Day 1: Wonderful! I can't fully assess because I haven't slept in two days (and two nights), until the plane but so far it seems like it will be a wonderful time here. Rose and Morry are delightful with east coast accents and antics. A dog in the distance sounds like my Guthrie on a hunt. A bug or frog outside sounds like a distant radio where you can't distinguish the words but only hear the buzzing. I keep listening to see what he's saying! I share one side of a cabiny home with a Gecko who I have named George. He keeps mostly to the west wall by the ceiling. The jungle has been cleared here so there are rolling hills and pasture with streams or ponds (it's the rainy season) and a variety of cows and horses grazing. Very picturesque. We are quite remote - they have 200 acres, half of which is jungle, but we are on the far side of the cleared land. How I will spot a jaguar is not clear.
Thank you for your emails and prayers. I am here! Dios te bendigo.
Susana
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Two Stories and Living Out the "Yow!"
Two stories came to my inbox yesterday. One of a man who died of Melanoma even though they had found it in Stage 1. It caught my breath. The other of a friend who didn't find it until Stage 3, yet came through with flying colors. "It's like winning the lottery at this point," Jimi said.
Both stories are good for me to hear. The first one because I need to remember to be vigilant even though Melanoma doesn't feel like anything. The second one because we are not always the ones who are the statistics, sometimes we are the ones on the other side of the 65%. The 35% who do survive Melanoma 3 (or the 9% who don't survive Melanoma 1).
Statistically, they can say you have an X% chance, but in actuality, they can't say anything. Not about you, personally, where you will fall in the statistics. You, personally, could be on either side.
Even though I'm taking drastic measures - the crazy health fanatic route - to become a Corporal Territory Unfriendly to Cancer, my mind keeps slipping back to discounting that it's serious. Yet, it is. They don't *know* that there's not more melanoma lurking in me; they think the biopsy took it all. But they didn't biopsy every abnormal cell of my skin (never mind eyes or colon, where Melanoma can also show up first). Now that I know I am *capable* of Melanoma, is any cell safe?! You could wonder. I'm one of every 62 people in the US who have a lifetime risk, now. That's a 2,000% increase (two-thousand, no typo) since the 1930s, when, ironically, the natural protocol that I will be following was first developed as the "Gerson Method." With this method, according to a statistic from 10 years ago, 100% of people with Melanoma 1 or 2 had no recurrence as of five years later. (I feel a little better about where I fall in a 100% kind of statistic...though, there's still always the one-tenth-of-one-percent person who gets rounded off the total...)
All of that said, here's what I believe about statistics. We don't die early. My days were appointed before I was conceived in the womb. Whether I get hit by a bus getting off the plane in Belize (should it land at a bus station), or die in six months from Melanoma nobody found, or live to be 96 just to have the license to speak my mind (like my Grandma did!) - it is all in God's hands. This diagnosis doesn't change anything; it is just another part of regular life. I will die when my Appointed Days are up. To me that means something about God completing in my life what He set out to do with me - no matter how short or long that seems to fall in my mind, or in the minds of those who love me.
Imagine the awesome kind of abandon you can live with when nobody can steal your life. I don't mean reckless...but Fearless. When life doesn't have a little kink like this now and then, you can forget you believe that. You can forget to live with that abandon.
The stories are helpful. I need to be vigilant. Maybe I'll get crazy fanatical about it (like every other natural health aficionado!) Not to save my life - it's saved for the days I have to live it - but to make the utter most of it. Wouldn't it be great to burst into Heaven with a "Yow! That was awesome!!!!" rather than a feeble "So, my time is really up then...?"
Here's to the living out the "Yow!"
Love and the Usual Adoration,
Susan
Both stories are good for me to hear. The first one because I need to remember to be vigilant even though Melanoma doesn't feel like anything. The second one because we are not always the ones who are the statistics, sometimes we are the ones on the other side of the 65%. The 35% who do survive Melanoma 3 (or the 9% who don't survive Melanoma 1).
Statistically, they can say you have an X% chance, but in actuality, they can't say anything. Not about you, personally, where you will fall in the statistics. You, personally, could be on either side.
Even though I'm taking drastic measures - the crazy health fanatic route - to become a Corporal Territory Unfriendly to Cancer, my mind keeps slipping back to discounting that it's serious. Yet, it is. They don't *know* that there's not more melanoma lurking in me; they think the biopsy took it all. But they didn't biopsy every abnormal cell of my skin (never mind eyes or colon, where Melanoma can also show up first). Now that I know I am *capable* of Melanoma, is any cell safe?! You could wonder. I'm one of every 62 people in the US who have a lifetime risk, now. That's a 2,000% increase (two-thousand, no typo) since the 1930s, when, ironically, the natural protocol that I will be following was first developed as the "Gerson Method." With this method, according to a statistic from 10 years ago, 100% of people with Melanoma 1 or 2 had no recurrence as of five years later. (I feel a little better about where I fall in a 100% kind of statistic...though, there's still always the one-tenth-of-one-percent person who gets rounded off the total...)
All of that said, here's what I believe about statistics. We don't die early. My days were appointed before I was conceived in the womb. Whether I get hit by a bus getting off the plane in Belize (should it land at a bus station), or die in six months from Melanoma nobody found, or live to be 96 just to have the license to speak my mind (like my Grandma did!) - it is all in God's hands. This diagnosis doesn't change anything; it is just another part of regular life. I will die when my Appointed Days are up. To me that means something about God completing in my life what He set out to do with me - no matter how short or long that seems to fall in my mind, or in the minds of those who love me.
Imagine the awesome kind of abandon you can live with when nobody can steal your life. I don't mean reckless...but Fearless. When life doesn't have a little kink like this now and then, you can forget you believe that. You can forget to live with that abandon.
The stories are helpful. I need to be vigilant. Maybe I'll get crazy fanatical about it (like every other natural health aficionado!) Not to save my life - it's saved for the days I have to live it - but to make the utter most of it. Wouldn't it be great to burst into Heaven with a "Yow! That was awesome!!!!" rather than a feeble "So, my time is really up then...?"
Here's to the living out the "Yow!"
Love and the Usual Adoration,
Susan
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Melanoma, Belize, and other curious developments
I recently had a biopsy that came back as Melanoma. "That's the really bad cancer," the doctor said. (Thank you for that, doctor.)
It was in the early stage, so it's not life threatening, that I know of. But Melanoma is the most deadly skin cancer - when it spreads, it is very swift and terminal. So, since my fair skin, red hair, and series of childhood sunburns make me a likely candidate for more, I am opting to go through a rigorous natural cancer treatment program.
It's only incidental that the program is in the tropical paradise of Belize....
It all came about because last year a client couple hired me to promote their book on a natural treatment for cancer (Setting Yourself Apart From the Seeds of Cancer). Morry Keller, a former physician, overcame pancreatic/colon cancer 40 years ago through this method and has been teaching it to others since then. A few years ago, they relocated from the U.S. to Belize. I was very intrigued by the book - I love natural health information and organic living, as you know. I even thought about going to Belize to learn from Morry and his wife Rose. But the cost of travel was prohibitive and then my plans for going to Africa last year fell into place, so I put Belize out of my mind.
Until less than a year later when I was sitting alone in the car with the dogs outside the doctor's office after she told me "That's the really bad cancer." My first clear thought then was: "Go to Belize."
Hmm! If an adventure can come out of such bad news, all the better!
So, I'm leaving next week. My computer access will be sporadic - I will be on the jungle side of Belize bordering Guatemala - but, I will post updates here.
If you are the praying kind, please pray for me this summer. I won't list all of the challenges of this effort lest it discourage me (or you). But I especially appreciate your friendship and support now. May God bless you this summer and show you tangibly how He's working in your life and all around you. And how you fit into it. I pray He will do the same for me!
love and Adoration,
Susan
It was in the early stage, so it's not life threatening, that I know of. But Melanoma is the most deadly skin cancer - when it spreads, it is very swift and terminal. So, since my fair skin, red hair, and series of childhood sunburns make me a likely candidate for more, I am opting to go through a rigorous natural cancer treatment program.
It's only incidental that the program is in the tropical paradise of Belize....
It all came about because last year a client couple hired me to promote their book on a natural treatment for cancer (Setting Yourself Apart From the Seeds of Cancer). Morry Keller, a former physician, overcame pancreatic/colon cancer 40 years ago through this method and has been teaching it to others since then. A few years ago, they relocated from the U.S. to Belize. I was very intrigued by the book - I love natural health information and organic living, as you know. I even thought about going to Belize to learn from Morry and his wife Rose. But the cost of travel was prohibitive and then my plans for going to Africa last year fell into place, so I put Belize out of my mind.
Until less than a year later when I was sitting alone in the car with the dogs outside the doctor's office after she told me "That's the really bad cancer." My first clear thought then was: "Go to Belize."
Hmm! If an adventure can come out of such bad news, all the better!
So, I'm leaving next week. My computer access will be sporadic - I will be on the jungle side of Belize bordering Guatemala - but, I will post updates here.
If you are the praying kind, please pray for me this summer. I won't list all of the challenges of this effort lest it discourage me (or you). But I especially appreciate your friendship and support now. May God bless you this summer and show you tangibly how He's working in your life and all around you. And how you fit into it. I pray He will do the same for me!
love and Adoration,
Susan
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