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| My adorable little nephew |
Well, I tried the higher doses of artemisinin, and it appears as if my body didn't prefer it. According to research, there's quite an individual variability of effectiveness. So, last night I started back on the low doses of Artemix. I'm back to doing the same protocol from Oct - Jan. I'm back in contact with the lead researcher at the UW who knows all there is to know about the artemisinin derivatives. He's originally from India where he was a medical doctor, but he moved to the states and earned a PhD, and he now researches artemisinin. He is the most kind doctor and researcher, possibly in the world. I emailed him and discussed what happened with this latest protocol and he expanded on the reasons why the low doses work so well. There's a 24 hour cycle where you eat antioxidants in the morning and at lunch, then refrain and stop eating in the early evening. You then take the artemisinin four hours after dinner with a cup of whole milk. Then you start back over in the morning with antioxidants. By utilizing the 24 hour cycle, you keep your body healthy and it cleans up any residual damaged cells, then when you take artemisinin on an empty stomach, the body creates more free radicals which allow the artemisinin to attack the cancer cells. The artemisinin works its' magic while you sleep and when you wake up, it's time to clean up all of the mess. I'm excited to be back on the low doses, it's so much easier.
It's crazy, but I never liked the high doses. It made my innards hurt. I'm disappointed that Herman grew, but I'm not surprised. I had been noticing some mental deficits, nothing too serious, but things were different up there. I didn't want to jump to conclusions because there's just no point in freaking out, but when I saw the further infiltration of Herm on the MRI, it all made sense. The growth is in my speech and language area, and although I feel like I'm progressively better at expressing myself with the written word, the deficits are when I'm speaking aloud, or processing speech. Tricky stuff. I still don't think anyone else would notice, but I notice and that's creepy enough.
The past twenty-four hours have been pretty tough. My family all returned to Friday Harbor and Wenatchee, and that's when the whole thing hit home. Here we go again, another three months of trying to stop the growth of Herman and hopefully, someday, actually see him shrink. Yesterday, as I was laying in bed trying to nap, I wondered if I was going to be able to keep up the fight. This is exhausting. Sometimes I feel like giving up. I know that I won't, but it's so tough. Luckily, my friends Meghan and Nicole invited me to run the lake. If not for that, I probably would have just laid in bed. I just need to keep one foot in front of the other, and do what I can. At least today I get to visit my friends at the retirement home, they always make me feel better and it's a great excuse to get up and out of the house.
It's so foreign to have a blob growing in my brain. And to feel it, recognizing that it's there and it's eating into who I am, deep in my core, my thoughts and processing, it's absolutely fascinating, and horrible, and terrifying.
