It's Been Six Weeks... New Prayer Requests and Other Things

It's been six weeks since my last terrain test which gave us the "go ahead" to back off my IV treatments from twice a week to once a week.  It's amazing what that has done for my schedule, for our finances, and for my veins! 

Tuesday, October 28 I will be testing my terrain again and the results should be back within a few days, but for sure by the end of the week.  The results of this test will give us an indication of whether I can continue with the once a week IV treatments as we move forward to December when we test my CTC (circulating tumor cells) which will also indicate how we will continue beyond that.  It's a one step at a time process, for sure.  I am on a good trajectory so far, and I appreciate your prayers that things will continue on that positive trajectory and I appreciate you believing with me that healing with be solid before the end of the year and a full NED (no evidence of disease) report on or before my 2 year anniversary of my diagnosis date of May 1, 2024. 

So that is the physical/technical, "in the natural," side of things.

On the emotional side of things, they say that our cells hear our thoughts and react accordingly.  Negative thoughts create unhealthy cells and positive thoughts heal cells.  There are multiple scriptures that back this up.  For the sake of the idea I am hoping to convey I would like to draw attention to:

Finally, brothers, and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.  ~Philippians 4:8

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will.  ~Romans 12:2

There are some really good reasons to be aware of our thoughts, our surface level thoughts and our deeper level thoughts that we may not always be aware of and checking them with scripture and reframing them to align with Philippians 4:8 and Romans 12:2.  

The Lord led me to and opened the door for me to explore emotional healing through Christian based counseling and THAT has been a journey.  For right now, I won't go into a lot of detail, but something I thought I would share is some of the visualization process my counselor is using to help me heal childhood trauma.  When something we are discussing reveals a wound from childhood she guides me through some visualization healing processes.  At this point, I have had a difficult time visualizing certain parts of little me and a sweet friend of mine showed me a little AI trick.  Mind you, I have not used AI for anything thus far and haven't really felt inclined towards it, maybe even felt a little or possibly even a lot reluctance. But this I have been having fun with... creating pictures of current me hugging on different versions of little me.  Here are three AI pictures that represent difficult seasons in my life.  It's been amazing how healing it has been to "see" these versions of myself being loved on in a way I don't have memories of experiencing.

   

But better yet...

On the spiritual side of things:  Today I went up for prayer and the Lord was so good to provide a really positive environment and experience.  It was such a gift to be surrounded by such sweet people who spoke life and health and freedom into my life.  Today I was set free of some deep seeded things and much more.  One of the dear ladies that I made a sweet connection with suggested I visualize Jesus hugging a version of little me as part of my healing from childhood trauma.  That inspired me to create more AI images that make me smile... and actually change internal perspectives from those versions of me.

    

Something my counselor told me is that our minds cannot always differentiate between what's real and what isn't real.  That is why paying attention to our thoughts and emotions and NOT relying on them for our truth is so important, AND why it's also very important to rely on the Lord and His truth.  And, one of the reasons that visualization is so helpful is that creating healthy happy images in our minds during a period where things were more difficult can be healing.  The Jesus from my youth was not the Jesus in these pictures and the Jesus I am finding in scriptures today. I am quite enjoying these visual images of being loved by my Savior and Lord.

 

Sitting in my doctor's office in 2007 I remember looking at a poster on his wall that I wish I had taken a picture of.  It was a barrel that was divided into 3 parts - 1) physical 2) emotional 3) spiritual and it basically said that these 3 areas need to be full for us to have good health.  Boy, it's been taking quite a long time for me figure out the nuances of healing in these three areas. 

In the "healing cancer" holistic world there are typically 5 areas that are focused on.  1) physical 2) emotional 3) spiritual 4) detox 5) nutrition.  While I have been working on focusing simultaneously on all five areas over the past 17 months, it's been these past 6-7 months that I have made some big progress in the emotional block and I am pretty excited about some things that my counselor and I are working on these next few weeks and months.  I hope to report on those things when the timing feels right.  As far as the other areas, I have a desire to write more and hope to sometime soon.  Many blessing to you and thank you for sticking with me and reading this far. 

Prayer Requests:

Normal Markers: Once again, thank you for your prayers and I ask that you continue to pray for my terrain and cancer markers come back normal in all areas this week, and every 6 weeks or so that we test them and that the CTC numbers stay in the normal range from here on on out.  If they are normal in December, Dr. Cochran said we can go from testing every 3 months to every 6 months.

Financial provision:  We are in continual gratitude for the financial blessings ya'll have provided both to us directly or through our GoFundMe.  Something we were able to do about a week ago was take out a HELOC loan out on our house to cover my medical bills at a lower interest rate than our credit card was.  Our interest alone was $500 per month on the card, so that will be a bit of a relief to have that shrunk down.  Cutting my IV therapy cuts my protocol costs down significantly, and Dan has some good things going on with his work with Ignite Local and his financial business that looks hopeful for us to be able to climb our way back out of debt.  We are grateful for the financial gifts we have received and continue to receive, and we are also grateful for your prayers for creative ways to address the financial expenses of this journey. 

Health for my gut: I felt like I was making progress in my gut, but these past couple of months I have been experiencing challenges there.  I have been doing some increased detoxing and increasing some of my meds that address parasites which means die off or herxheimer reactions can become a bit of a thing. So, if that is what is going on I imagine this will pass, it's something I will be bringing up to my ND soon.  Please pray for answers here and for things to settle down.