Two Weeks Down...One to Go

We met with Dr. Forsythe yesterday and he thinks the treatments are going very well. He listened to Harold's lungs and intestines and said they both sounded very good when listening with his stethoscope. He thinks Papa will respond well to the treatment.

We met with Dr. Donaldson on Wednesday evening and fine tuned the supplement regimen. During our conversation with her, she gave us some information inadvertently that will be helpful for anyone you may know that either has leg cramps at night or restless leg syndrome. She said to start taking a 400 unit Vitamin E in the evening for a week and after a week to take one in the morning and one in the evening. If this is done consistently, it will alleviate leg cramps and restless leg syndrome symptoms. Dr. Donaldson said it really makes her angry to see the commercials touting medication for these symptoms when Vitamin E will take care of them. This is pretty big news since we know several people that this should benefit.

We are meeting with Dr. Husser this morning and hopefully will have some of the blood test results that have been done locally (hair strand tests, etc.). The results from the German lab will probably not be back until just before we leave Reno or possibly not until we get back home.

Today papa finishes his second week of IV Salicinim treatments and is feeling good. Yesterday afternoon we drove up to Virginia City, Gold City, Silver City and Carson City. Virginia City is mostly a tourist city with little shops all along the main street. It is beautiful from the top of the mountains getting there.

We plan to take a trip this weekend to Napa and Sonoma Valley. The weather is supposed to be good this weekend so we can go over Donner pass to get to California. It is about a 3 to 4 hour drive to the valley...looking forward to the trip.

Medicare Miracle?

Medicare Widens Drugs It Accepts for Cancer (click the text to see the NY Times Article)

This article is good news for cancer patients. When we get the results of the blood test from the German lab (it takes 2 to 3 weeks to get results so we may be on our way home or home before we hear anything), if it recommends using a drug that the FDA has not approved as a first line against colon cancer, Medicare will now pay for it, and they would not pay for anything that the FDA had not approved as first line prior to this law being enacted.

Harold continues to take a Salicinium IV treatment each day; today marks the half-way mark of the treatments and Harold seems to be getting stronger and is feeling better (he definitely has his ornery side back!).

Other good news is that we finally got car back yesterday - that was a very happy moment for us! Last night we watched 'Jersey Girl' at the hotel and also walked trail around the Truckee River. We also picked up some new luggage; this was the last item we needed to pick up that we lost in the break-in. We are still waiting to hear back from insurance on the replacements but unfortunately, we will have to foot at $1,000 to hit the deductible for our homeowners to kick in and we had a $250 deductible to replace the window - what a lesson in travel!

We are hoping the weather permits a trip this coming weekend to Napa and Sonoma Valley. It is about 3 and a half hours away from Reno.

We Continue to Be Surrounded by Miracles

Our first week in Reno has given us very serious hope for arresting Papa Harold’s cancer. We have met many cancer survivors that were Stage IV patients that conventional medicine had given up on and told there was nothing more they could do.

They are coming back for their follow-up treatments and have wonderful stories to tell us.

We met a lady who had metastatic breast cancer that had gotten in the bone marrow. She could not take any more chemo and was at a point where she was sleeping all the time and in her words “had no life left”. She came here three years ago and is back today for a follow up treatment. She appears to be very healthy today. Praise the Lord.

She is one of many patients we have met that are alive and well after being told there was nothing more that could be done for them.

We were very excited to move on Saturday to our new location for the next two weeks. It is a beautiful high rise condo complex. We have a unit on the sixteenth floor overlooking the mountains and the Truckee river. It was like moving from the “ghetto” to upper Manhattan. It has a very nice indoor heated pool and a rooftop hot tub, game room with pool table and ping pong table, exercise room, and 24-hour beverage service for coffee, tea and hot chocolate. They even have a covered garage that requires valet parking (so it is very secure, yeah!)

I have replaced our clothing we lost with enough to get us by until we get back home; however, I still have to find luggage to pack it in before we leave for home.

Papa Harold’s treatments last about three hours each day Mon-Fri. He also sees the various doctors on some days. We were in the clinic one day last week from 9:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. Needless to say that made for a pretty tiring day. We are hoping the weather next weekend will allow us to take a small trip either to Tahoe or Napa Valley.

It was snowing here yesterday as we went to Mass at a beautiful little church about a block from our condo.

Now that we are in the new location, we are about as comfortable as you can be when you are away from home.

Thank you to everyone who continues to check in with us. We would love to get comments from you - feel free to add comments to our blog posts - we will enjoy hearing from you!

We will never lose our hope (Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.)

Love to All - Harold and Sonja

God Continues to Guide Our Way

We have met with three doctors at the clinic and Harold has had an salacinium IV treatment every day this week. All three of the doctors are very good and very integrative with their medical procedures.

Yesterday there was a lady in for a follow-up treatment that had an inoperable brain tumor. Her tumor has disappeared and she looks as healthy as I am. This was very encouraging. Also the week before we got here there was a doctor from Texas and his wife who was also a doctor taking this treatment.

We will not be taking treatments on the weekends, but will be taking the salicinium orally. It is going to snow in the mountains this weekend so we won’t be able to take a trip to Sonoma Valley or Tahoe like we wanted, because Donner Pass will be closed...that just takes us the the inevitable conclusion most of you already know...We will probably go to some movies and play a little poker (hey, it has paid for our going-out meals so far, can't complain!).

Papa Harold is Trippin'...Careful, Watch Your Step!

Message Written by Sonja:

We left home on Friday, January 16 and drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico the first day. We spent the night at a Ramada Inn. We always pack a small bag if we are travelling for several days with a couple of changes of clothes so we don’t have to take in all the big bags. We had packed to be gone for four weeks with clothes, all of Harold’s supplements, an ice chest with food and dishes, an electric skillet, crock pot and Panini maker.

We parked about 100 feet from the office under a light. When we got ready to leave on Saturday we found that someone had broken out the back glass of the SUV and stolen EVERYTHING we had taken with us. I had taken the computer in with us, so we had it and our toiletries and a change of clothes and they got everything else.

I was pretty devastated and had a meltdown, but got over it. The officer that investigated told that anywhere in New Mexico they will break out a window for a candy bar laying on the seat. Would have been nice to know that ahead of time. It was a lesson hard learned.

We had to complete the next two days of the trip with a plastic dripcloth duct taped to over the back window. We had no security at all - imagine how safe you feel leaving your car wide open for another night at a hotel outside of Las Vegas - God was watching over us though as we went without incident on night 2.

We made arrangements to get the glass replaced at the dealer in Reno. Unfortunately, the glass is special order so we had to wait for three days for the insurance adjuster to go to the dealer and write up the estimate. I finally got a call last night that he had been there yesterday and the car should be fixed no later than Tuesday of next week. We have had a rental car for several days waiting; needless to say, it was an interesting start to an already emotional journey.

Finding Our Way

Mom and dad went for dad's monthly check-up at Cancer Treatment Center in Tulsa from November 2008 through January 2009 and Papa Harold’s CEA (the marker for tumor activity in the blood) had been doubling. From December to January, his levels had went from 27 to 56 and the CT scan confirmed the tumors in his lungs and liver had doubled in size in a month - we were hoping that it was due to the IVC treatments killing the cancer cells causing his elevations but the scan proved that to be wrong.

Dr. Ketterl, his oncologist, want told them she wanted to do chemo (the same regimen he took in 2004 that did not have any affect on his cancer).

During October when mom and dad were visiting Ryan, Julie and Peyton in Indianapolis they had an IVC (intravenous Vitamin C) treatment with a Naturopathic Doctor that told them about a blood test that a German lab was doing that would test your blood for specific chemo and natural substances that would likely work best on your specific tumors.

Mom immediately began searching for the lab and a clinic in Germany that used the test. In the search, she found that a doctor in Reno, Nevada used the German blood test and additionally used a substance called Salicinium that has had great results on some other cancer patients. Mom contacted the clinic (it took several tries to get ahold of them) and set up an appointment for dad to go through the series of Salicinium treatments. It is a three week regimen that they wanted to begin immediately (in fact they set off on their journey last Friday, January 16 to drive the 24+ hours to the treatment center) so the doctor could start on Monday. After the 3 weeks of treatments, they will journey back home for two months and take the Salicinium orally and then come back to Reno again for a one week follow-up with the IV treatments...

On with the journey!