Hideous 96 hours of tummy hell

I have always been a food lover. Since I was 5 years old and my Italy dwelling Uncle fed me blue cheese and red wine at meals in my own baby wine glass. Together with the most amazing canneloni cooked by his Italian chef boyfriend, I will never taste such canneloni again, I can still smell and taste it in my mind it was a dramatic life changing blissful experience. My mum fed me good old fashioned 80's healthy food minus the pop tarts although it was a treat to have a vesta curry or paella, the paella was my favourite and to this day I still get some as a treat for lunch and reminisce (although weirdly it doesnt taste quite the same, I am sure by law they have to change some of the ingredients for health and safety reasons!!!).

I am fasting, and it's an extreme one.

Everything looks like food, people are walking steaks everyone is lucky to still have limbs in tact, on facebook I have drooled at homemade birthday cakes covered in chocolate, watched Poppy not eating all of her tea of sausages mash and peas and carrots desperately trying not to cave.

 It is Wednesday and I haven't eaten since Sunday and have just imbibed water with a clear white Miso soup in the evening as a treat!! I have still been taking the supplements though. so I hope that doesn't damage the ethos surrounding this dramatic non eating experience..

Basically I have been reading research. A couple of friends had pointed me in the direction of fasting as a means to increase the efficacy of chemotherapy. I shall attempt to put the articles in the links list on the right of my blog.

96 hours is the optimum BEAST of a fast, you have to be healthy to attempt it. So there was me thinking, yea I can do that, I mean it's not like I am tired already (!? chemo is messing with my brain) So I decided just like that to drop the food and go for it.

So with water bottle in hand I have supped like a starving calf at their mothers teat for the last few days trying to forget about the intense hunger pangs, trying to convince myself this is for the greater good, to get rid of the damn cancer in it's entirety by knocking out my good cells so they become dormant so that the chemo focus's on the still 'doing stuff' cancer cells.

Today after chemo it was the closest I have come to caving, I could barely walk up the stairs fom the chemo department I had to stop halfway up I shuffled into the shop and went crazy buying alsorts of goodies from  grazes range of delish nibbles and shoved them like a mad woman in my bag. Laura the nurse on Hodu, when I told her what I was doing said 'yep, you are a nut job' Hahaha she said she would be interested to know what the outcome is, infact lots of the staff were interested to know, some of them warned me there is not much of me and this is probably slightly insane, but one of the nurses is doing rammadam so we talked about how he deals with the fasting thing, he  went into great detail about the roast lamb he has after sunset.....hmmmmmmm cheeky :).  Alot of what I have been reading has been talking about the array of health benefits. I remember watching a documentary where a doctor did the 5 -2 fasting where you have 500 calories on the 2 fasting days. This sounds much more sane and has alot of benefits too. If you have had cancer it could be something that helps  to keep it at bay for the future.

After my father drove me home and helped me into the house as I could barely stand I slightly caved and drank a whole pint of milk!!!! ( I usually hate milk on it's own). Then slept for most of the day.

After the fast I am embarking on the Ketogenic Diet, cutting out carbs as carbs become sugar in your body and sugar is a big no no for cancer. I have invested again into another purchase for the ever bulging supplement cupboard Organic Stevia a sugar substitute which has ZERO sugar in it and is very sweet. It is basically a leaf and I have actually bought the seeds (bulge bulge) to grow my own and dry the leaves to make my own stevia sugar. Agave and Date syrup are also good substitutes but still have some sugar in although nowhere near the sugar that refined conventional sugar has. I made my own elderflower cordial with flowers from the garden and the recipe required 1KG of sugar 1KG!!!!!! instead of this I used 4 tablespoons of Stevia and the result is just as sweet! my daughter has it with fizzy water and she says it tastes like lemonade she cant get enough of it!! This makes me VERY happy. I want to attempt Elderflower champagne but am not sure whether stevia will turn into alchohol........hmmmmm.

Anyway I have come this far and I will continue to the end of this fasting marathon but man, I realise now what some of the refugees have had to go through, this is the last time I do this one, a much less aggressive number next time and what will I be doing this weekend after I have been gnawing my own hand off? Cooked breakfasts, roast dinners, snacks, food food ...........food glorious food.........................If only everyone had this option....

more sleep please

So my caravan was collected on an adventure to Derbyshire. It was frought, but we all arrived in one piece. We were stopped by two people on the same day wanting to know where I had bought it, much chortling occured on the M25. Overtakers couldn't quite believe what they were seeing as my vauxhall corsa sailed by towing a miniature caravan...it is cute beyond belief, I loooove my baby and want to keep her safe, Myrtle seems to suit it as a name but Poppy insists on cloud fart.....or pooh butt....

In other news, I had my oncology appointment today post MRI and Ultrasound, as I think I had mentioned in a previous post, the initial disco dancing regarding no evidence of disease i felt perhaps may have been presumptuous given that the liver biopsy indicated one lesion measuring 10cm which would'nt have shown up on a CT scan as it is different imaging to the Ultrasound used in the biopsy. I requested an ultrasound through the Onc's secretary and explained why and a very thorough MRI was carried out. As expected, the onc explained that the lesions were still there but had responded to chemo( good job I sent email or I could be celebrating no evidence for the next few months/years!!), she didn't give me precise sizes she said thay had reduced in size. Upon my request she had also checked regarding the Radio frequency Abalation as they know I am not chemo's biggest fan and any targeted treatment to me is a better option. She explained that the lesions are right next to a main artery to the liver and another *important* exit . Just my luck, i remember the very talented (and extremely good looking) surgeon in the biopsy reeeeeeeally not wanting to do the biopsy because of this and the risk of damaging other organs as they are also near the gallbladder. So the final culmination of the meeting led to the agreement that due to me being halfway through chemo i am to continue and hope for further shrinkage if the one near the artery disappears they may look again at frying  (do you want bacon with that?) eeeewwwwww.....

I feel abit numb, abit deflated, abit sad, abit sentimental, abit like this is now real and my new normality and the novelty has very much worn off. I am also very grateful that the chemo is actually working and really i should focus on that. As a child I was in remission after the first round of chemo, i guess I was holding out for a similar situation sub conciously . Also the chemo is really doing it's worst now I am finding it hard to do as much as I was doing last month, the onc told me to expect this to get worse.....this is like a red rag to a bull so I am implementing chi gong as of tomorrow...and more protein energy balls...raaaaaaa chemo why you little grrrrrrrr. I also have the beginnings of neuropathy in my toes and one of my fingers, they are going numb but I guess I need to crawl to the finish line ....in another 3 months......
I stupidly watched 'Holby City' tonight, tears streaming, the storyline re Arthur has been sad (and has a lot of artistic licence) but  it was abit well, close to home, my mum won't watch it, I also watched 'Cancer and me' documentary and depressed myself even further.

After Onc appointment, I got home and found a message from a support group asking me along for a girls night out....I sent them a big fat 'YES' I need a night out, i need to dress up and get out out!! I am keeping my eyes open for local festivals to take 'Myrtle' too and fun things for Poppy and I to do with her I would love to do a survival skills course with Poppy or bushcraft or something I reckon she would be good at that.

So I am off to bed, today the steroids were given at 4pm roughly and i will struggle to sleep....looks like a nightcap of valium tonight then *Soft music plays -'why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near' little glittery sparkles surround my head *aaaaaah ahah ahhhhhhh close to you*  aaaaaand relax........