Whipple Surgery and My Experience

I am not sure where to start here. I know that I was highly afraid to get this surgery and finding information about what my recovery would be like was difficult. After months of consideration I chose not to get the surgery, and as I sat with that decision I felt I was choosing death, so I changed my mind and scheduled the surgery. I do not regret it. As I write this I am 31/2 weeks out and still learning how to use my new digestive system, but I can with reasonable hope say I’m cancer free. There is a possibility of stray cells ready to seed new areas and start over, and I have a genetic marker which makes me susceptible to cancer spreading through the sheath of my nerves, or so I’m told. After some more chemo I will feel more confident in my cancer free status.

I had Adenocarcinoma. The tumor was in the head of my pancreas and was blocking my bile ducts and until I had a stint placed I was unable to digest my food and sick from my liver, gallbladder and pancreas backing up into themselves. I did seven cycles of folfirinox and do have a defective BRACA gene making the platinum infusions work better on me. My Tumor responded well to chemo. The cancer’s tendrils pulled back, the tumor shrunk by about half and stray cells in the system were hopefully knocked out. But Chemo was hard and the accumulative side effects were getting really bad, so I stopped one cycle early. As I understand it this cancer builds a protective shell of it’s own dead cells making it very hard to beat without surgery.

Nov. 29 Surgery Day: I showed up at 5:30 am and by 9 am I was put under. There were difficulties and my surgery lasted 13 plus hours. I can only imagine how hard this was for my family in the waiting room or at home. But for me: I woke up around 11:30; it was dark and there were no other patients around me, just blue hospital sheet walls and a lot of doctors. It felt like an alien autopsy. Then I went back to sleep.

Nov. 30: On the next day I remember seeing my family, though I’m told I saw them the night before. I was so thirsty when I woke up, but was only allowed to swab my mouth with water. This lasted too long, but I don’t remember how long, just the thirst! Then I got ice chips, and then water. I did not have a epidural, but I did have a daludid drip which I could push every seven minutes. I had a catheter in my penis, a bunch of cables stuck to my chest monitoring my heartrate (I had super low heartrate for my week in recovery, like 40 bpm, but I was not dizzy or anything), and there was a tube coming out of my stomach draining fluid off and around my pancreas. Wires and cords were not my friends. But the truth was it was all a big drug haze. I don’t remember much so the details are few, but the pain wasn’t so bad and I got up and walked into the hallway that first day. This hurt and it was scary to think I could hurt my new stitches. I went probably 20 steps. The worst pain was in my shoulders and later my back. They strap your arms up over your head during the surgery. My back would be really sore for weeks from laying on that table so long. Some folks have bad pain in their tailbone, but mine was minor. The hospital bed put me in a reclined seating position, and stretching out strait put so much tension on my stitches, organs, and arteries!

Dec 1st- Dec 2nd: Everyday I got up and walked more. I did not hit my drip too often because I wanted to feel the pain to know where it hurt and what was going on inside me. I was taking 3000 mg of Acetaminophen (Tylenol) per day. The most pain was not in the organs but rather in breathing. I had to take very short breaths and not breath into my stomach, it put pressure on an already inflamed area. On the third day I think I was allowed food but it was an all liquid diet, and basically this meant chicken stock for me because I try to go low sugar, and everything on the hospital menu is sugar. After eating they were looking to see if anything came out of my rear end, gas was acceptable too, so long at it traveled through my digestive system. Gas did form and was quite painful, mostly I burped, but some farts, so that was good!

Where: My surgery was done at OHSU, a teaching hospital in Oregon. The Surgeon Dr. Mayo specialized in whipples and had done a lot, though I never asked for a yearly number. He and his staff were very professional, and Dr. Mayo came and met with me everyday I was in recovery (seven days). I completely recommend this hospital and surgeon!

What: They removed my gallbladder, duodenum, half of my pancreas and some of my stomach. The stint was removed from my bile duct and the bile duct was reconstructed and connected into a section of intestine that was pulled up to replace the duodenum. I had a blood clot in an artery in the middle of my pancreas, but after removing a section of it the vascular surgeon was able to stretch it out and reconnect it without grafting from my leg. There were a total of three major new connections and hundreds of stitches.

Dec. 3rd-5th: The next couple of days aren’t noteworthy in my mind. My daludid drip was removed and I was given 5 mg oxycodone. The catheter was removed, which was great, but it meant I had to get up to pee. They gave me Lasix to make me pee a lot. I was trying to drink water but consuming anything caused pressure. I was also asked to try some food. They wanted me to try a variety of foods to see if I could take them. I don’t remember exactly what I ate but not much. I tried meat but it was hard to digest and hurt, all food hurt, but I was hungry. A mango popsicle was my favorite (but plenty of sugar). I would also get my blood sugar checked before eating to see if my insulin levels were ok, and they were. I think there was a 35% chance of becoming insulin dependent, but I heard that even this could change after a few months, as your pancreas heals up. Through all this I wasn’t taking many pain pills, probably an oxycodone every 4 to 6 hours and the Acetaminophen. I think I wanted more pain pills after I left the hospital, I guess I got tired of being tough. I listened to audio books to stay busy and wrote in my journal, but reading was blurry. I had a TV but only watched it twice. I was up walking three times a day between 50 and 100 meters, and even went on some longer walks around the hospital. I had talked with a woman who got the surgery a few months before me. She said she worked out to build muscle mass before the surgery and then made sure to be up and walking around and was working out within a month after the surgery. I used her as motivation, and made those walks kind of a tool not to give up. You want to beat this you got to work for it was my mindset.

I loved my nursing staff so much and conversation with them was uplifting and positive. I have tired to make positivity a must since I found the cancer and didn’t let the surgery change that. On day six they talked of releasing me. Everyone jokes they want to leave the hospital, but I actually asked to stay longer. I felt safer in the hospital, and if something was going to go wrong I wanted to be there. They let me stay one extra day, but I was ready on day seven to leave, just not mentally. Before the surgery they gave me a four days to a week recovery estimate, but the nurses told me later that the whipples they saw, and their floor specialized in them, took one to two weeks to recover, so mine was actually quite fast.

Dec. 6th: This was day 7, or 8 if you count surgery day. I was released and went to the worst hotel ever for someone recovering from surgery! This was probably the hardest day for me. I was free in the world, on my own. Nooooo, bring me back to my hospital bed and awesome nursing staff taking care of me! I suppose a lot of this was mental but driving (passenger of course) was not easy, every bump was tense and hurt. Walking through the supermarket was exhausting, and then my hotel…This hotel was directed at business people looking to bring someone home after meetings and lots of drinking. The place was so cold, the blankets were heavy, and it took so long to heat up. The bed was 3 foot high and so hard to get in and out of. I tried to prop myself up with pillows but didn’t really sleep that night, it was misery! But hopefully you will go to a better hotel or strait to your home.

Dec. 7th and Beyond to 3 Weeks: This day we drove back to my home, about six hours. Sitting in the car was ok, reclined. I slept a lot. Now would begin home recovery which was again a slow process. But I was up and moving around as much as possible, going on short walks and trying to be active. At about three weeks after surgery I was lifting some 5lb weights, and attempting a very easy workout including Qi Gong breathing exercises, light yoga and light stretching, and walking. After one week home I weaned to three or four oxycodone a day. Sleeping was really hard as my back hurt so bad. I slept in a chair at first because laying out on my back stretched out my stomach and reconnected artery too much. I would wake after an hour and could feel the blood pulsing and pain throbbing. I slept on my side for an hour, but it put stress on my pancreas so after that only my back with a pillow under my knees. By day five at home I was out of the chair and sleeping in my bed. The back pain persisted, but slowly lessened for the duration of three weeks I’d been home. I still needed a pain killer in the night to sleep and for some reason I woke every hour without fail to pee, whether or not anything came out. I missed sleep. But all in all, the real challenge after getting home was learning to eat.

Eating: I was put on a very low fat diet by the doctors because I had a “chyle leak”, which was triglycerides coming out of the pancreas. I had to eat under 10g of fat a day, really hard. I also choose to go very low sugar. Eating sugar made me feel like it was running strait through me and I needed to run to the bathroom. Easy to digest foods were best, so little as I liked it, I didn’t eat many vegetables or whole grains. Chicken was been my friend, and refined flour snacks like saltine crackers. A lot of people suggest mashed potatoes. Really any simple carbohydrates are easy to digest. My mother made me a very rich beef bone broth which nourished me well, and I ate live cultures though they sometimes produce gas, but helped get my gut functioning properly! Eating small meals and snacking more often is key. The bigger the meal or the harder to digest, the more it put me down. After eating I got super tired and sometimes napped. I could feel blood pumping in my stomach and temples. After about twenty minutes I would get the chills. The surgeon’s nutritionist told me my body was diverting all it blood to my digestive system to help digest the food. This felt correct to me.

On Christmas, about 3 1/2 weeks from the surgery I was able to eat a delicious low-fat dinner I made and shared with family, and I digested it without too much problem. In the previous week my digestion had improved and I was able to eat with less pain and fatigue. I always took my Creon (digestive enzyme) with meals. I drank a little water, but not much, and ate small meals.

Post Surgery 1.5 Months: I had some setbacks with my drain hose staying in too long, but it is out now. It irritated my insides and maybe did some damage, there was bleeding and the pain was incredible, and had to go to the ER to get it taken out. Here my surgeon fell short. In terms of my body growing strong through exercise, this set me back 3 weeks…

I am eating a higher fat diet, but still fairly low, about 25g a day. I eat some whole grains and vegies and beans, but still eat a lot of simple carbs and chicken. I keep my meals small, drink a bit of water with them, and then drink a good amount of water about 20-30 minutes after finishing. If I don’t eat a big meal, I don’t get the ball of food in chest feeling. Walking after helps too. Sleep is still not easy for me and I wake often, but my back pain has gone away. I am not exercising the way I’d like but will start again soon, the drain was removed one week ago and feels like its close to healed. I am not taking any pain killers, which is a struggle its own, physically. Sitting up strait for too long a period gives me stomach cramps. Other than that I’m doing great. I am ready to get strong, to go on hikes and exercise. Eating is not what it was before surgery but it’s not painful either. I am putting a date of Feb. 15th to start chemo again (11 weeks after surgery), but will delay if my body does not feel strong enough to handle it. I have five cycles to go to make the desired 12. I try not to worry about cancer coming back, but chemo will be a good precaution. I do my own anti cancer routine as well: Chinese herbs, mediation, positive mindset, diet (somewhat thrown off).

Best to you all out there, if you are preparing for this surgery or thinking about getting it. I hope this has been a clear picture of my journey through it. I am happy I got a whipple, and I believe I can live a long life after.

Getting Through Chemo — Diet and Eating

A lot of people lose their appetite, I was lucky enough not to. If you have trouble eating find the right nutrient filled foods that you can get down and will carry you further with eating less. Bone Broth, and stocks are a good example of this. I was told carbonated water helps some people eat. I don’t understand this but whatever you can do to make yourself eat, eat. You need strength to get through this.

Low Sugar: Cancer feeds on sugar. Sugar is rampant in our society. If you love sugar, as I used to, I’m sorry but don’t allow this addiction anymore, hard as it may be.

Supergreens: These are to help your liver process all the poison that is chemo, and all the waste created by what the chemo kills…everything! If the chemo is killing your cancer, your liver and kidneys need to process all the dead cells and toxins. Help them. There are a ton of supergreen powders to chose from, I used a mix of wheat grass, spirulina, Moringa, kale, and mix it with my oatmeal in the morning (or smoothie if you prefer, both are great vehicles for powders and whey protein). On top of this get them from your food which is always best. Broccoli, kale, spinach, bok choy, chard, etc. Wheat grass shots at your local health food store will help you alkalize your body as well!

Other Potentially Good Foods: Bone Broth and stocks. Smoothies. Fresh fruit an Vegetables. Sea Salt (why use iodized salt when you can get salt from the ocean naturally full of vitamins and minerals?). Eggs are a complete protein. Nuts can be hard to digest but if you go for them eat almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds. Whole grains vs enriched. Ginger (anti nausea) and turmeric(anti inflammatory). Squash is prebiotic and full of vitamins and minerals. Garlic. Fiber both soluble and insoluble.

Chew Slowly: Chewing your food begins digestion and helps you to absorb more from your food. It also helps in alkalizing your body because you are doing much of the work your stomach acids will have to do in your gut. Take your time eating, focus on just eating (not watching tv and having a conversation at the same time), and enjoy your food.

Go Organic: My mother spent a fortune raising an organically grass fed cow we named Elmore Leonard. We spoiled him with $25 bales of alfalfa and compost like bananas and lemons (he loved ’em, but the reaction…). Elmore had a horse for a best friend and humans to talk with. He lived a good life, and in turn shared with us the best tasting and most nourishing beef I’ve ever eaten. Eating suffrage meat can’t be good for us mentally or physically. Hormones and pesticides makes their way back into us when we eat foods grown with them. Sadly we live in a world where the food we eat, the stuff we drink, and the air we breath are polluted and grown in deficient conditions or soil.

Is organic better? Some non organic food may be just fine, and some organic food may be garbage with good labeling, so why pay the extra money for organic? Because you have a better chance of getting better food, and that chance is worth buying organic. That’s my two cents anyway, or by todays standards, that my $2.28 cents.

Probiotics: I did mention this in a pervious post as a medicine to take. The chemo comes through and wipes out all the living bacteria in your gut. We need that bacteria to fight off bad bacteria and to aid in digestion. I typically waited 5 days or so to begin, because I figured the chemo would just kill the good bacteria I was adding and potentially divert its cancer attacking effects to what I was adding. Saccharomyces Boulardii was recommended to be because its a very hearty yeast based probiotic, which can come out on top of any bad bacteria trying to form in your gut. I took this intermittently with a 33 probiotic blend. I didn’t eat dairy myself but yogurt is a good source. I am big on fermented foods such as Kim Chi, Sour Kraut, Bragg liquid aminos, and the most important Miso!

Fasting and Intermittent Fasting: Intermittent fasting is when you only eat for 6 or 8 hours in a day, stopping food early in the evening and being conscious of when you break-fast in the morning. I usually only intermittent fasted for about 14 hours or less sometimes. On Sundays I chose not to eat at all, usually aiming for 36 hours, but often less. There are countless pros and cons to fasting to be found online specific to cancer or in general. This is an area of much debate. In general when you fast your body gets a rest from eating which does require energy and all kinds of organ function especially the pancreas (where I had cancer). Fasting puts you into a state of autophagy, where your body begins breaking down dead cells (or cancer) and processing them, though the length of time needed to enter this state is debated. If any of this interest you do plenty of research, fasting can hurt the body too. Especially make sure you are intaking a lot of water and getting salts (electrolytes).

I read some studies that discussed fasting while undergoing chemo infusion, but found that my chemo used a dextrose (sugar) infusion for one of the drugs, so this was taking me out of my fast. The basic idea was that while fasting your cells go into a protective mode while cancer stays awake and cries out feed me, feed me, so that the chemo is more effective on the cancer and less on the rest of your body. In my first attempts at this (before I knew about the dextrose) my body did feel more able to take the chemo.

Gaining weight: This is really up to you how your want to approach this. My doctor and nutritionist assigned to me told me to eat as much fat and protein as I could. I personally never tried to gain weight which may have been a mistake on my part but I did ok. I didn’t think putting a bunch of fat and meat in my diet was healthy, and the truth was when I did up these things I had little success gaining weight. But I made sure to get enough food, complete protein and nutrients, and I made sure I was not losing muscle mass. Before diagnosis and a stint was placed in my bile duct, I was starving and my body did start pulling protein out of my muscles to survive, giving me flab below my biceps, but it never went too far. I was around 160 pounds and lost about 40 pounds before my cancer diagnosis. In the 5 months on chemo I think I gained a good 10 pounds getting me up to 130. My advice here is to go ahead and try to gain weight. A way to gain weight I didn’t try was carb loading. But again here decisions must be made by you. Eating a bunch of carbs can overwhelm your bloodstream with sugar, which cancer loves, so weigh out what feels right to you. One nutritionist I saw said that keto was a recommended pancreatic cancer diet. Fats are proteins are hard to digest and require much pancreatic enzymes and bile, so sounds wrong to me, but the idea is you are taking digestive enzyme pills to offset this. I also find this diet to be hard on the whole body, too rich and difficult to digest, but who know. The more I learn about diet and eating the more I realize that everyone is different and diets are not one size fits all.

Macrobiotics: I believe this to be a healthy diet and this is the direction I will head when cancer is behind me and I’m a normal weight and a guy with normal life stresses. It’s basically a whole food plant based diet with a lot of extra components focused around a yin and yang scale of which you eat mostly foods in the middle of the scale rather than on the outer edges. Macrobiotic diets are considered to be highly anti cancer, but once you have cancer, they don’t necessarily give you the protein and nutrients you need.

Here are some basics: Whole grains only (not refined), with lots of vegetables, miso and cultured foods, and a little meat or fish, a little sugar and fun food splurges once in a while. You strive for everything to be mild here. Foods are balanced from yin to yang. Grains and vegetables tend not to be extremes on this scale, but more middle of the path, but still sway in one direction or the other. You are encouraged to eat the foods your ancestors ate and that in climate conditions you live in and come from.

But yin and yang are also codified in your whole world and balanced. Are you emotionally more yang (laugh and get angry easily) or yin (worrying and have feeling of inferiority); are you physically more yang (small dry and heavy) or yin (pale and tall); and mentally psychologically more yang (optimistic and talker) or yin (introverted and passive)? These classifications go into mental or emotional conditions and moods, activities you do, the space around you, the physical shape and condition of your body, and just about all other areas of life. When you try to balance yourself you begin with your diet but must balance it with how you are in life and all of your other more yin or more yang characteristics.

Yang is : Yin is:

• contractive
• inward
• fire
• hot
• heaviness
• inner
• active
• drier
• summer
• day
• brighter
• descending
• time
• bitter, salty
• grown downward (roots)
• meats, eggs

• expansive
• outward
• water
• cold
• lightness
• outer
• passive
• wetter
• winter
• night
• darker
• ascending
• space
• sweet, sour, spicy
• grown upward
• dairy, oil, fruit

So you see that even wrapping your mind around a macrobiotic diet means warping your whole lifestyle around it. Walking the the middle path in the the way you interact with others and in the shape and context of you soul. It might just be easier to say: when you eat a bunch of meat, sugar, and rich foods it tastes good, but puts a toll on your body. Instead eat whole grains and vegetable and splurge mildly.

Get Strong: In the end do what you need to do to be a strong healthy person while chemo is tearing you apart. Your body needs all the help you can give it. I think making sure you are getting vitamins and minerals is key, preferably from food sources not supplements which tend to be hard for the body to absorb, but supplements are better than nothing. You will likely be getting a blood panel each infusion, see what you are deficient in. Potassium? Eat foods rich in potassium, and get a Calcium/magnesium/potassium powder and drink it before bed (the one supplement I highly recommend). Vegetables will give you a good variety of vitamins and minerals but if hamburgers make you feel strong, eat them. Its your body, and your diet.

Getting through Chemo–Exercise, Energy and Mindset

Theme song : Across the Universe by the Beatles (Noting’s gonna change my world…)

The first and most import way to beat this is belief. You do have an effect on what is happening inside your body. Find out what you are living for and unmovably believe and work to stay alive for your reasons. In this rough world it’s easy to get lost, to stop caring about life because life can be really hard, and it can often feel like doom or destruction is inevitably approaching and as a species we are ignoring it. There are plenty of changes humans need to make but for you to get through this you need to put your focus on yourself. You need a reason to live and you need a unbreakable determination to make it happen.

When I was diagnosed I went from dead to alive. I was a zombie in this world, passing time, and that brought me to cancer. If you ever need a wake up call right? So how do you get through chemo and the vast array of scary contemplation cancer brings into your life? I found mediation and focusing the mind helped me to live better moment to moment in a positive mindset. And the more I focused on my mindset, the more I was aware of it, the more I could control it. During chemo my positivity fell plenty but more I didn’t give up the easier it was to not give up five minutes later. I used yoga and mediation and walks in the forest primarily. Working out is a good option for many, there are many ways to you get your energy levels up and aligned, and plenty I won’t list here or be aware of. Below is what got me through. It is very important not to overdo it when doing chemo, because it can take days to bounce back. Stress yourself but do not overstress.

The Seven Chakra’s: These are fairly key to most of the energy work described on this page. I imagine most have a general idea of them but educate yourself. This is trial and error work and understanding. The more you practice feeling energy move through your body the more you can feel it, understand it and control it. Each chakra has a color. Imagining these colors can help you feel them. When you fill a chakra with energy you cant exactly prove it, but you can feel it and choose to believe it. Explore and feel your chakra’s and energy system for yourself and let your skill grow.

Breathing in White Light: In general I found great comfort in breathing in white light from the infinite universe through my crown. If I was scared or depressed, I’d close my eyes and breath in god’s light, white light, and felt relief. Interpret this as you will, for your will, but breath in positivity and love and be filled with it. One step further: the more I did this, the more I was able; if I had done yoga or meditated earlier, it was easier to feel the positively and to control it, and to control my own emotions.

Breathing Out the Bad: Here is a simple exercise. Optionally you can do this with reverse breath, which means breath into your dantien or third chakra at solar plexus while pulling your stomach in, and breath out while letting your stomach out. When you do it breath white light into solar plex chakra from all your pours, the tips of your fingers and the crown of your head. Take from the infinite energy source all you can. And breath out slowly all the bad from your pancreas, (or heart chakra if you don’t have pancreatic cancer). Imagine all the negativity, fear, sickness as a black smoke or black ashes released through breath and imagery back into the infinite universe. Don’t feel bad about this, the universe does not care about good and bad, it can handle everything, just let it all go. Again. Breath in the white light from the infinite universe, through every pour and hair of your body, down into the third chakra, and slowly release all the negativity out of you, breath out freedom, and relax. In with the light, out with the fear. In with the light out with the sickness. In with love out with negativity. Do it until want to stop. Let it all go. You can make it through this struggle. You have amazing strength that you didn’t know you had, or even know you could tap into. The universe loves you and will take care of you, let it. In with the good, out with the bad. Release…. Good job.

Qigong/Tai Chi: These are breathing and energy moving exercises and artforms. Do whichever forms you are drawn to, there are many for each. This is a low speed, low stress workout to help get your blood and energy flowing, as well as put you into a more positive space. Blood heals your body by binging in oxygen and taking away waste. Increasing your energy and blood flow promotes strong blood with lots of WBC, RBC and platelets, which all fall with chemo. Moving and stretching also helps your organs move around and not sit in one place in your body, stagnate. Combat stagnancy in all forms. When you are done and during you will notice your energy has turned positive, like life is not so bad, like you are proud our yourself, like you can get through this. I know I have repeated this, but bringing yourself into a positive energy is contagious in that it will make it easier to notice when you’re in a negative space and easier to make the switch. Get into the positive. This is a part of choosing life.

Yoga: Yoga is awesome. It stretches you out, helps you breath, relaxes you the way mediation does and builds muscle. Its does everything. Yoga does not need to be a strenuous work out, don’t stretch harder than feels ok, maybe just a little past actually, but it shouldn’t be very hard. Go to classes if you like, find videos on the internet, get books. Yoga is way to mainstream to act like you can’t learn. I was lucky enough to have a yoga guru cousin to teach me. We usually do praise the sun, warrior, chair, inversion, tree and child’s or corpse at the end. Cat and Cow also feels especially good with chemo as it stretched the stomach gently and is relaxing. We would go slow and focus on doing three to five slow breaths in each pose or parts of the pose.

Light Working Out: Building muscle, like all of these exercises strengthens blood flow, increases energy and gets you breathing. Increased lung compacity from working out strengthens the lungs which are tied to the immune system in your body’s internal energy systems according to according to ancient medicines such as acupuncture. On a simple note working out increases your desire to hydrate, a very important thing to do. It again brings oxygen into your blood and strengthen your organs in turn by keeping things moving and forcing them to work. This is primarily seen in lungs, heart, brain, colon and your cellular system but everything is effected by a little healthy stress. Yoga and Qigong/Tai Chi, though very low stress, build muscle too. Working out does not have to mean pumping iron, but if that’s what you like do it, just be careful not to overdo it.

Walking: Go out and walk, preferably in nature if you can or by the cleansing sounds of waves crashing in the ocean! Nature is uplifting in itself and walking makes you feel good, is low stress and even if you feel crappy it can be done.

Acupuncture: This is probably the only alternative medicine that your doctor will accept and collaborate with. Acupuncture is accepted by western medicine. My health insurance even paid for mine! Thank you Oregon. Tell your practitioner what symptoms you need help with, for example nausea, neuropath, fatigue etc. They will likely take your pulse and treat you based on what they find as well as what you ask for. I would not be afraid of the needles. The first few might feel weird or even painful as you feel them tap into your damaged energy system, kind of like a slow arc of a shock. But the vast majority you feel next to nothing. And they align your energy flow, your chi, when sometimes breathing and mediation at home cannot.

Grounding: Also called earthing to make it sound extra hippy. Put your bare feet on the ground for one hour or day or better yet, lay out on the grass and look up at the trees. Connect into the earths magnetic energy to stabilizes your physiology and mentality. Said to reduces stress and improve sleep as well as effect your general well being. Be with the earth, she is beautiful.

Massage: I’m weary to put this in because it sounds lazy, but if you can afford it, get your health insurance to pay for it or have a friend who knows what they are doing, why not? I took a course in Thai massage years ago in Thailand and it followed the blood flow equals healing principle. Massage through sore muscles and down blood channels to free them up and increase blood flow to the injured areas, then let the blood do the healing.

Move You Ass!: This is for any chemo, any cancer, any life challenge or activity. Get up and move your ass! You may not feel good but do it anyway, but again: just don’t overdo it. Stagnancy is an ally of cancer. Get your blood and energy moving. Get your motivation moving. Get going. Get it?

Embrace the Emptiness: There is no spoon. There is no spoon. The spoon is a perception of this reality, but you are more than this reality. The universe is empty, and from that emptiness springs all the life and reality we see around us. I probably sound like a nut by now, but there is definitely something to be gained by looking past this one life, or the things in this life that we perceive. We will all die, and when we do, who can say what is next? You find comfort in letting everything go, in accepting the chance of your death as equally as you accept the chance of living through this struggle. Buddhism teaches good and bad are part of the same dichotomy. That when we find nirvana on a hundred foot pole, we should take another step. It means stopping the necessity to name and understand the world around us. That nothing is permanent, or more so that the only permanent is nothing. When you are in mediation and something comes into your brain or a sound distracts you, don’t explore the distraction or condemn yourself for allowing it, instead acknowledge it and move on. Say hearing-hearing, not I am hearing, bringing in the ego. Thinking-thinking. Not, Oh no, I’m thinking again! In emptiness lies peace and freedom. It is detached from the outcome of worldly affairs, and human emotion. It means just being. There are many philosophies based around thoughts like these. Yoga as well, when explored as a philosophy, is practiced all day everyday and it strives for this emptiness, or something equal to it. To be empty means no fear and no hope. It means no nothing. Nothing-nothing.

Love Someone or Something: Find those that need love and give it to them, and you will not only be appreciated but it will fill you with love as well. Love a dog, a friend, family or a partner. Love the forest and the birds in the sky. Fill your body with love and give it away freely. When you give love you get love. Its circular. We should see this in all life. When you do something nice for someone it also benefits you by giving yourself gratitude for helping this other person in need. It feels good to be nice. It’s nourishing to do good in the world. Somehow this is not the way we talk about success or giving in this world, we have forgotten that to benefit someone else benefits us as well. It’s an example of the infinite energy above that we can tap into, and give back to in mutual benefit to all.

My Favorite Meditation: Here is the Spring Forest website and the meditation is called Small Universe, but it is a little pricy. I was given the CD by a friend. The CD is nice because it times out your inhales and is very soothing to just listen to. Here is how you do it:

Stand or Sit lotus, in a chair or lay down. Tongue to roof of mouth. Breath in and out through the nose. When you breath in, focus your energy to filling a chakra, when you breath out push the energy to the next chakra. It will follow the seven chakras in the front then in the back, hitting the first and seventh only once. It is a circle. I will describe where to focus the energy as the cd does, not exactly the same as the picture below, but these locations feel right. Begin by saying inside your mind “I am in the universe. The universe is in my body. The universe and I combine as one.” Take a few breaths into your dantien deep behind the navel, feel it swirling clockwise and growing bigger. Breath out and push down to the bladder. Then breath into the bladder filling it. Then down to the root chakra, and then into it. Breath out and push the energy up to tip of tail bone. Up to lower back. Up to kidneys area. Up to spine at base of neck. Up to the penial gland. Up to crown. Down to third eye. Down to throat. Down to Heart. Down to dantien. And back around again. 9 times total. When you are done picture the energy in your dantien swirling clockwise smaller and smaller and tuck it back in behind your navel.

Thank you for reading.

Getting through Chemo–Vitamins/Herbs and Medicines

Lets not beat around the bush here, you are going to feel horrible on Chemo. My first cycle I was pretty gross for one week, then I had this crazy energy burst for the second week. I thought, Easy, I can get through this! Turns out it was a fluke. Maybe the steroids they injected me with were still pumping, or maybe I just willed myself into it through naivety. It was consistent that I would feel worse and worse until around day seven, then start to feel better slowly, but never again was I out building a roof on my barn with my cousin, like I was in that first cycle. The longer I was on chemo the worse I was able to tolerate it as well, which is expected: accumulative side effects. But there were some things I learned along the way that made my life easier and my body stronger. I won’t lie here, my doctor didn’t like most of the extra stuff I took and almost immediately said no to anything that wasn’t prescribed by him and from a big pharmaceutical company. It will be up to you to discuss this with them and ultimately to do what you think best.

Creon (prescribed): Digestive enzymes either synthesized or harvested from pig liver. I initially thought I should be sparing with these and coax my pancreas to do it’s job, but someone told me they were just giving the pancreas a break when it was under too much stress already. Definitely a staple in helping to absorb the nutrients you need from your food.

Milk Thistle: Used to strengthen the liver, kidney and gallbladder. These organs are under stress, and your liver and kidneys have a ton of work to do under chemo! It also has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. The synthesized version is called silymarin. Take 1/2tsp-1tsp per day. This stuff tastes bad. Get capsules or I just ate it and swallowed it down with water, I wouldn’t put in a smoothie because it will ruin it.

Mushroom Powders: Major cancer fighters. Look for Stamets in stores or if you can get bulk–much better and cheaper. The important ones are: Chagga, Turkey Tail, Lion’s Mane and Rishi. And Shitake for eating. My doctor said that these could create extra stress on my liver and not to take them. So I stopped, but eventually I reintroduced and found no obvious negative effect. The truth was the chemo was 100 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 times harder on my liver (ha ha, ok I don’t really know). But I believe these did make a difference in my tumor’s reduction. I took 1-2 tsp per day of a mix I got from a naturopath.

Tea (Essiac or customized): Essiac is an age old cancer fighter with 4 simple ingredients (Burdock Root, Sheep Sorrel, Indian Rhubarb and Slippery Elm). I drank this for a while then had a completely different tea designed for me by a naturopath based on pancreatic cancer. It had a lot to do with anti stagnation in the blood and cancer fighting stuff I assume. Take the tea first thing in the morning then wait 20 minutes till eating, and take before bed with a two hour hold on food beforehand. I found that I liked the routine, especially the evening hold on food. It helped me to not eat before bed, which was a old bad habit of mine. If you go for the tea you’ll need to learn to deconcoct. Its pretty easy, for instance, simmer for 35 minutes, strain, then add half as much water to the herbs and roots in pot and simmer for another 15 minutes, then mix the two. I drank about 1.5 oz per dose. Or 1/9th of the whole batch at a time.

Probiotics: Definitely good with chemo because chemo kills everything in your gut. A few days to a week after receiving chemo I began building my stomach flora back up. Saccharomyces Boulardii was recommended to be because its a very hearty yeast based probiotic, which can come out on top of any bad bacteria trying to form in your gut. But I took this intermittently with a much more diverse 33 probiotic blend, as well as good old fermented foods such as Kim Chi (not too spicy) Sour Kraut, Bragg liquid aminos, and the most important Miso!

Marshmallow Root Tea: This is like aloe for the back end of your digestive system. It soothes and creates a nice protective membrane in your intestine. Do not take till a week or so after infusion because it has some cleansing qualities, and we actually want to keep the chemo sickness in as long as possible for it to keep working. The Marshmallow Root can clear out the stuff you want to stay in, but when you want it out…its great! Stomach pain was one of the largest chemo side effects for me so this was so necessary.

Calcium Magnesium Potassium : 1/2-1tsp before bed helps you to relax and maybe helps you go number 2 in the morning. This will also help alkalize your body. It’s also good for blood pressure and hypertension. Related to this my bi-weekly blood panel always had great numbers in these areas and most all areas, my WBC eventually fell off from the chemo.

Vitamin D: Some say you should take 10,000 IU per day or more, including my whipple surgeon who suggest I take (only 1,000 IU) for the rest of my life. There may be some anti-cancer or anti-cancer spread potential here. I tried to sit in the sun to absorb D when the weather allowed. Sorry, I chose not be be afraid of the sun, it feels healing to me. I upped my Vitamin D when my sun intake was low. I think adding a Vitamin D + K helps you to absorb it.

Immune System Boosters: Zinc is king but also try Elderberry syrup, Astragalus root tincture, Echinacea and whatever is your go to. The chemo kills your white blood cell count so immune system boosters are very important to prevent colds and flu’s which could lead to going septic in a worse case scenario. I personally think it would help stimulate your WBC count as well, though my oncologist says this is incorrect.

Antacid (prescribed): My doctor prescribes me a Prilosec type proton pump inhibitor. My naturopath swears Tagamet is better which is histamine receptor antagonist. I took the pump inhibitor but have since switched to Tagamet. In truth I don’t often don’t find much relief when I take either.

Alkalize Your Body: It seems well know at this point, though probably still debated, that cancer grows in an acidic environment not an alkaline one. If you can get your PH up to 8 rather than 7 or below that’s great, 6 is way too acidic. Trying to do this is very difficult. You can buy test strips for your urine, and consult many sources on the net about what foods will alkalize* you or not. As a mostly hard rule proteins require acid to digest, as does sugar. I tried to go on a macrobiotic diet which focuses on a whole food plant bases diet that seeks to walk the middle path, meaning foods on a low alkalizing, low acidifying scale, always finding balance in the middle. But eventually I upped my meat intake because I was still malnourished from pre-diagnosis, or at least couldn’t put weight on. There is a balance you must find. You need a healthy strong body and meat can help accomplish this both with fat and protein, and with essential amino acids and B vitamins which help in liver function.

*To further complicate this understanding: a food that is acidic (lemon, vinegar) produces an alkaline in your body, and a food that is alkaline produces an acid, because that is what the body produces to balance them in digestion.

Liver Support: Besides milk thistle listed above it’s important to eat the right foods for your liver. The liver is a two stage process and you need to make sure it gets the right foods for both stages, or one side can back up. The first stage has to do with packaging toxins and requires some of these, but not all: B2, B3, B6, B12, folic acid, Glutathione, Branch-chain acids, flavonoids, and phospholipids. You get this stuff all over the place, vegies, fruits, fish and poultry, nuts and SUPERGREENS. The second stage is about disposing of the waste. You need Glycine, Taurine, Glutamine, N-acetylcysteine, Cysteine and Methionine. You get this stuff primarily from meats, but also from eggs, nuts beans and SUPERGREENS! Support your liver! It has a ton of work to do!

Ginseng: I’m not really sure why I take this… ha ha but I do.

Pain Meds (prescribed): Not much to say here except that you might need them. For me it was intense stomach pain mostly located in my lower left abdomen, my colon. I’m guessing that’s where the chemo spent the most time, waiting for me to have a BM.

Zyprexa (Olanzapine) (prescribed): Ok this one is way off the beaten path for me. It is an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. When my oncologist offered it to me for nausea, yes that is right nausea, I immediately said no way. But he showed me studies of it greatly helping with nausea for the first days after receiving chemo. I would take it the first four or five nights after getting infusion and I swear, this cut the nausea greatly. OK, I guess I wasn’t nauseous, just emotionally unstable!

Natural Anti-Nausea: Ginger root, peppermint, lemon and marijuana. The first three mix nicely in tea, though I rarely did peppermint because I found it harsh. Marijuana should be vaporized (smoked) for best effect and try to find strains with a high citrus (limonene) terpenes. Some of these are Kush, Diesel, Jack the Ripper and Cinex. If it has the citrus smell it’s probably high in it.

Lower Your Chemo Dose: This is a big maybe. The doctors will likely want to hit the cancer as hard as possible, but you can get them to lower the doses. At 40 years old I eventually went down to 80%, one drug here, one drug there. Immediate I asked for my steroid dose to be lowered to 80% which probably made me experience more nausea, but I really don’t like the effects steroids have on me. The truth is they have a playbook and it’s wise to follow it, but every person is different. I was willing to sacrifice the chemo’s effectiveness to spare my body, because I believe my body can fight the cancer too and I am just not willing to hurt myself via chemicals the way some people are. This is always up to you, but I would hate to be encouragement for you to give this a half assed fight. Go hard! I went hard in my own way, utilizing a number of different directions, not solely chemo. Do what works best for you, but do it 1000% because this is it. Life or death. Work hard. You got this!

Pancreatic Cancer Survival Guide part 1: Diagnosis and the decision on Chemo?

Pancreatic cancer has a very low survival rate. It is hard to diagnose before it metastasizes. Once formed the tumor creates a protective hull around itself, a snapping turtle. Most seem to find it the way I did, which is they start to jaundice. There are a few types of pancreatic cancer, I had adenocarcinoma, the most difficult. The tumor was in the head of my pancreas and actually grew out to block my bile ducts, so for a few months I was unable to digest my food properly and becoming nauseous after eating as the bile from my liver couldn’t get down to digest my food and instead backed up into it’s own producing organs (liver, pancreas, gallbladder). At the end I was eating barely more than an apple a day. Once I began to jaundice, to turn yellow in my eyes and skin, my local health facility sent me to the ER for better tests. They did ultrasound to identify, a CT scan to identify better and about a week later I got into to an Endoscopist to put a stint into my bile duct and to take a biopsy.

If you are here, you may have went through that moment when the doctor says it could be cancer…and life falls away and all your fears and hopes turn to barren ice. People will tell you they know how you feel, but unless you have sat in that office and gone through it, they don’t truly understand. The love and support of your loved ones is invaluable of course but there is nothing anyone can say to get you through this, you just have to do it, and do it in your own way. Through this process people will constantly tell you what you need to do, and what you shouldn’t do. If you are ever offended by this, just realize its their fears they are speaking on, its not really about you, at least not completely. Listen to all the advice you can and from everyone, but remember only you are in control here, whatever route you take and how you handle this is yours. This cancer can be beaten, and if it isn’t, positive changes in life can still occur. Spring into gear. Relax. And be the best you that you can.

I am skeptical of western medicine and much prefer a natural route. For instance with chemo, the idea of dropping a chemical weapon on your system to heal cancer sounds absurd to me. But I still chose this route in the end. I did change my diet to a more whole food plant based diet, and I have also collaborated with Chinese naturopaths, acupuncturists, as well as begun to meditate and do yoga. There is also the question of leaving the US which may offer a variety of alternatives. Relying on my insurance I did not have the budget to explore any of these. In the end I believed my best bet for long term survival was to do chemo and now surgery, which I have completed 1 week ago.

Age may certainly be a factor in your decision, I am 40 years old, and though I am not afraid of death, I want more life. Chemo was bad, really bad and I only made it through 7 two-week cycles before I decided enough was enough. I’m young and strong, and I will admit I could have done more chemo, I just hit a low that was low enough for me. Primarily this means the neuropathy got real bad and my stomach was too painful and sick from the chemo, but the host of ways chemo messes you up is too many to remember or specify. Surgery was rough too, the only one they seem to offer is called a Whipple (the worst surgery name I can imagine for something so drastic). I cannot discuss recovery very well at this point because I have not learned how to adapt to my new digestive system. I will say I was impressed by my surgeon and that the surgery did not live up to my fears of it. I also only had to be in the hospital for one week after. I came home yesterday!

So, should you do chemo? I don’t know, I still believe you don’t fix the body by attacking it, but this cancer is strong. I made it though chemo, and if they suggest I do a lower dose chemo down the line to eradicate any stray cancer cells, I will probably do it. I do suggest connecting with others who have gone through this process, and the pancreases cancer network. Most of all I suggest you demand that they do a full line of genetic testing on your FIRST biopsy! I wish I had, and later when I asked my oncologist he said it would not help. This was not a 100% truth. But a second biopsy was also very unappealing to me because it would mean another endoscopy and putting a needle through multiple organ walls, which seems a risk to me.

We did do one major genetic test, BRACA. I have this mutated gene, and with it the platinum drugs had a better chance of being successful at fighting it, and were. But still I would have liked more options and a full set of data from the start, so my doctors could play with these chemo regimens to streamline them to my tumor. There are number of different genetic pathways to fight the cancer, and if you can do multiple that are genetically preferred to your situation that would be best.

Thank you for reading my first blog on the subject. I will continue with some of my experiences through chemo next and throughout with the mental emotional journey that cancer brings into your life. For me the positives of this have been immense and the challenges have been surpassable. Good Luck.