No Stone Unturned

A few months ago Kristine and I both separately hired a medium (one who communicates with spirits) for a phone sitting. We had heard about this women from a friend of Kristine's. Her friend has seen several psychics in the time we have known her, but none whose readings have been so accurate. Typically when people relay what they've been told by a psychic the message usually includes nothing more than ambiguous statements lacking much, if any, specificity. The messages are, in turn, embellished by the recipient to draw his or her own customized and suitable conclusion. This women on the other hand named individual names (i.e., spirits) and gave striking details about them and their relationships with the recipient. She does her readings without ever asking one question accept to validate that her interpretations make sense.

We set up our appointments separately and were careful that the medium could not link the two of us together (for example, I gave her an email address I use infrequently so that she could not Google me and find the blog). We wanted to see if she gave us consistent and unaided messages. Frankly, I admit that I was not at all a believer going into this reading. I was intrigued by the description of our friend's experience, but intrigue is far from faith. It has been my general, and usually unpopular, belief that death is followed by nothing more than our decomposed bodies as fertilizer for the earth. However, what followed certainly changed my mind and reoriented my perspective. It resurrected a hopefulness and comfort in me about our current circumstance no matter the actual outcome.

The medium, true to expectation, described specific spirits in both Kristine's and my reading. She told Kristine that her grandmother on her mother's side was in her presence and proceeded to accurately describe her ailments in the last decade of her life. She told me that my grandmother also on my mother's side was present, that she had died when I was very young and that we were very close and connected in the last years of her life (a signature memory of mine in defining my relationship with her). In one of the most chilling recounts of Kristine's past my grandmother, through the medium, said that exactly 2 years earlier (she was very specific about the timing), "[The doctors] got the dosage wrong." This was chilling because it was exactly 2 years, to the month, prior that Kristine had received her last treatment of chemotherapy. And it was this treatment cycle from which she encountered severe hallucinations due to an elevated dose. The medium went on, for both Kristine and me, to give a combination of accurate statements about our past and present lives and predictions about our futures as expressed by the visiting spirits.

While the readings from our pasts provided the necessary validation of her abilities, we were most interested in hearing about her predictions for Kristine's future health and well-being -- our key purpose in employing her talent. To Kristine's and my guarded exultation the medium made something very clear, Kristine still has more work to here.

The medium continually described Kristine's life after her disease and how she would use her experience from illness to help others. She spoke of Kristine's fear that additional chemotherapy would finish her and explained that her feeling, according to the spirits, was warranted. She envisioned Kristine resolving her disease using a combination of holistic and conventional means. She interestingly sited the primarily factor in her long term recovery to be though nutrition and further sited that her diet going forward would be less restrictive than it had been in the past (again the medium was not made aware of any dietary measures Kristine had taken).

In my session, I pushed harder to uncover a more concrete path for how this implausible outcome would play out. And although I did not get an exact answer I did get some leads with which to work. The medium told me that Kristine would see a nutritionist who would play a crucial role in her recovery and help her to form a long term pattern of health. She also described Kristine's cancer as being very unique and explained that her recover will be equally as unique.

This is a long set up for the present -- the genesis of a new chapter of trusting life and following our instincts even if it means disobeying logic and naively disregarding what seems inevitable. I attempted to expedite our prescribed fate and sought out a local nutritionist. (Of course, it's unclear whether this was actually a manipulation of fate or just a tangential path ultimately leading to the same predetermined outcome.)

We saw the nutritionist for several weeks before she sent us an email regarding an alternative medical center. It was one that I had heard of before from a few other sources but ignored due to its location in Mexico (a common migration point for homeopathic doctors driven out of the US by the FDA). Her colleague successfully beat his cancer following the center's program. Doing subsequent research on the web I ran across a list of people who had eliminated their cancers through a variety of different naturopathic methods and had volunteered to be contacted. Fortuitously the only sarcoma survivor on the list had had leiomyosarcoma (the same subtype as Kristine) and had attended the same center that our nutritionist had recommended.

Well, this was too strong of a coincidence to ignore. I called the man to confirm and learn more about his story. Prior to going to the center his cancer had spread to his pancreas, lungs and liver. He was 39 when diagnosed and had several surgeries to remove malignant masses. He told me that within 4 months on the center's treatment his check up scans showed stable disease, within 6 months his tumors started to reduce in size and within a year all of his tumors were completely undetectable. His oncologist told him that he didn't want to know what he was doing but whatever it was to keep it up. He shared a number of stories with me about people he had met through his yearly check up visits to the center who had similar experiences.

At the man's suggestion I called the homeopathic doctor at the facility. He told me that based on Kristine's advanced stage and type of cancer the chances of the treatment's success were certainly reduced but that it depended on the individual. Typically they like to evaluate the patient in person, but he felt it best that Kristine not make the trip in her current state of health. So instead I made the trip and discuss the treatment on her behalf. In just two weeks I organized my travel plans and headed to meet with a homeopathic doctor in Mexico. Kristine's mother and sister flew in for a short time to help Kristine while I was away.

In the last few weeks Kristine's condition has deteriorated at a faster pace. She is unable to attend physical therapy any longer, she now relies on Oxygen almost constantly to prevent labored breathing, new tumors continue to spring up daily in random locations throughout her body and she seldom finds relief from the pain caused by the tumors on her head, shoulder, back and abdomen. She will receive Cyberknife radiation on her shoulder (in hopes that it will improve her range of motion which currently restricts her from even feeding herself) and a large tumor under her left breast (which has burst open recently causing an exposed wound). The only other conventional options are in trial phases, which Kristine does not qualify for in her condition (including Pazopanib and Yondelis as recommended by some of the blog's readers, thank you by the way) or are not currently open to new patience (Rexin-g). So unless one of these drugs is fast tracked due to an overwhelming success in trial none are viable options.

I've hesitated to be candid about this chapter in Kristine's cancer fight. I realize that some of the unorthodox tactics we have pursued inevitably bring intense skepticism and judgement. (Even though it's not as if we have ignored conventional tactics entirely.) But as I sat alone in a hotel room 3000 miles away from Kristine over the weekend, my solitude compelled me to share this current phase of an unrelenting quest to save her life no matter how crazy it might seem. In a way, this part of our story speaks to the desperation we face to find hope under any stone that has yet to be turned, not wanting to look back with regret. To walk away from a belief that anything is possible is walking away from the wonders of a miraculous universe that displays its powers in unusual ways. You can call it God or energy or chaos. You can accept or deny that we have a hand in the outcomes it prescribes. But you can't deny its existence. For Kristine and me this means putting our faith in the fight and not going down settling for what seems to be an inevitable fall. As Neil Young said in the song Out of the Blue, "it's better to burn out than to fade away." We will fight on and keep trusting our instincts knowing that our pursuit, hope and faith never faded.