12.15.08

so we are back from PA. it's all a bit much to try and wrap my head around and even harder to type. it's not good. but there is hope.

so the woman we saw on saturday is a certified naturopath. our appt was for 90 min but she ended up spending 10 min shy of 3 hours with us. she draws john's blood and then puts it under a microscope. the image is displayed on a tv screen so you can see what she's seeing. overall she was very knowledgable and helped us a lot with the educational and nutritional component that truly should have accompanied john's chemo and steroid treatment but, didn't. such is western medicine. so here we are.

in a nutshell, john has toxic/acidic blood. if you have one marker your blood is technically 'toxic'. the more markers you have, the more toxic it is. john has 6 of 9 posible markers. the more toxic your blood is, the sicker you are/feel/become.

i have to say, watching a parasite swim through your husband's blood sample is not an easy thing to witness. nor, i'm sure, was it easy for him to see. it was like something out of a science fiction movie. one was shaped like a stalk or a snake, one was like an octopus with tenticles, one was like an ameba like blob. they were about 25-50 times the size of the cells.

he has virtually no good bacteria and bad bacteria has taken over. it has created a virtual playground for all things bad. he has, in his blood, yeast, fungus, fat, bacteria, undigested food, parasites, evidence of liver damage, evidence of malabsorption, and heightened levels of chemical/metal. also his cells are called, 'sticky cells' bc they are not round, seperate cells as they should be but rather are all stuck together in what looks like a row of quarters. while some of this may be from lifestyle/poor diet, there's a very high chance that this started (or at least got out of control) with his chemo and steroid treatments.

all of these things in the blood causes him to feel sick, to feel pain in the joints, to have inflammation to the point that it's almost debilitating some days, to be lethargic, and in essence, to stay sick from the vasculitis. now, that's not to say that addresing this will cure the vasculitis, no. but it should, over time (like, 6 months to a year), make him feel fewer symptoms of the disease and be able to live a life with less chronic pain. addressing all this will also boost his immune system.

again, trying to nutshell, the goal of the chemo was to kill the white blood cells which were wrongfully attacking john's blood vessels. it did that. it also, however, killed most of the healthy bacteria in his blood. this created ideal conditions for everything else, like dominos, to go wrong.

too much bad bacteria: while on the chemo john should hav been taking a probiotic vitamin with "strains in the 6 billions range" (whatever that means). it would have kept up his good bacteria levels, ... but no one told us.

parasites: she said that anyone can get a parasite. you can get them from digging in your flower bed, walking on the grass or wet sand, and some are airborne, for instance. a healthy person, however, has high levels of good bacteria so there's not much of a comfortable living environement for the parasite so the person does not get sick. the parasite eventually dies or just sort of hangs out and does minimal damage. john's body, having virtually no good bacteria, was a rich environment for the parasites to flourish, grow, multiply. additionally, with john's less than perfect diet, many of the foods he was eating (sugar, white flour) actually feed the parasites, thus making him crave those foods even more. like a terrible cycle.

malabsorption and undigestged food in his blood: this is caused by a condition called 'leaky gut'. it's when the lining of the small intestine gets too porous and food leaks out before being digestged. this is of course super for feeding the parasites, not so super for feeding john.

high levels of chemicals/metals: she said that this can be caused from things as far back as the type of pots and pans john's mother cooked his food in as a child (cast iron metal for example) or could be caused by the cleaning supplies that john breaths in; but most likely she thinks its from the chemo. once his blood dried, it dried a dark grey metal color. ugh. this indicates toxic levels of chemicals/metal.

fat: she never really talked about the fat we saw. i'll assume it's diet but who knows. it was like information overload so i didn't think to ask.

yeast/fungus ("candida"): she never really got to how this got there or why but she kept mentioning that "candida is in your blood in fairly high doses" and kept mentioning that he needed to cleanse that out.

"sticky cells": can be caused by dehydration. she's telling john to drink one half of his body weight in ounces each day. it can also be caused from extended illness. (duh)

liver damage: she thinks this is primarily from diet. she explained that certain foods are acidic and others are alkyline (opposite of acid). when you eat non alkyline food (sugar, white flour) it makes your blood too acidic so the liver has to work hard to create ammonia which neutralizes the acid or, as she puts it, "you'd drop dead". john's liver was most likely compromised by the meds and now that he (and his parasites) are eating non alkyline foods his blood is too acidic causing his already taxed liver to ovesecrete ammonia. she was able to see the liver damage in the blood by these long, black, silk looking lines in the blood (like a spider web drawn in coal).

so, this was a lot of bad. she said "your blood is very on the toxic side", "your blood is on the dark side", "your blood is on the bad side". you could tell she was couching it and didn't want to freak us out. i told her, "i try to be glass half full, i need good news. what do you see when you look at his blood that is good? what does he have going for him?". she struggled and then said something vague about "good connectivity". i asked what that meant and she said, "he has good connectivity". uuuhhhh. ok. about an hour later i asked the same question. i got the same pensive answer.

in a hocus pocus kind of way the appt was interesting. she knew john had fungus on his toe just by looking at his blood. she knew john had had surgery in the past just by looking at his cells. she said that cells have "memory".

so, what now? she gave us a list too long to type that john has to do. i am going to do most of it with him bc life changes of this sort are hard enough w/o having to do it alone.
-detox diet, fiber, probiotic, digestive enzymes, milk thislte, all organ cleanse, candida/fungal cleanse, parasite/bacterial cleanse, chelating, olive leaf extract, whole plant vitamin/minerals, increased water intake, eating fewer starchy foods, more alkyline foods, and fewer foods that cause inflammation (who the heck knew that there were foods that caused inflammation? not me). this will all take about 6 months to a year. it has to be done in steps over time. some of the steps you can do at the same time, others can only be done when a different step has already been completed. she said that there were other things she wanted to recommend but not being familiar with vasculitis and john's course of treatment (besides what we told her) she didn't feel comfortable doing that until she put it in a report and sent it to a doctor. i don't suspect john's internal doc will take any of this seriously (he's a very very nice guy but pretty much scratches his head and says, "humph. you're a-typical. i have no idea. good luck. see you in 2-3 months". i can only take so much of that. i do suspect that john's chiropractor will take it seriously as he is currently furthering his education to include wholistic methods in his practice.

she said that we can call with any questions and that we should come back in about 12 months. she keeps his slide and notes and will compare it with how he looks then. "we should see improvement in your blood by then if you take these steps and you should know there's been improvement b/c you should start feeling a bit better". music to my ears. again, to be clear, not that this will cure the vasculitis, but it will perhaps control the pain associated with it; and he is in a LOT of pain all day every day so praying that this helps.

so, that is that. it seems that we will be drinking water until we float away and eating things like flax seed and artichoke and steel cut oatmeal for a while.
yumm-o! bring it on!
k