Day 25: East vs. West, a small success and a funny

Met with the surgeon yesterday. I got the impression that he did not care for Naturopathic treatments. I have seen a Naturopath most my life, since I had a stroke at age 25 actually. But that is a different story. One of the things I always find interesting about Western medicine is “ranges” on blood workups. For example, my Vit D is 27.3, the surgeons office recommended I take 2000IU daily, the Oncologist bumped it to 10,000. The Surgeon made a comment… “Well “normal is 30” – what did they bump you up to? 50,000?” The range for normal is 30-80. The Oncologist wants to see my Vit D at 60-80. Apparently Vit D is critical to immune strength – which I will be needing over the next few months.

The surgeon mentioned that MRI’s tend to exaggerate tumor size. So I did a little web research (whatever did we do before the inTARwebs?), seems that about 30% of the time MRI exaggerates by .66 cm when contrast is used. Mine have apparently increased in size by 3cm and 3.6cm. He did say that based on size alone this would put me at Stage 2 without knowing for sure whether it is in the lymph nodes or elsewhere. He wants to wait until after we get the PET Scan results to decide on whether we will do surgery first or chemotherapy first.

We should hear Monday on pre-authorization and hope to get the PET Scan done early in the week so hopefully we can get moving on getting rid of it. I am a data person, so I love getting all the data, but at some point you start to feel like… seriously? have we not analyzed the crud out of it yet?  Of course, the peace of mind or reality sammich a PET Scan will offer will make it worth the wait.

We also talked about what to expect post surgery. In a word… EW. So so so much EW.

Ok so some wins… in my search for food stuffs that are alkaline and realizing that most my normal foods are now off the menu I am starting to find new options. So… successes:

• Thank you Shannon, I found some instant Cafix and it is actually alkalizing to boot! Mixing with a half of a Starbucks Via in hopes that people will still like me as I transition off the coffee and to the teas
• Unsweetened Coconut Milk is pretty good. It is not like milk nor is it like cream and the flavor is not too strong of coconut, it is mildly alkalizing and so far it compliments my organic vanilla tea (thank you Suzanne) beautifully.
• Quinoa is going to be one of my new go-to foods. Made a chai spiced quinoa porridge with chia seeds, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger and coconut milk. Added dried fig, dried apricot, slivered almonds and dried dates with a smidge of 100% organic maple syrup and liked it very much. Very filling and doesn’t take much.

My pH was 6.5 this morning. Goal to get it above 7.

Oh and the funny. The Surgeon wanted to do another breast exam to see if he could identify the borders of the tumors… (yeah yeah…). Anyway, I said to him: “You know, just last night I told Rick that the next man that touched my #killerleftboob was gonna punched in the throat.” He looks at Rick, awkward pause, Rick says, “I didn’t touch it… so your up.” No, I didn’t punch him… may have fantasized a little… it hurts people… oi!

As all’y’all have figured out by now… I cope with bad jokes and humor.

#strongerthancancer #embracingtheadventure #killerleftboob #hawtrightboob #breastcancer