“January 14, 2010…a day that will live in infamy!  Well, okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  But it is certainly a date I am sure to never forget!  It’s the date I heard the surgeon inform me that the lump in my breast was malignant…cancer.  Few people are ever ready to hear that diagnosis; it never crossed my mind that it was even a remote possibility for me.

Most people close to me know that one of my goals is to live to be 105.  I even have a blog titled, ‘Thrive to 105’ (www.thriveto105.com).  I’ve always been remarkably healthy…no serious illnesses, no broken bones, no hospital stays except for my babies…and I’ve always prided myself on living a lifestyle that would afford me the longevity I’m looking for.  I love life, and living another 50+ years is something I look forward to with great anticipation!  So how could this be happening to me?

As my daughter sat with me in the first surgeon’s office where I was referred, he explained how they would cut into my breast, remove the lump, then perform the biopsy.  At that point, my question was would they do the biopsy while I was ‘under’ and, if it was malignant, remove whatever else they needed to remove?

The surgeon’s answer was, “No.  If it’s malignant, you have to come back for another surgery”.  Well, it didn’t make sense to me that I should have to go under the knife twice, so I opted to get a second opinion.  Little did I know this was the first small step on a journey I had never expected to take.

January was supposed to be an exciting time for me.  I was moving into my own new apartment after a divorce and many months not having a place to call my own!  As it turned out, my move date ended up to be two days after my biopsy.  Instead of deciding where to put things in my new place, I was worrying about how to deal with a potentially life-threatening disease.”

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So today I had a “treatment” that is commonly touched on when researching alternative therapies…one that is non-invasive (except for an IV needle) and one relatively easy to obtain without traveling to foreign countries or going to special clinics.  Today I received a High-Dose Vitamin C IV Treatment.

It’s not the first one I’ve done, so there wasn’t any apprehension on my part.  In fact, I was looking forward to it, as I generally am whenever I do treatments.  Attitude is of the utmost importance, you know…not just when fighting a cancer “battle”, but when fighting any chronic disease.

As I sat down in the barcalounger (nice and comfy) to get started, I had a headache.  By the end of my treatment, my headache was the least of my problems!  By the end of the treatment, I was feeling chilled, tired, and light-headed.  After getting a blanket from the nurse…I had to go to the bathroom (which always happens by the end of these treatments)!

Once I was up, I decided that getting warm by sitting in my convertible with the top down would be just as good as sitting under a blanket.  Although it did warm me up, by then I was fighting the urge to vomit (“No, God, please…not in the parking lot!!!”).  Fortunately, that didn’t happen…but I did have to go back into the office to use the bathroom again!

A trip to the post office and Target had been on my agenda after my treatment; but by this time, the only place my car was headed was home!  Thankfully, the caregiver who helps me care for my dad with dementia still had time on the clock.  After downing a glass of herbal ice tea, I made a b-line for my bedroom and a nap…that lasted for nearly two hours.  It was awesome!

When I got up, I couldn’t wait to eat and was craving a tuna sandwich.  But no tuna for me (mercury and mayonnaise…bad), so I had sole almondine, waffle fries (I know….not so good) and lightly steamed broccoli.  I was famished…and I was singing along with the music from the 70s music channel on the TV!  Back to normal!

I know that’s a rather long-winded way of getting to a point, but here it is:  My choice of therapy this day, although it made me feel sick for a few hours, left me feeling none the worse for wear when I awoke.  I dare say that the side effects of a treatment of chemotherapy would last far longer and would not normally (from what I understand) leave one with a hearty appetite!  In addition, nothing in the IV I had today compromised my immune system or destroyed any of my healthy cells.

I’m just sayin’….

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As 2012 is well underway, I am in the third year of my journey since being diagnosed with breast cancer on January 13, 2010.  It’s been an extremely enlightening and immensely challenging couple of years, to say the least.

For someone who loves to write…and especially loves to write in the first person…it’s been very interesting to me that I haven’t written more about this experience in my life.  I’ve yet to quite get a handle on why I haven’t, but I’m focused on changing that this year. I intended to create a blog site for posting about alternative cancer treatments, but setting up the blog site isn’t my forte’, if you will.  In lieu of that for now, I’ve decided to use this blog site to start sharing the vast amount of knowledge I’ve gained in two years in hopes of helping others who may be diagnosed or have loved ones who’ve been diagnosed with cancer.  Not only will the resources and information I write about give those interested in alternative therapies a road sign to follow, but it will also help any who choose the standard care treatments.  Much of what I will share can help with post-treatment lifestyle choices and ways to minimize the negative impact some of those treatments have.

My wish is that as people find out about and read my blog, they will pass it on.  I welcome questions or requests for help and/or further information and hope I can be a source of support and encouragement for others on their journeys!

Fighting with healthy alternatives!

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First of all, I’ve always struggled with deciding what I wanted to do with my physical body once I’m declared dead.  The thought of being put into the ground in a box isn’t very appealing and neither is going into an oven ending up as a pile of ashes.  I suppose a mausoleum is a little more palatable, but I don’t think I have the money for one of those.  Taxidermy could be an option…LOL…but I rather doubt my children and grandchildren want me standing in the corner of their living rooms peering over their shoulders for years to come.

There is always the off chance that I may not make my goal of 105, and cryonics just might be the answer to that possibility.  It’s at least an intriguing thought.  Until I started researching, I didn’t know much about cryonics, although I was aware it existed.  Did you know Ted Williams is “on ice” as I write this blog?  Anyway, in layman’s terms, cryonics is:

“…the science of placing humans and animals into a low-temperature, biologically unchanging state immediately after clinical death, with the expectation that advances in medical technology may eventually enable full restoration to life and health.”

Here is an even better medical explanation of the logic behind cryonics:

“The purpose of cryonics is to save the lives of living people, not inter the bodies of dead people. Death is a neurological process that begins after the heart stops. A stopped heart only causes death if nothing is done when the heart stops.  Alcor uses life support equipment to restore blood circulation to maintain brain viability after the heart stops, ideally within minutes. This means that every cell and tissue of a cryonics patient can be just as alive at the beginning of cryonics procedures as any other medical patient.  The purpose of cryonics is to intercept and stop this dying process within the window of time that it may be reversible in the future. The first few minutes of clinical death are certainly reversible, even today. There are good reasons to believe that this window will extend further in the future. That is why cryonics is sometimes implemented even long after the heart stops. Cryonics is not a belief that the dead can be revived. Cryonics is a belief that no one is really dead until the information content of the brain is lost, and that low temperatures can prevent this loss.”   Alcor Life Extension Foundation

It makes sense, don’t you think?  Apparently, several hundred “participants” do, including Ted Williams.  It certainly does have me thinking.

More to come in my next blog post.

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As you may or may not recall, here at the White Gate our Task is “…to uncover or awaken to the essence of who we truly are…” and accomplish this by integrating the five faces that are a part of our whole being (child, youth, adult, elder, and essence).

The Challenge at this gate is to overcome the face of our ego that will not want to give up control.  There is, in fact, an acronym for FACE referred to by Arien and created by David Richo, author of the book, Shadow Dance. The acronym is:

F – Fear; A – Attachment; C – Control; E – Entitlement

Overcoming FACE (and, in essence, our ego) entails shifting…

“…our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility”.

Personally, I think the second and third parts of this acronym are the most challenging for me.  Letting go and not being attached to the outcome of things is much easier said than done; and giving up control, trusting in something or someone other than myself is often times outside my comfort zone.  It could take a while to unveil my true face if I first have to conquer my ego in this way.

I think another part of the Challenge is then being able to recognize ourselves once our egos have been cast aside to make room for the five true faces.  What a transformation there should be once we get in touch with our true essence, the child inside, etc. and have them come together to form a brand new person!

Once we meet the Challenge, our reward or Gifts at the White Gate are curiosity, flexibility, and self-acceptance.  Those all feel like “comfortable” gifts to my way of thinking, so I guess I better get to work on the attachments and control issues I have!

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• I loved this heading from one of my medical newsletters…”Garlic protects women’s hips”. Visions of cloves of garlic stuck all over my hips suddenly filled my head.  I mean, garlic is one of my favorite food items, and I knew it could help my heart…but my hips?  Well, apparently researchers in England found that women who ate a lot of garlic and onions had a lower incidence of hip osteoarthritis.  Of course, no one can stand to be in the same room with them after a meal!

• Now, I have used hummus in place of mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich in the past, but I recently ran across a suggestion for other healthy spreads for sandwiches that sound worth trying.  The three examples are:

1. Black beans with balsamic vinegar and tahini
2. Kidney beans with apple cider vinegar and basil
3. Lentils with sesame ginger dressing

Put three parts of the vinegar with one part of the cooked legumes in the blender, doctoring it until it suits your fancy.  Not only is it suggested for  sandwiches, but also as a veggie dip and sauce for pizza and pasta (I’m not so sure about that one).

• I thought this was pretty cool…there are actually websites out there that will buy your unused gift cards from you.  Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever NOT used a gift card; but apparently it happens a lot, to the tune of $2.5 billion of unused cards in 2010!  Be forewarned that more money is paid for the cards from the more popular retailers out there, i.e. Walmart, Home Depot, Macy’s, the Apple Store, etc.  Of course, they aren’t going to give you the face value of the card, but it’s certainly better than having them gathering dust in a kitchen drawer.  Not only can you sell the cards you won’t use, but you can buy discounted cards from these sites for a retail outlet you might want or even trade.  The sites I looked at were Cardpool, Giftcardrescue, Giftcards, and Monstergiftcard.

• Thanks to AARP (again!), I found this site that, in actuality, my children would be using for me if I wasn’t the wonderfully tech savvy person that I am (try to keep the laughter to a minimum).  The website was developed by Google (of course), and is a way for “kids”, as they call them, to email techie instructional videos to their parents who need help with such things as copy/paste, how to change the screensaver or wallpaper on the computer, how to find directions or have a video chat.  The format is very humorous, but not condescending enough to be insulting.  If my mother had a computer, I might even send her a few.  If you know someone who needs “help”, check out TeachParentsTech.org.

That’s info junkie for this week.  I think I’ll go eat some roasted garlic now while I search my kitchen drawers for old gift cards!

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In the past year or so, I’ve read about little things called “telomeres”…and they are, indeed, little!  They are little pieces of DNA that are like the plastic ends of shoelaces, only they sit at the end of our chromosomes to help prevent them from falling apart.  As we get older, the telomeres start to get shorter at a rate that is greatly dependent on our lifestyles.  Eventually, they get so short that our cells do start to become dysfunctional and we begin to age.

An article in Nature, a scientific journal, addressed a study done on mice whose aging had been accelerated by depriving their systems of the enzyme telomerase.  When telomerase was re-introduced back into their bodies, the telomeres that had shortened began to grow again, working like a “fountain of youth”, restoring their organs and brain functions to their younger versions.

According to Life Extension Magazine for April 2011:

“The significance of the Nature study is that it tested the effects of telomere lengthening in an animal model analogous in many ways to disabled elderly humans.”

Studies have been done on human cell cultures that show “restoring” the length of the telomeres promotes cell division, rather than having them deteriorate and die.

There are many who would argue that the benefits to humans cannot be established or even suggested merely by rapidly aging mice then administering the telomerase enzyme.  However, those who authored the study had this to say:

“In conclusion, this unprecedented reversal of age-related decline in the central nervous system and other organs vital to adult mammalian health justify exploration of telomere rejuvenation strategies for age-associated diseases, particularly those drive by accumulating genotoxic stress.”

The Life Extension Foundation is so encouraged and excited by the potential benefits of telomere lengthening in fighting the aging process that is has been funding research to delve into reversed aging in humans, which included telomere lengthening.  As of December of 2010, it has donated $2 million to ReCyte Therapeutics to do a new group of studies, at least one of which will be with mice to delve into cell rejuvenation and how it can be done.  One part of the study will include telomere lengthening in rejuvenating vascular systems (to prevent heart attacks) and immune senescence to help protect humans from cancer, infectious disease and autoimmune disorders.

Once these studies have proven, hopefully, the great potential for telomere lengthening and its affect with mice, the research can go on to try and document findings using human specimens.  Pretty amazing stuff, and something I intend to keep my eyes on.

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I apologize to you…and to myself…for letting so much time lapse since my last post.  Many of you who are my personal friends know that from August through November of last year, I was dealing with issues regarding my father and finally have him with me here in the St. Charles area.  Then came the holidays and also just trying to get myself back on track after traveling so much and not taking the best care of myself and my recovery.

BUT!!! Now I am feeling good and am functioning in a more organized fashion…which means I am once again making time to blog for me and my “fans”!

SOoooooooo, on to Information Junkie Day!

From my January 2011 Natural Healing newsletter, more on the benefits of eating walnuts.  If you suffer with high blood pressure, you should consider adding walnuts to your diet.   Penn State University researchers have shown that for those with high LDL levels, eating walnuts and/or walnut oil can lower their resting blood pressure and stress level blood pressure by a couple points.

Next, here are a few websites dealing with travel just in time to start planning those summer vacations:

Air Travel –

• Momondo.com
• Dohop.com
• Kayak.com

Car Rentals –

• AutoSlash.com
• BreezeNet.com

Hotels –

• HotelsCombined.com
• BetterBidding.com
• BiddingForTravel.com

Home Rentals –

• HomeAway.com
• VRBO.com
• Zonder.co
• Rentalo.com
• SecondPorch.com

Cruises –

• VacationsToGo.com
• CruisesOnly.com
• CruiseStar.com
• CruiseBrothers.com
• Cruise.com
• OnlineVacationCenter.com

Okay, I must admit I’m not a big fan of Martha Stewart, but somehow last year I ended up with a subscription to her magazine, Living.  Grudgingly, I must say there have been some interesting ideas and products in it.  Here’s a product I didn’t know about…”silver-crowned bulbs”.  If you have light fixtures in your home where the light bulbs are exposed, you may want to consider trying these.  The top of the bulb has a silver coating that covers up the internal parts of the bulb and “diffuses” the light.  Of course, this fashionable option comes at a price…$5 each.  If you’re interested, check them out at www.gracioushome.com, which is actually a pretty cool site with everything you could possibly want for your home…sort of like a Bed, Bath & Beyond online.

Lastly today, I was reading in AARP…yes, I am a card-carrying member…about new words that have now made it into the dictionary.  Here are a few, along with their definitions:

• Sheeple, noun – Unquestioning followers (from sheep + people)
• Turducken, noun – Roast of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey – WHAT???????
• Cheeseball, adj. – Lacking taste or style
• Bromance, noun – Close platonic male friendship – I HAVE A LOT OF THESE!  It’s a lot easier than romance!
• Matchy-matchy, adj. – Excessively color-coordinated
• Chillax, verb – To calm down and relax…which is what I’m going to do right now, since I’m no longer feeling stressed that I haven’t posted to my blog in six months!

Glad to be back in the saddle, so to speak.  More to come…but not today!

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I think it’s important that we are constantly aware of that fact; because in that awareness should lie the motivation to live each day to the fullest, give it all we have, love with all our hearts, and then put our heads on our pillows at night able to look back on the day with satisfaction, joy, and gratitude.

Today is Wednesday, and according to my original “blog plan”, this is supposed to be Information Junkie Day.  Although having an Information Junkie Day seems rather trivial considering the mass destruction we’ve recently seen and the threats of a nuclear disaster on the horizon, there is something a tad comforting about continuing to live our lives as normally as possible.  Not that we aren’t concerned and aren’t filled with sympathy and empathy for those who are suffering, but if they have to put one foot in front of another to get through their day, it should be easy for us.  As we offer up prayers and perhaps donate money or whatever else we can do to aid those in Japan, we need to remember that today is all we’re guaranteed.  We need to think about how we want to feel when we put our heads on our pillows tonight.  I, for one, want to breathe a sigh of contentment, say a prayer of thanks for this day, for my life and how I’ve lived it.

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My dad is a recluse; and if it wasn’t for my brother, my sister-in-law, and I regularly cleaning up his place, they could use him in one of those hoarding shows on TV.  They would have to dig him out from under used paper towels and junk mail.  On my last trip, a good friend helped me rip up the carpeting at the house and put down area rugs and carpet tiles…a HUGE improvement!  While there, I remember thinking to myself (and possibly speaking the words out loud to someone) that I almost wished  something  would send Dad to the hospital so we could get into his bedroom (his one bastion that is always off limits to visitors) and get it cleaned out.

So, “Be careful what you wish for”!  Here I am back again, because Dad had an accident at home that sent him to the hospital.  Although I really wasn’t anticipating or wanting to come back this soon, I am overjoyed to have gotten that bedroom tackled.  Today we shop for a new bed and linens for Dad’s room; and when he returns from the hospital, there will be a wonderful transformation awaiting him!

But will he be happy and grateful for the effort and ultimate caring that has gone into this new, clean, and healthy environment?  Hell, no!!

What does all this have to do with the main thrust of my blog theme…Thrive to 105?  In a nutshell…my father is NOT thriving in his senior years.  He is a lonely, miserable, old “geezer” (as my kids affectionately call him); and it’s a very sad commentary on a life that could have been so different for the past 20 years.

My father was a highly intelligent man, a high school teacher of creative writing, English, and mass media, a writer of newspaper columns and a book of poetry, and a painter.  He was handsome and witty.  Unfortunately, he was also manipulative, self-serving, and depressive.  He retired at the age of 57 from teaching and for a while kept himself occupied volunteering as an ombudsman for a local nursing home, consulting for GM as a Spanish interpreter, and teaching Spanish in night classes.  Slowly, but surely, however, he started to change, becoming more and more agitated when around people and letting himself go in his personal hygiene.  Eventually, he began to drink every day, all through the day.  Which brings us to where he is today…that lonely, angry, and still self-serving old man.

When I consider my dad’s existence over the past 20 years, it is a wake-up call to me…and now to any of you reading this.  No doubt some are predisposed to depression and/or have long-standing personality traits that might be hard to change; but if you’re young enough and aware enough now to realize that those traits aren’t serving you at this point in your life, now is the time to make an effort to transform yourself!!  Do you have a vision of what you want the next 20, 30, or 40 years of your life to be like?  Does that vision include a never-ending chain of days spent alone and lonely, not caring for yourself or anyone else or do you want to live out your remaining years active, happy, and surrounded by the people you love and care for?

The choice really is yours and no one else’s.  There are so many resources available these days for helping with physical AND mental/emotional problems and challenges.  I read a great entry in my Science of Mind guide this morning that said,

“…if we learn to keep our thoughts fresh and young, and if we have a keen enthusiastic zest for living, we will never grow old.  Like the exuberant energy of spring, we can choose to imagine a continuously wonderful life.  Every season has its gifts.  With an open mind, anything is possible.”

THRIVE TO 105…sadly, my father is not doing that.  Although I didn’t need his example to motivate me, my trip here this time reinforces and soundly resonates through me the resolve I have to spend my next five decades in a much different way!  I hope you will do the same!!!

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