More than 10 weeks have passed since my last blog entry in mid-June. The summer has been a busy one. Time to catch up. I chose the subject name for this post, In The Danger Zone, because it it so easy to suffer from apathy. Because there seems to be no real danger right now. My previous CT scan on May 16 only showed two small 5mm nodules in my lung plus a slightly enlarged lymph node in my chest. So the temptation is to be very nonchalant about the whole thing and forget about cancer altogether. However, to stay out of the Danger Zone I must live "as if" the cancer is aggressive and spreading. I must keep a really positive attitude to help both my immune system and my quality of life in general.
The latest update is a CT scan and visit with Dr Fairey the surgeon on the previous Monday August 22, followed by an appointment with the oncologist Dr North at Cross Cancer Institute in Edmontnon on August 23. Dr Fairey and Dr North both remarked on how very healthy I looked. That is both good news and bad news. The good news is that the cancer probably has not progressed. The bad news is that Dr North has now lost interest in my case. I am not sick enough for his serious attention! He didn't even take a quick online look at the CT scan before our appointment! He will phone me next Tuesday with the results of the Aug 22 CT scan.
The sad thing is that the medical profession is only interested in treatment for symptomatic disease. There is not interest in disease prevention. I mentioned my Iscador subcutaneous injection treatment to kill cancer cells to North and he almost yawned! He said if that made me feel better from a psychological point of view then go for it.
The GFR for my kidney was only 37 so they would not give me intravenous contrast, which means that from now on I will be scanned in Yellowknife with some contrast in the one litre drink beforehand. My GFR has been as high as 47 from recent blood tests. According to the med folks kidney function cannot be improved much and that it deteriorates with age. North was of the opinion that my GFR would never increase no matter what I did. However, since I have reduced creatinine and increased my GFR as high as 47 I am going to keep trying. At the very least I can prevent kidney failure in the future (where the GFR falls to below 20 and dialysis is the only option). I am going to seek the help of my doctor here in Inuvik, Dr Gail Robson, so see how nutrition can be optimised for my kidney.
Now I get on my nutrition rant again. It is a shame that the medical profession no mo more about nutrition than to recommend the industry-sponsored Canada Food Guide! I look forward to the new Guide which apparently has thrown out industry sponsorship. And Naturopathic Doctors and nutritionists are almost totally ignored. However, I continue to attribute my diminishing cancer to high immune system function governed by nutrition and supplements such as high dose curcumin to help T-cells target cancer cells and destroy them.
Drugs, drugs, drugs! An article in the 2016-07-01 edition of the Guardian Weekly has an article entitled Cancer hope higing in your bathroom. Talking about every day medicines like aspirin etc are seen to have beneficial effects in fighting cancer. A certain Pan Pantziarka, a coordinator of the Repurposing Drugs in Oncology project is quoted: "Basic evolutionary biology tells us that cancer is a complex, adaptive system that evolves resistance to very closely targeted agents." Of course, it is great that there is a lot of innovation happening in the cancer drug world and how to deliver the drugs to target cancer cells. For example, see the recent CBC News article:
So what about nutrition? What about insulin resistance and high blood sugar, allowing cancer cells a growth spurt? Our own body's immune system is all we have to fight cancer cells, yet when we eat high sugar foods the immune system almost shuts down for a few hours - again providing cancer cells with a growth spurt opportunity. Here is a good link - why not starve cancer to death?!:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-an-old-idea-revived-starve-cancer-to-death.html?mwrsm=Email
It is a heavy-duty New York Times article that again points to the importance of high sugar diets in feeding cancer cells.
That is all for now. After my discussion with Dr North next Tuesday, and after receiving the radiologist's report of the Aug 22 CT scan, I will update the blog again.
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