A Positive Oncologist

A week ago (on Dec. 12) Deb had a good Dr. visit with the oncologist. He was positive for a change. He took an x-ray of her pelvis bone (which was heavily involved in myeloma in June) and compared it to June's x-ray. It showed that her bone was a bit stronger than before, so we hope that is the case throughout her skeletal system. She asked him if any of his other patients used alternative medicinal treatment. His answer was surprising to us. He said that at least two thirds of his patients also did alternative treatments. She then asked him about a double blind medical study in Europe on a supplement that was proving to be very effective in fighting MM, but he was unaware of it so he took the info to check it out. At the end he told Deb that she was doing well and to keep up the good work!

She has started a therapy on her back where she is in a small pool at a sports medicine therapy place. This is giving her more mobility and helping her exercise her back without all the pressure that would be on it outside the water.

After battling a sore throat the past few days, she started the next round of steroid treatment yesterday. It inhibits the immune system so she didn't want to start on Wednesday last week for fear it could lead to a throat infection. Pray for it to do a great job of helping drive the myeloma into complete remission.

The other day she started sounding a bit like Yoggi Berra (for you non baseball fans, he is the old guy in the Aflac commercials who repeats himself like a proverb - saying the same thing in two different ways). She said, "You know, if my back didn't hurt a little bit, and I didn't know I was sick; I wouldn't know I was sick!" Smile. That was music to our ears. She is able to do quite a bit more than even a month ago. She has come a long ways, and God willing, she will go quite a bit farther over the next 20+ years.

We went to Abilene for Marcos' graduation on the 9th, and he promptly left for a week of skiing in Colorado with aobut 60 of his ACU social club buddies. They had a good time and none of the guys got hurt, so that was great. Now it is job hunting time. He finished the semester with a 3.67 grade point average even with a bad case of senioritis.

We celebrated Tracy's 27th birthday last night with dinner at a gourmet pizza place and driving through two neighborhoods to see their beautiful Christmas lights. God has blessed us with two fine sons. Thank you, Lord.

Here are our prayer requests:

1. Ask God to bless this steroid treatment into suppressing the Multiple Myeloma into complete remission soon, i.e., no cancer activity detected, so that no further compression fractures occur.

2. Ask that Debbie then be able to get her body into an alkaline state and keep it there. Thankfully, she is making some progress in this area.

3. Ask that her bones rebuild and get stronger during the complete remission

4. Ask that she not get sick during this time of a weakened immune system due to taking the steroid.

5. Ask that her faith and confidence remain strong and her attitude stay very positive

6. Now stretch your faith in our God who heals and ask that her alkaline state be permanent and keep the cancer from returning for 20 + years. (Yes, I know how many of us were raised and taught about limiting God, but our God is the God who often does the impossible. So let's grow our faith some more. "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." Mt. 7:7)

Debbie is one of the most disciplined people I have ever known, and I believe she is disciplined enough, by God's grace, to be able to stay alkaline with her vegan diet and supplements. She has an admirable faith to ask for great things, and an indomitable spirit to fight for healing. We all love and admire her.

Thank you and may God bless you all with a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
Duane and Deb

Surprises and Decisions and Requests

Friends,

I apologize for not updating you for the past two weeks, but a lot has happened.

The first surprise was that as I followed up on my "over 50" physical I went to a cardiologist to have a routine ekg stress test done on Nov. 21. Both the Dr. and I were surprised that it showed significant abnormality in my heart, and he strongly suggested that I have an angiogram done ASAP. That was done this past Tuesday, Nov. 29 and showed that my heart is fine. He said that 20% of the time the stress test abnormalities are false. Whew!!! That was a major bullet dodged. Thank the Lord, I can now throw away my nitro glycerin tablets I was carrying around in my pocket!

The second was on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We got Deb's blood work back showing that the cancer marker was still the same as in September when she got off the steroid treatment. If only it had increased or decreased we would have known what action to take - either hold the alternative treatment course if the number was decreasing or get back on the steroid treatment if it showed the cancer progressing.

After praying and thinking through it all, on Sunday (Nov 27) we decided to put her back on the steroid therapy which suppresses the cancer (along with the bad side effect of suppressing her immune system) in the hope that it will bring her into complete remission and getting the M protein cancer marker down from 0.1 to 0.0. (Keep in mind that in June it was 6.4, July was 4.8 and 1.4 in August, and it has been stuck at 0.1 since September, so she has come a long ways.)

The reason for this decision, we think, is really two fold. First, even though the cancer is barely active, there is so much of it in her bones that it is making her system acidic such that the alkalinity we are trying to achieve is offset by the cancer's spewing out acid into her system. She has not been able to get ahead of it. If the steroid will completely suppress the cancer down to 0.0, then that will help her achieve alkalinity in her system, which we believe will keep the cancer suppressed indefinitely, and that gives us great hope and confidence in a healing.

The second reason was a time factor. Her spine is weakened (and beginning to hurt a bit more) from the advanced state of MM at diagnosis and the presence of the tumors in her spine such that we were concerned about it causing more compression fractures as it continues to nibble away at her vertebras. We just didn't feel that we could put her spine at further risk by spending another month much less several months combating this monster naturally as we had been. Her body needed a boost, a reinforcement, to knock the MM down to 0.0 ASAP. So we resorted back to the medical community's recommended steroid treatment, in spite of all its side effects. We think the trade offs are worth it at the present time.

Here are some special prayer requests along this line:

1. Ask God to bless this steroid treatment into suppressing the Multiple Myeloma into complete remission soon, i.e no cancer activity detected, so that no further compression fractures occur.

2. Ask that Debbie then be able to get her body into an alkaline state and keep it there.

3. Ask that her bones rebuild and get stronger during the complete remission

4. Ask that she not get sick during this time of a weakened immune system

5. Ask that her faith and confidence remain strong and her attitude stay very positive

6. Now stretch your faith in our God who heals and ask that her alkaline state be permanent and keep the cancer from returning for 20 + years. (Yes, I know how many of you were raised and taught about limiting God, but our God is the God who often does the impossible. So grow your faith some more. "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." Mt. 7:7)

Debbie is one of the most disciplined people I have ever known, and I believe she is disciplined enough, by God's grace, to be able to stay alkaline with her vegan diet and supplements. She has an admirable faith to ask for great things, and an indomitable spirit to fight for healing. We all admire her.

Thank you and may God bless you,

Duane