On the evening of 12 August 2009, I was sat at home alone watching a film after a day at work. I was staying at home at this time as Maria had taken a long break in Spain, and I had quite a lot of work on. The phone rang, not unusual, as we always kept in touch at all times. Maria told me straight out in tears and barely able to talk that "they had found a tumor in her lungs". My world stopped and an indescribable weight dropped in my stomach. I didn't know what to do or say, I was totally numb. I rushed over to Maria's mum's place and met her with her brother where after a very traumatic night we managed to get Maria on the next plane home to Sweden.
Following comprehensive tests, Maria was diagnosed with an inoperable adenocarcinoma lung cancer. The tumor was growing and the doctors put Maria on a course of Chemotherapy along with Radiotherapy. After several months and more scans, it seemed as though the cancer had shrunk and was inactive. Not enough to operate but nonetheless dormant and not posing any threat. We began to enjoy a normal life and start enjoying time together as a family with regular scans to keep a check on the sleeping giant.
In may of this year, we met Maria's oncologist for an update on the latest PET scan. The news wasn't good. The tumor had awoken and now spread to 4 or 5 different areas of the body. Our world bottomed out again, but only for a day. Maria decided straight away that we had done enough moping the first time and we could now attack this with a strength from the (second) beginning. Her doctor suggested taking a new biopsy a procedure she had done a year ago, which involved opening the throat going down and fetching a sample of the tumor (not very pleasant) and then seeing if she would have the correct mutation of cancer for a new promising drug that had finally started to do tests in Sweden. We had heard about this drug a year before and had travelled to Italy which was one of the few places that was doing the early trials on the drug. The new drug Crizotenib, had indeed had fairly good results, but it is just that, a new drug. Nobody knows what the long term effects may be, and the common side effects included tiredness and nausia, and this was a drug that you would pretty much have to take for the rest of your life.
Maria decided that she didn't want to go down that old road of conventional medicine this time. The doctor had also suggested that Radiotherapy and possibly some Chemotherapy would be required if we were to follow the normal path. So after some research and reading around, we heard and read about a natural alternative called DCA (Dichloroacetic Acid) which had also had some pretty impressive results, however no clinical trials and after reading about the history of the research it appeared that the path of development and progress seemed to have dried up around 2007, although DCA is selling very well, in all shapes and sizes.
A bit more reading and searching and Maria came upon the Gerson therapy. A course of treatment developed by Max Gerson a genius doctor from Germany who discovered that (simply put) a course of controlled nutritional diet could help the bodies failed immune system recover and ultimately fight the host disease. The Gerson Institute whilst being based in the USA, had a lot of it's early development based in Mexico, where it is stilled practiced today. One of the centres specializing in the Gerson therapy is the CHIPSA Immunological Center in Tijuana and this is where we went to start a 4 week treatment.
This blog, is by no means meant to be any accurate scientific journal, or guide. It shall merely be a daily collection of observations and happenings during the course of our time here at the CHIPSA hospital. It wont be structured and may seem really lame at times. However, it is my own journal, and it may be of some use to someone, somewhere in the future, who knows?
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