tasks are the EASY ones! I won't even go into the bigger, harder ones that I should be doing right now. I feel as if the only way to truly do what I need to do would be to retire. But I have no idea how to do that. It seems pretty impossible.

So. I've just spent 45 minutes on this post. I have no idea who reads it, really. I think my average number of hits pers day was around 25 or so. Not a huge number of followers. Am I doing that much good? I think this blog is but a nanospeck in the world of breast cancer information.

Well...it's time to stop. I haven't even fed Olivia her breakfast, and she has been waiting for...uh...exactly 50 minutes. Nor have I eaten my own breakfast or taken the first round of pills that should be taken on an empty stomach. (But I did fix the font problem, except for the very last graph. But it took me another 20 minutes to do that.

I need to mull this over, obviously. :-)

Comments

[Jane Underwood]

Thank you, Heather.

[Heather]

Jane,

Shame on me for not telling you earlier how much I have gotten out of your blog. I've been following you in my RSS feed reader since I first found you through a Google search for some breast cancer information. I, too, am an unwilling member of the club and am open to all information on the topic. I gladly and loudly echo Lynne's comment and want you to know how grateful I've been for the research you have done and shared here on your blog. It has led me in what I feel are helpful directions.

As long as you continue to blog, know that I am one of those quiet ones out there who is eternally grateful for it.

I do hope your liver is A-OK! What a worry!