ccactive123

32 Coupe

Thanks for writing. I do see that it’s hard to feel threatened by much with CC inside me. At the airport, I didn’t worry about terrorists, the TSA, patdowns or anything else. I did say I wanted the patdown vs. the radiation from the machine, and the TSA seemed fine with that.

Jeff

Swearwords and Good Foods in an Extreme Life

Hey Y’all,

Why are there stars in my words as well as my eyes? I say da*n the torpedoes, it’s full speed ahead. While this is a fearless group and probably far beyond word sensitivity, I thought it best to err on the side of civility. Stars allow me to swear but at the same time not directly offend, so I am neither muzzled nor offensive. After decades of writing poetry, I recently switched to writing short stories that allow me ‘get it all out’ which sometimes involves very spicy language to describe very scabrous events. Having lived a life of some extreme range, this is the way it is. I’m sort of like a frilly viscount by day and alley crawler at night, so I like to quote Tennyson while kicking a mugger’s knee (actually happened). I think I took in too much of Have Gun Will Travel as a youth for those old and American enough to remember that TV series starring Richard Boone. I became that character, Paladin.

My own intake is very odd. My daughter’s mom inveighs against any red meat, seafood, bamboo, mushrooms and other foodstuffs, the list changing time to time but always rigidly enforced. They all feed cancer per her beliefs. She does make me a good bean soup she says kills cancer with several kinds of beans along with somethings akin to ginseng and goji berries. Warren Kramer, famed macrobiotic maven I met in Boston, says never eat more than one kind of bean at any one time. His diet is so boring and tasteless that I’d be dead in a week on it as I’d never eat enough. Some acolyte of his wanted to charge me $250/3 days to make and bring it over, and I had an easy time saying no. (You have to order everything special from Japan or other places; for them Whole Foods is totally low, like McDonalds). My trainer at the gym can make kale and cabbage salads I find much tastier and my gut enjoys, so I sometimes have her whip up batches and scarf them down. Food testers find lamb to be good for me, and when I eat New Zealand lamb chops, I really do feel good then and after. I eat yams for health despite their unappealing taste, eggs every morning, love Brussels sprouts (apparently the most salubrious of the cruciferous veggies) and can eat limitless amounts of cilantro. I had one session with famed nutritionist Eileen Poole, now around 95, who said in all her years had never had a patient quite like me. On her list of foods, she couldn’t find many to check off. Just about all grains, most fruits, many veggies, chicken, turkey- not particularly good for me. Cilantro was tops (she uses muscle testing) and said to eat 4 pounds a day if I like. So, like many of us, I’m all over the map intake-wise, but as I am a bit more extreme as already claimed above, maybe have a wider map. One belief I might have is we die, meet God, and God says none of that mattered anyway and we just fretted and strutted and wasted our time over it. Attitude may be more important than the material we eat. The French can drink alcohol, eat fats and pastries, but because they make love to their food while eating it (and therefore to themselves) instead of treating meals like impositions to be got out of the way (chomping down a Subway sandwich in the car racing to yet another pointless meeting), their food turns to good stuff within them while the Subway meal turns to crap.

And not only Eileen found me unique. I saw this other famed character John Wyrick who reads auras. It was an interesting session including some impressive chiropractic he was originally trained in but no longer does except when he feels like it. At the end of the session, as I’m writing my check, I look up to see him staring at me. I ask what he’s looking at and he says it’s my aura, that he never in all his years and readings seen one like it. I had to ask was that good, bad, up, down or what exactly. He said not really anything like that, just that the shape, nature and character of my aura was unique and he had never seen it before, all the while staring at me intently. I wish I could know more of what he spoke, but in a way it seemed not even he knew more than its unusualness.

Maybe my unusual nature is part of why I can be a ECC T3 and still able to do the 5-step triangle pushup (a tab on the YouTube site with my Manna) that none of the muscleheads at the gym can do. Who knows?

Manger comme le font les Français,

Jeff

Eli

Holy S**t! I better eat carrots so my eyes are better as I seem to have read that piece very poorly. (I know- carrots don’t really imporve vision and it’s my mind that failed me). I will re-read that & see where I went so wrong. Wasn’t the headline about how great asparagus is? I thought..well, I’ll just have to read it again. Now I may need to convince Kathy to bonfire all her aspargus stockpile and never get near it again instead of ascribing her wellness to her ingestion of it.

This recalls the celery thing. I recall a debate over safroles and whether their prescence in celery prevented or caused cancer with no clear answer ever coming about.

Thanks for this correction. I never mind being wrong. I very much mind staying wrong or being left alone to remain wrong, and you have been helpful- once again.

Jeff

Hi Peggy,

I’m glad to be accused of livening up things, ironic again as this site is about deadly matters. I not only go down with the ship, I go down smiling, laughing, guffawing. That’s my modus vivendi and I ain’t changing just because of something serious.

Around me I often see people not serious enough about serious matters and at the same time not light enough about everything. They can be distracted yet glum. What’s the point? I like to focus in on what I’m doing now and be a bit aggressive about imposing humor on most everything.

Hugs back,

Jeff

Marions,

Thanks. The first step is how do I gather all my writings so far? I will get them, transfer to Word and then have one file that can’t get lost. I had no idea this site would educe so much from me.

Between my cc, my absurd HOA and other insane aspects of my life, I should get this stuff down before I go out.

I appreciate Eli getting my photo up. It’s actually my cousin Bill at age 24 but who can tell? (I love to lie and tease).

Jeff

Hi Lainy

Well, that’s a good word for Hoffman’s.

As for chemo, my dad had small cell epithelial bronchogenic carcinoma in 1973. He took 3 courses of methotrexate which wiped him out. Turns out survival is 6 months WITH OR WITHOUT TREATMENT more or less, so why the hell treat? My second stepdad Don was about to go on a cruise to Alaska with my mom and the day before some imaging showed something in his lung. A verbally aggressive surgeon convinced him to go under the knife and then follow up with chemo. First, I think you don’t resect lung tumors often as that breaks the protective layering of things. He stayed alive but very ill until death. In retrospect all agree he should have boarded the boat, done the 6 weeks travelling and feeling good, then once home treated for recovery, cure, palliation or whatever. But what he did do was get cut on day one and then was miserable every day after. Only the medical community can’t find a problem with this.

Today chemo is much lighter doses over more sessions and better, but I’m still deeply mistrustful. Docs tend to focus on the tumor and lose sight of the person. I don’t want to live a tumor-centered life, I want to live a me-centered one with the human I am in the bulls-eye, not off to the side. Getting a straight or consistent answer about outcomes and side-effects can be near impossible, deepening my mistrust. In math, 2+2=4 all over the world, commie or capitalist, black or white, tall or short, etc. But other things are open to who said it, what they are getting out of it, who may be offended or pleased by it and lots of other polluting and confounding factors. To chemo or not is often very hard to decide and feel a good, solid decision was made. It should be much, much better than that.

Check out http://physicianswholisten.blogspot.com/2011/06/will-asparagus-cure-cancer.html for this guy’s argument that asparagus is THE answer. I find it rather convincing as it can’t hurt and tastes good; who can say that about methotrexate?

Jeff

Hi Lainy

When I send, there’s a sort of new page with little on it but what I sent and what I’m responding to. I like old-fashioned books where every page and tome is tangible and visible and I can hardly get lost. The multi-screen world is flummoxing to me. I recall when electronic devices had buttons where any button did just one thing. Now there are devices with 1000000 commands and three buttons. You hold down #1 (but not too hard), tap #2 while singing to #3 (and better be on key) and then…it drives me crazy.

I wanted to go home sooner but realized entering a pressurized container (airplane) might open the wound. Then what? They won’t turn the plane around. I didn’t want anyone fiddling with Dr. Carlos’ brilliant work. So I stayed until all tubes were out and he cleared me for air travel. As for Teddy’s story- yikes! That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid. What if there were no nurses? What if the plane over or under pressurized?

By the way, after the Whipple for some while I smelled of pancreas (I think that’s what the odor was) and I hated it. It permeated everything. It is so repellant, how do surgeons take it? My wound stunk, my breath, my belches, my skin- it seemed to be everywhere. I was so glad when it went away. Lesson #1 in med school my godson the great doc said was, “Don’t f**k with the pancreas” meaning don’t even touch it or get near it. Whipple guys (and my guy in particular) cut it, carve it, burn it, and know what they are doing. I sure respect their work, but had I become a doctor (which I once wanted to do), I was headed for dermatology, everything out in the open, visible, and except for melanoma and a few other baddies, hardly ever deadly.

Jeff

To all:

This is part of an email exchange at my personal email address, but since it contains thoughts relevant to this string, I thought to include it with some edit-outs of personal info from the sender.

Well, I say shaking my head, it’s nice that my very unconventional views are finally finding a welcome somewhere, albeit very late (if not too late) in life and only resulting from a medical event the equivalent of a firing squad. I’m very surprised I have such support for my approach and view anywhere and really seem to have it here. Oddly, I really haven’t received much flak from anywhere; I guess those who don’t like my way are staying mum or out of sight.

It surely is a bad cancer. No need to soften any words with me about anything. As for resources, I was lucky to have Dr. Carlos in Boston and his anesthesiologist; I am lucky to have my onco Dr. Hoffman here in LA. He understands my position and won’t fight me on it. He told me (and those I always bring with me, my daughter and best friend as witnesses as I need to recall everything that was said where I might miss something were I alone) that his mom would do as I am and his dad would do everything to fight it with chemo, radio, surgery, etc. He is well-educated about all this, important as even the smartest on this don’t know that much. On the other hand, Dr. Patty, radiation onco down the street, is insistent I undergo a series of blasts at her place. She is tops in her field and very sweet and the place is great. But it was she among 4 others who misidentified those liver blobs. Her machine rotates and would shield a lot of me from the positrons but would bake the upper part of my right kidney. I asked about the adrenal sitting atop that kidney and she said in all her practice she’s never been asked about that at all. I ask what others don’t. I don’t just go along. I need that adrenal and her answers didn’t assure me whatsoever. She keeps wanting me to “come down and chat” but really get pressured into her series of radiation. Best stats are they would only improve my chances 10% at best under the schema of I’m 60% dead anyway and this would reduce that to 50%. But I would be sick, tired, have a disabled kidney and baked adrenal, etc. and what if getting hit lowers my overall immunity so I’m now just weak enough where the cancer can jump over my now lowered fence like a Little Sheep of Death? I am hugely more willing to die (inevitable) than be sick (a choice for now). Now if this were breast cancer with tons of studies and facts and where adjuvant therapy increases one’s chances around 70%, I’d be going for chemo, radio, whatever they said.

So I’m not really “fighting it” in a normal way of speaking. I take weird and unknown Chinese powders and pills, eat asparagus (heard about that one? It’s the only cancer cure anyone needs! Look it up), avoid things that weaken me, don’t let myself get too tired (I nap), stay busy and out of hospitals and lots else. I don’t do as much or more than I do do. It’s a ying-yang approach. Haven’t got to Xi Gong yet but consider it important and it’s on my list. The yoga at the Onco place I go in LA was far below my level and not my cup of tea; they offer Xi Gong there & I’ll try theirs first.

Your husband’s history with a lower tummy gone wrong is really long and must have been quite a trek for anyone involved. My old friend has had IBS and surgeries and all that stuff for 30 years and he was an nuclear submarine commander! How can you live underwater and have heavy responsibilities and your guts are on fire all the time? My hat’s off to your husband and his kind, long-sufferers in a body region most just take for granted scratching our pizza-fed, pouchy bellies and never noticing much about much.

You are very sweet and it’s nice to be understood as only we in the cc club can understand each other.

Thanks for writing