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New Medications Strephon Monday, Aug 10, 2009

Went to substitute doctor with home doctor on vacation for a month. Liked this Dr Smidt better, more precise, saw I had not pain pills or sleeping pills right away as we talked. And he said to call him tomorrow afternoon between 4-5 to report how medications are working.

I was almost crying in the office, being understood better by Dr Smidt who explained things. The muscle relaxant relieves muscle tension which relieves pain and makes it possible to sleep. Plus present medications may make me emotional, anxious and with lack of sleep.

Medications taken quarter to 2 pm. Still burping and pain at 2 pm now. See when a real change comes …

We shall see!

Timeline:

1:45 three pills taken symptoms: uncomfortable pain chest, burping
2:45 chest pain deminished one half, sleep, burping minimal
3:45 chest pain gone and not really burping. ate a peach. had a one hour nap also.
6:06 feel confident again-worked on Jesus novel last hour
11:30 PM in bed asleep. Took one sleeping pill then. Slept through the night and awake 6:30 AM. Started peeing in bed but caught it and got to the toilet. Clear pee. Not smelly. Felt a bit groggy at first. No felt pain in chest like before yesterday’s medication change. Took only one Dex 1.5 mg at noon with the new pain killer table and stomach protection pill yesterday after lunch. Had just a little phlegm, and just a little now at 7AM.Grogginess gone. I can think and write here. I can breathe deeper because not chest discomfort. Was sleepy before bed but decided not to chance it and took the first sleeping pill from the new substitute doctor, Dr Smidt.
4:30 up out of bed awake. Very sleepy at 10 pm and went to bed. So 6.5 hours not bad. Now feel vital and awake.
6 AM went back to bed sleepy after writing tennis friend who smokes and has skin skin cancer he gets cut off. I recommended he get early diagnosis, which I did not get. Try and get the lung cancer, if you might have it, when it is only 2 cm, not my 10-11 cm which is big and hard to work with for treating.
8 Am up awake. No pressure in throat from the previous burping. Dr Smid, the new doctor I like , insisted I stay with the 1.5 DEX once a day, when I reported in yesterday. Now waking confirms this is a good light dose. He wanted longer to see how this works. The other home doctor, Dr Jacobs, on vacation now, took the pharmacist’s recommendation of 4.5 mg DEX and it gave me huge night sweats and disorientation, so I stopped after two doses and changed to Dr Smid when she went Jacobs went on vacation for a month. Thank you, God! I’m not good at this stuff but learning.
Aug 13 sleep with sleeping pill at  and woke at 4 Am, gives now had snake little almond butter and bread and no deface coffee at 4AM.  Feel uncoordinated and move slowing, holding on to walk objects, but able to function. Cannot go right back to bed because vibrating arms. tension to use high energy to blog. I may be getting more life force energy and if so should be used on the way to recovery.
At 11PM took sleeping pill and already sleepy. What to do? do I need sleeping pill every night? Am I too knocked out. Try one every other night.
The plan is always try the medication but regulate. If too much slow it down, as well as if wrong. If not enough, use it, but check with doctor first.
8:30 AM Up and with determined energy. I first got up early this morning at 4:30 AM, arms vibrating a little, wrote a little, ate a little, back to bed sleepy at 5:30 AM and now up for the day. At bedtime last night at 11PM was so very sleepy before taking the pill but took it as soon as I got into bed. This deep sleep syndrome happened one other time yesterday when I took a tv break and suddenly I woke myself from a profound sleep. If I had to drive then I would have been dangerous. Two hours later I felt alert and could drive S home from the new apartment.

Woke now thinking positive from the core thinking I did yesterday about myself. Don’t just assume I have debilitating cancer. I have a cancer challenge. I have a life challenge. I have a very strong purpose on earth still to live. I am in Greater Hands still ready to do what is wanted of me from that Greater Source and Guidance.

Thinking also that I should get the pure hydrogen peroxide to take in the water for oxygenation. Read about the technique. Somehow I really like the idea of more oxygen everyday, but must check it out.

WILL BE POSITIVE AND ACTIVE TODAY, NOT WORRYING ABOUT THINGS, AND GIVING MY BEST WHICH IS WHATEVER I AM CAPABLE OF. I WILL BE INTENTIONAL AND NOT WEAK AND WORRYING. THIS I HAVE SOME CHOICE IN. IF I GET WEAK AND WORRYING I WILL WONDER ABOUT THE MEDICATION HAVING ITS EFFECT. I WILL NOT INVOLVE MYSELF WITH MY PARTNER IN AN ANXIOUS OR PUSHY WAY WO SHE HAS THE SPACE TO BE DETERMINING WITHOUT INTERFERENCE FROM ME. I WILL HOWEVER COMMUNICATE IN A RESPECTFUL WAY SO SHE KNOWS WHAT I AM EXPERIENCING AND CAN STAY TUNED TO BEING PART OF MY SUPPORT SYSTEM AS NEEDED, AND SO WE STAY RELATIONAL WITH EACH OTHER.

My spiritual focus is on the effects of the cure on my body-mind. I am preparing for when I can buy the profound alternative medications.
Today, Aug 14 I have been a lung cancer survivor for 4 month. One statistics a clinic gives on the web is that 40% are still alive after 6 months, that’s 60 people who have already died out of 100 in six months! I take it these dead people are mostly those who succumbed to the doctor’s picture of them as sick ad terminal people, and so could not resist or counterbalance the doctors or pressures of friends and family.

WHEN YOU RECEIVE A LUNG CANCER DIAGNOSIS DO OT GO INTO A DYING PROCESS.

Live your living process, who you have been and now can be, for as long as you can.

This is how I am doing it.

My will-power act was to resist the doctors and friends when they wanted me to get two days of invasive diagnostics plus the invasive treatments of surgery, chemo and radiation right away.

There is no doubt that my home doctor and the hospital concer specialists wanted me to follow completely their routine. I suffered emotionally making the psychological shift as to what this all meant to me and what choices did I have left. Yes, the doctors gave me choices. I did not have to do what they wanted, but they were clear they wanted me to go through their treatments. I resisted and went to the Internet for days of research on the treatments they proposed and to find out what statistics there were as to outcomes.

I started researching alternative practitioners as well. Friends from around the world gave me suggestions, but their practitioners were too far away or their own help was amateur and too far away to travel to. I listened carefully to all serious advice that came by email or blog commentary.

I kept my new blog going with frequent entries about myself, my mental, my physical, my dreams, and at last my spiritual perspectives when I had them. Certain people in blog comments gave me helpful perspectives. They shared also, some of them that they had had serious, now controlled illnesses to deal with in their older years, but not old years yet.

Through the blog I built a simple context of support people which was good psychologically, but also could create dependence.

I must not follow their advice directly but consider their issues, resources and perspectives. The end result was that I enlarged my own perspective on myself, health and what it can evoke in me having cancer. I learned to discriminate with responses to me.

I went through some heavy emotions provoked by strong symptoms. I was taking medications to control all the phlegm and coughing coming up, which was seriously debilitating in my day. Then with the new strong medication I know had to know the symptoms evoked which were themselves often strong and debilitating. I was no longer a normal physiological person able to live out my day with vitality and no extra physical worries.

I had the wrong doctor to help me with symptoms so I could function normally in the day. She went on vacation for a month and so I was assigned a male doctor who was decisive and got me on the DEX drug low dose still but with added pain killer and sleeping pill and the request to keep him informed by phone once a week about how the medication was going. I keep writing down my symptoms here so as to be accurate for myself and the doctor as to my physiological state. I got informative short answers from the doc as to what the medications would do to me.

In the meanwhile every day I wrote up my physical details but with my psychological and spiritual moods and thoughts, going for realistic insights and decisions.

This latter is my job as a conscious journeyer, to know my inner states and to deal with them also through this journal work. I choose to share all this stuff publicly on this blog because this way I have a little community of commentators who have their own stories to tell and perspectives on handling this kind of thing. Thus my own perspective was broadened.

The function of a blog is for conscious processing, not so much to get medical advice or make sickness type decisions, though practitioners were sometimes offered me as resources.

And in this blog I preserve a record in case when I die there is a book-length record to edit up as a cancer book, a genre these days, for Stefania, my partner to edit into shape if she wants.

I have always written my books placed on other people’s experiences and my own so as to be a useful and inspiring resource for others. Sometimes I made significant money as well, which is called ‘making a living.’

So I leave something useful behind for other people also so afflicted. You never know whom you can benefit, even after your own demise.

Now today I took the sleeping pill at 12 midnight and was soon fast asleep. Then up at 5 AM and writing this out after getting a little instant coffee and almond butter on raison bread. Not yet fully on the no-wheat diet, not an easy switch to make.

The following are my notes I spoke from for the new substitute home doctor, Dr Smid, now written a few days ago when I first took the new meds. I wanted him to know the details since he had not seen me before. It took only 15 minutes to have our session the same day. I had panics the previous day and night because my symptoms were not controlled and I suffered mental hell evoked. That’s the way I seem to be at this point.

Not using codeine at the moment. Don’t seem to need it and Dr Smid says it’s a weak pain killer. The one he gives me really works.

——–written for the doctor and me to keep my orientation clear, and to give the new doctor my essentials accurately———–

Dear Doctor,

It feels somewhat of an emergency. I’ll just list things.

1. Last night could not sleep for hours and a bit of a panic, maybe.
2. I have no medication for sleeping
3. I have no medication for anxiety
4. I have no medication for pain
5. Yesterday and last night felt dull pain in my chest, right side.
6. 10 cm lung tumor from scan on right lung lower
7. Last night and often gas burps come up. What is active there?
8. The gas pressure burps coming up are caused by what?
9. For a few weeks now have been taking codeine to be comfortable more. What does it do? I don’t really know. Was it to relax me? Lessen the cough?
10. Why do I take codeine now, if I do?
11. What are the interactions with the various medications? What should I be doing and not doing?
12. Can you give me a plan to follow?
13. Should I do the DEX 4 mg once a day and endure any intense symptoms in adjustment? What are these symptoms?
14. I am quite mental at the computer, doing research and writing my books and blog, but this only in short sessions. Some video viewing for breaks, plus short walks. But I get bored, being so limited.
15. I have not been seriously ill or in the hospital in my life except when they took my tonsils out as a kid.
16. Digestion regular, pee clear. weight steady lately at 77 kilos.
17. I see Dr Schuurbiers medical center 17 Aug. She is my pulmonary specialist for taking x-rays and scans and diagnosis. But at age 75 I refused any surgery, biopsies, chemo or radiation therapies because intense and I wanted to go slowly. Just the 10 cm lesion tumor and possible lymph node near by. No spread elsewhere. This is my best understanding of it all. Web research British Cancer society give stats of only 5 in 100 surviving with treatment for lung cancer, so I don’t see it’s worth it, certainly not a 50-50 chance.

—July 28 started DEX medication but stopped it myself after two doses and heavy night sweats, one each night, and uncomfortableness, but did stop the phlegm and the coughing bouts which sometimes were big and often.

Week later to see Dr Jacobs and we tried tried DEX at 1.5 mg once or twice a day. Have just used up this short supply so need decision.

DEX?
CODEINE?
FOR SLEEP?
FOR ANXIETY?
FOR DIGESTION BURPS?

OR OTHER MEDICATION?

—medications————–
New Prescription To Stop Cough July 27

Started Monday night: July 27, 2009 on table and capsule: 10st DEXAMETHASON 4 MG TABLET
OMEPRAZOL 20 MG
ONE EACH A DAY

Codeine

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