Carol Johnson was 44 years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Four years later, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma…
After going through two stem cell transplants, she is now on low maintenance chemotherapy…and she is taking curcumin. Read her story here: http://goo.gl/sW1Sc
…but it’s still in draft form. Not ready, in other words. So I’ll just go ahead and post two cutecutecute videos that I watched during a break today…
The first is of a teeny tiny kitten playing an invisible harp: http://goo.gl/JS3YB Awww!!!! 🙂
The second is the most recent Simon’s Cat video, which gave me a nice little chuckle (we’re always amazed at the amount of stuff that our cats manage to shove under the couch in the living room…hmmm, I hadn’t thought of looking under the fridge, too, though…hehe!): http://goo.gl/pA7yQ
Okay, enough. Back to work…Oh, just a little hint before I go: after months of being totally overwhelmed by the amount of info/material, I’ve decided to pick up the virus connection trail again…Let’s hope it leads somewhere…(!)
Just took these photos of our youngest kitty, Pinga, at play. They remind me (a bit) of Surprised Kitty: http://goo.gl/sRybJ
Had to share… 
🙂
A blog reader (also a FB friend, co-administrator of our MM support group on FB, etc.) posted a very interesting link on the FB group’s Wall today: http://goo.gl/jOEO8 This link will take you to a “Natural News” article discussing a hot-off-the-press book written by Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, a well known cancer expert (see the article for more details)…
The NN article is very well written/organized and easy to read…And, since there is no way I could possibly summarize it, I really urge you to go have a look…
Oh, wait a sec, I just wanted to point out that the following excerpt strongly reminded me of yesterday’s post/film (ACS = the American Cancer Society, by the way):
“ACS maintains a Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, which periodically reviews unorthodox or alternative therapies,” Epstein wrote. “This committee is comprised of volunteer health care professionals, carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or unproven therapies that are generally cheap, and minimally toxic.”
Periodically, the committee updates its statements on unproven methods, which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with unproven methods, he or she is blackmailed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused quack becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.
“The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners are in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This despite the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers.”
The cancer industry’s favor of pharmaceutical products is evidenced, Epstein said, “by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, while it has yet to approve a single nonpatented alternative drug.”
According to Epstein, “Dr. Samuel Broder, NCI director from 1989 to 1995, frankly admitted, in a 1998 Washington Post interview, that ‘the NCI has become what amounts to a government pharmaceutical company.’ Taxpayers have funded R & D and expensive clinical trials for over two-thirds of cancer drugs on the market. These drugs are given, with exclusive rights, to the industry, which sells them at inflated prices.”
Sigh. Quelle surprise…(NOT!!!)…
In 1997, at age 37, after undergoing radiation therapy, chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, David Emerson, a MM Support list member and FB friend (also the founder of the People Beating Cancer website), was essentially sent him home to die. His doctors gave him months to live, a year at the most. Well, he refused to give up. He began doing a lot of research, consulted many doctors and ultimately went to Dr. Burzynski’s clinic in Houston, TX, where he underwent this Polish doctor’s controversial antineoplaston treatment.
Well, David really beat the odds. He has now been cancer-free for 12 years (since 1999). And that is why I watched this film today (= almost 2 hours long) with an open mind: http://goo.gl/Uw2kY
Now, I should make it clear that I’m not endorsing this cancer treatment, since, to be super honest, I don’t know enough about it, how it works and so on…
So you might wonder why I’m talking about it today. Well, for various reasons: 1. you can watch the film for free (UPDATE (June 23): the free offer deadline has now been extended…indefinitely); 2. I found it (the patients’ testimonials, etc.) very interesting and 3. I was simply astounded at the FDA’s relentless harassment of this doctor…
A brand new study, which has just been presented at the Endocrine Society’s Annual Meeting in Boston (June 4-7), shows that maintaining a circulating vitamin D level above 33 ng/ml is associated with a seven-fold greater likelihood of having a more favorable outcome with bisphosphonate therapy. SEVEN-FOLD! Even I am stunned…
The evidence in favor of vitamin D certainly keeps accumulating, doesn’t it? By the way, the time has come for me to thank my friend Sherlock for talking to me about vitamin D about four years ago. It is only thanks to her that I had my levels checked…and then my quest began…Grazie, Sherlockissima! 🙂
Without further ado, here is the link to the press release about this new study: http://goo.gl/fcxWQ Wow…
Oh, I just looooooove this myeloma specialist!!! 🙂 Before I get carried away, though, and forget to publish the link to the interview, here it is: http://goo.gl/9QkPW Dr. Berenson makes so many good points, points that make TOTAL sense to me, that it’s a bit hard to choose only a few…
Well, I’ll give it a quick shot. I really REALLY liked what he said about about:
Perhaps most of all, though, I was interested in his advice for SMM folks: in order to try to prevent future bone problems, we should be taking supplemental vitamin D and calcium on a daily basis. (I would add that MGUS folks should at least have their vit D levels carefully monitored…) YES!!!
About three minutes into the interview, concerning bone issues, he says: “Let’s start just with simple things that you can do…First of all, vitamin D, calcium…We didn’t care about that 5 years ago.” But now, “We care a lot.” As I said, I LOVE THIS SPECIALIST!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!
Here’s a summary (from memory and a few jotted down notes…) of what he said specifically about vitamin D and calcium. Basically, all patients, MM and SMM (and, I would add, MGUS, too) should have their vitamin D levels tested in order to have a baseline. If their vit D baseline levels are low, they should take 50000 units of vit D per week for 8 weeks, then get re-tested. If their levels have gone back up, then they are probably okay with 1000 to 2000 units per day. If, instead, their baseline vit D levels are okay, then he recommends 1200 units a day. WOW!!!!! This is excellent!!!!!
As for calcium, he recommends taking 1 gram a day of elemental calcium…that is, not calcium gluconate or carbonate. I asked him a clarifying question about that and am waiting for his answer, which I will leave here in a comment as soon as I receive it…
Anyway, I highly recommend that you all watch this amazingly compelling 13-minute interview. Thank you, Dr. Berenson! 🙂
I read another fascinating article written by Jacob Schor, President of the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians (thank you!), titled “Will asparagus cure cancer?”: goo.gl/d42eV I’m still in shock. It turns out that eating a lot of asparagus can actually be harmful in certain types of cancer. ALL (=acute lymphoblastic leukemia), specifically.
But please note this paragraph in particular: As the names hints, asparagus contain l-asparagine. Eating asparagus would seem ill advised for people who have cancers that respond to l-asparaginase. This enzyme may be useful in treating lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Eating asparagus may make all of these cancers grow faster, most especially ALL.
Uhm…wait…
Asparagus might possibly make my myeloma cells grow FASTER???!!! Well then, I’m definitely striking it off my list of foods. Drat. I really LIKE asparagus! But my health is much more important to me, of course!
I don’t have much time today (familiar story, eh, especially these days…), but I did find out that there is at least one clinical trial testing a drug called PEG L-asparaginase on patients with refractory lymphoid malignancies, including multiple myeloma (see http://goo.gl/HnYuZ). This drug is a modified version of an enzyme, L-asparaginase, which…Oh wait a second…I think it’d be a good idea right now to stop, take a step back and try to understand what this stuff means…
So, what is asparagine? Basically, it’s a chemical that cells, all cells!, need to survive. Healthy cells can produce their own asparagine, but cancer cells cannot. But cancer cells desperately need this chemical, of course, so they grab and use up every available scrap of asparagine circulating inside the body. And in fact the idea behind the above-mentioned drug, PEG L-asparaginase, is that it gets rid of the circulating asparagine, which has the rather obvious effect of KILLING the leukemic cells. Simple, no? Well…a big problem with this drug, from what I read (quickly!) are its side effects, which can be quite serious…
Oh, before I go on, I also found this Cleveland Clinic bit of info on PEG etc.: http://goo.gl/fjZ61 Hmmm.
At any rate, I ask you, what would happen if we cut down on asparagine-containing foods? I don’t think we should eliminate them entirely, since that might hurt our healthy cells, too (mental note: more research needed). Oh, since this post is a work in progress, as you can tell!, let me mention that I just read that asparagine can be found in quite a number of foods–dairy, eggs, potatoes, nuts and so on…So we probably couldn’t eliminate them entirely, anyway. But I don’t see how it would hurt to cut down…
That’s what I’ve decided to do. Soooo…farewell, lovely asparagus… 🙁
Before I begin, I’d like to say it was my computer’s fault, not mine…In fact, when you really think about it, it was Stefano’s own fault. So there!
When he last updated my computer, you see, he must have erased my nifty calendar somehow…yep, the entire thing. All my appointments—gone. All those helpful and reliable (!) birthday reminders for all the important people in my life—gone. As quickly as you can say “keystroke.” Poof. And of course, I didn’t find out until yesterday morning…
You’d think I’d have known that something was wrong when my computer neglected to remind me of my sister’s birthday last month. But no, I didn’t. I’ve been so busy and distracted by other things that I guess I just didn’t pay any attention…
Okay. Fast forward to yesterday morning.
As we were getting ready for work, Stefano asked innocently, “Don’t you have anything to say to me?” I mulled this over for a moment and replied, beaming a smile at him, “Well yes, of course. Good morning!!!”
Hurt look. Downturned mouth. He moaned, “You forgot…you forgot…”
“Forgot WHAT???,” I retorted, putting on a sock. (Quick note: since I’ve been on curcumin, my memory has improved a whole lot…So I was 100% certain I’d forgotten nothing and that he was pulling my leg just to annoy me…).
He answered, “YOU FORGOT MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!”
After a stunned nanosecond of silence, I protested, “NOOOO, silly, it isn’t your birthday today, of course it isn’t!!!!!!!!!! That’s impossible!!!! My computer didn’t warn me!!!”
I’ve NEVER EVER forgotten his bday before…
But he was right.
I had!!!
Panic, total panic…holy caaaaaats!!!
And that’s when it hit me. I looked down at my computer screen and told him I thought there was something wrong with my calendar, since it hadn’t “warned” me first about my sister’s birthday and now about his birthday, as it usually does. That’s how we discovered that my calendar had been completely erased…Oh well. Not my fault, then. 🙂
After work, I drove directly to our favourite pasticceria (=cake shop), one of the best in Florence, and managed to slip inside just as it was closing…After apologizing for my foot-in-the-door intrusion, I explained that I’d forgotten my husband’s birthday, at which point the tired pasticceria owners turned into the most understanding and helpful people on Earth. “Signora, try this…hmmm, what do you think about getting him one of these? Ah, and how about this chocolate one?”
I ended up buying all his favourite sweets. Every single one. And a GLORIOUS cake consisting of a tart crust base topped with a lemon-based Bavarian cream custard surrounded with raspberries and strawberries and passion fruit (nice touch, eh, the passion fruit 😉 )…Oh, and let me tell you, it was absolutely delicious…
But that didn’t seem like enough. I mean, can a few sweets possibly make up for forgetting the birthday of the most important person in your life?
So in the late afternoon, braving the pouring rain (incidentally, it’s been raining buckets upon buckets here since Sunday…to the point where my flowers are floating and I’m thinking of trading my car in for a boat…), I went out again and bought him some books and some expensive Scottish whisky—two of his favourite things in the world (that is, after the cats and me and his computer…ah yes in that order…).
Oh, I forgot to tell you. To make matters worse, yesterday morning Stefano told me that for MY birthday he’s planning to whisk me away for a romantic weekend in a European capital…
Well, Stefano’s birthday turned out well in the end and life is good. And the best part is that I married a great guy with a great sense of humor…Hmmm, speaking of that great sense of humor…I really hope he wasn’t kidding about the romantic getaway! 😉
I have time only for a super duper amazingly quick post today, but I just read this bit of info and thought it too important not to share immediately, since I know that doxorubicin can do some real damage to the heart. If you are taking doxorubicin or know someone who is, please read this article: http://goo.gl/4k43c
Have a great Sunday, everyone!