To start from the beginning, go here.
Around this time Jeremy had a sort of early mid-life crisis. With some coaxing from a friend at the nuclear power plant where he worked, he interviewed at Solana Solar Power Generating Station, a newly built power plant in Gila Bend, Arizona. It was about an hour drive one way. He liked the idea of working at a power plant that generated sustainable energy and that he would help bring the plant online. He worked as a control room operator and quickly realized that due to his experience in the navy and at the nuclear power plant, he had more experience and knowledge than most of the workers there. He liked being able to provide expertise to help others perform their jobs. I wasn’t thrilled that he was leaving Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station as they had been so good to us during the whole cancer ordeal and aftermath. They gave Jeremy plenty of leave time to spend time with me while I recovered from surgery and many of his co-workers even donated their PTO hours to allow him to spend even more time with me while we figured out treatment options. But he felt like he needed a new challenge and a job that didn’t have the outage schedule twice a year where he had to work six 12-hour shifts a week for about a month. It was a taxing and exhausting month for him and I was pretty much without a husband during the spring and fall when the weather in the Phoenix area was ideal for outdoor activities.
So he began his new job at the solar power plant, commuting over an hour each way, working four 12-hour shifts a week, rotating between days and nights. It was another adjustment but we made it work. And Jeremy was enjoying everything he was learning at the solar power plant.
I still had a nagging feeling that I needed a scan of my lungs to check for metastasis of the cancer. All the research I had read showed that leiomyosarcoma typically metastasizes to the liver and the lungs and that it grew quickly. My most recent CT scan showed some lesions on the liver that were likely benign. But I had read plenty of stories online of survivors finding subsequent tumors in their lungs. I explained my worry to Dr. John at my next visit and he agreed to order a chest x-ray since they have much less radiation than a CT scan, they are much cheaper, and the image can show enough to tell if there is something to be worried about.
I went to the radiology clinic for the x-ray of my lungs and Dr. John gave me a copy of the results at my next visit while I was receiving a vitamin C infusion. He told me it didn’t look very good. As I read the findings my heart just dropped: “8mm right upper lobe pulmonary nodule.” My fear had been realized. I tried to call Jeremy but he wasn’t answering. I am not the type of person that lets things just happen to me. If something happens, I have to find a way to act and do something to change my circumstances. I am an actor, not someone to be acted upon. So I pulled out my phone and began to google lung cancer prognoses, treatments, and outcomes. Everything I read shows that lung cancer is difficult to treat and usually has poor outcomes. I am beginning to prepare myself mentally for the worst. After about 5-10 minutes of this, Dr. John came back into the room. He said that after looking over my previous scan of my lungs he thinks that the lung nodule is not something to worry about. The previous scan says that the nodule is a calcified granuloma. That means it is most likely from a previous infection that my body encapsulated and then calcified. It has probably been there for awhile and will always be there. He said that this x-ray is actually good news because there was another nodule on the previous scan that is no longer there. I went from down-hearted and dispirited to relieved and then elated. I was so happy to discontinue that google search. It was also another affirmation that my treatment was working: a suspect nodule was no longer there!
The x-ray scare was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I rededicated my efforts to make sure I was drinking enough vegetable juices and eating clean. Dr. John felt that we needed more clarification of the recent scans and ordered an ultrasound of the liver and another chest x-ray.
During my ultrasound, the technician was making small talk to ease the awkwardness and tension of the scan. In the midst of our conversation she asked what the ultrasound was for. I’m sure that in addition to facilitate the conversation it was also to help her know what to look for as she viewed the liver. I explained to her that I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer about 6 months prior and that we wanted to see if it had spread to the liver. She asked if I was undergoing the typical treatments of chemotherapy or radiation. “No,” I said. “I didn’t do any of those things. I just changed to an organic vegan diet and lots of juicing.” She said, “oh, really?” She said it in a way that I could tell that she thought I was chasing false hopes and that I wasn’t going to survive for very long. As I continued to explain my diet and that my results so far have been successful, she didn’t show any real interest or belief so I just let the conversation die. I could tell she thought I was crazy and I wouldn’t be able to change her mind in the short amount of time I was with her. I went and had the x-rays of my lungs taken and I went home.
At my next visit Dr. John gave me copies of the results of the ultrasound and chest x-rays and was pleased with the findings. The ultrasound of the liver showed “2 small echogenic structures in the right hepatic lobe corresponds to the findings on the previous CT scan. These are consistent with hemangiomas.” Hemangiomas are noncancerous masses in the liver that are typically made up of blood vessels. The chest x-ray confirmed what Dr. John had thought about the prior x-ray. It showed a “stable small subcentimeter calcified granuloma projects over the retrosternal clear space on the lateral view.” It was considered a negative chest x-ray. I was so relieved.
Now that my scans were showing I was ‘cancer-free’ Jeremy and felt that I could start reintroducing certain foods back into my diet. I had already started using salt again, albeit only Himalayan pink salt, Celtic sea salt, or RealSalt from the salt mines in Utah. These salts are unprocessed and contain naturally occurring beneficial minerals as well. Now I was looking for the first food item I could add back into my diet. Vegan diets are typically deficient in certain vitamins, especially vitamin B12 and vitamin D. Jeremy researched and found that butter has a minimal amount of the casein protein that is considered harmful while being one of the best sources of bioavailable vitamins B12, D and K2. I was torn. I wanted to add more variety and nutrition to my diet, but I could also see that what I was doing so far was working. I was happy with my scan results and I was feeling good. I didn’t want to tempt fate and add something to my diet that would cause the cancer to grow back. Eventually, Jeremy convinced me that the butter was the least harmful of the foods I could add into my diet.
Although it is technically a dairy product, butter contains little of the allergy-causing proteins and very little lactose, which is the major problem for those who struggle with dairy. We looked for the best quality butter that came from cows that were truly allowed to free range and where the butter was processed organically. Jeremy researched and found Kerry Gold butter to be the best quality that was most easily accessible. And it was offered in bulk from Costco. Bonus! We started by cooking the butter until it separated into ghee and milk solids. We used the ghee to spread on bread. After several months without butter, it tasted heavenly. Over the next few days I paid close attention to how my body felt after eating the ghee. I didn’t notice anything different so I felt that my body was tolerating it well. I then switched to omit the process of separating the ghee and just used butter. It tasted fabulous and my body still didn’t show any signs of intolerance. I was happy to include it into my diet.
The next food I began to include was ice cream. No, not your typical dairy ice cream–this wasn’t really ice cream, but it had the cold, sweet creamy texture of ice cream so it felt like a treat. The juicer we bought had several attachments which qualified it to be labeled a “nutrition center.” One of the attachments replaces the juicing screen so that everything is compressed and pushed out the end of the juicer. It was a masticating juicer so it slowly pressed the food instead of chopping it up through a spinning blade. To make the ice cream we had frozen some fruits: banana, pineapple, strawberries, and blueberries. We put the frozen fruit down the chute and the nutrition center/juicer would compress it as it came out the other end, almost like soft serve. We would serve it to our kids and they loved it. Each child had a different favorite, or combination that they liked best. My favorite was pineapple; but I also liked the banana with pecans. It felt a little liberating to find a treat that tasted good and was actually good for me too. Almost like a guilty pleasure–without the guilt.
I modeled much of my diet after Jeannie’s diet that she posted on her blog. Since she was the only survivor of leiomyosarcoma that I found that healed naturally, I paid close attention to every detail. She mentioned that she was on a strict vegan diet at first, but began adding wild caught salmon to her diet occasionally for the added nutrition of fatty acids and B vitamins that it provides. I felt that now, after 6 months on my diet and seeing results, that I could afford to add this protein source into my diet. Lucky for us, we had next-door neighbors that lived primarily in Alaska and used this home as a vacation home. They are wonderful and kind people that happened to be at their Arizona home when I came home from the hospital and so they knew all about what I was going through. She shared with me that she was a breast cancer survivor to give me hope that I could get through this. On one of their trips to Arizona, they brought us some salmon that they caught in Alaska. So we had it sitting in our freezer for awhile. We decided that it was time to try it. That salmon was some of the best salmon I had ever had. Maybe it was because it was the first meat I had eaten in months or because it was wild caught salmon straight from Alaska, rich with natural good fats, but the flaky meat just melted in my mouth.
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