July 21, 2007

Welcome back to the blog! Thank you so much for checking in again. It feels like a lifetime since I last communicated. So much has happened; namely: a cyst was detected on my left ovary in a CT scan taken in May. Of course, this was a big and upsetting surprise so soon after my operation in March. It threw me into a kind of panic I had not experienced before. For the first time, I felt totally afraid that this disease was getting the upper hand. Luckily, Mudita, my acupuncturist, “Healing Angel”, and extraordinary friend during all this cancer stuff found out about a doctor in Munich, Germany who is having incredible success treating cancer. After much research, soul-searching, and sending of a blood sample, it was agreed that I should go and see what Dr. Kübler can do for me. During this time, I also had to make the excruciatingly difficult decision to ask for a Medical Leave of Absence from teaching next year. My request was accepted and I went to work finishing up the school year, savoring every moment with the children, packing up my classroom and finishing paperwork. As soon as all that was “dusted-off”, Howard and I realized we had 3 weeks to plan and prepare for our wedding and honeymoon. What a tremendously busy and I must admit, stressful time it has been! But, our small wedding at the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco on 7/7/07 was everything we had hoped it would be and better. We only wish the church was bigger so we could have invited everyone we love. Next stop, Munich, Germany!

After leaving the San Francisco Airport Tuesday morning, July 17, and then being delayed for five hours in Philadelphia, to fix a busted air conditioning system, Howard and I finally arrived in Munich Wednesday afternoon. From checking the web for weather, we were expecting rainy weather but were glad to haul our bags on to the subway and through the city in sunny, warm weather. We had made a previous plan to meet up with a couple of neighbor friends of my good friend Jamy, who live in New York City during the school year but spend the summers in München (Munich). Debra and Silke rolled up in front of our hotel just as we did. After taking quick showers, we met them at an Italian sidewalk café. The nights stay warm, so we sat outside in t-shirts eating pizza and salad and trying the local Bavarian specialty of fresh apple cider mixed with mineral water. These two lovely women seemed so familiar to Howard and me. We laughed and got to know one another and they shared possible housing leads they’d found for me. Silke, who grew up in München, also gave me the numbers of a few of her good pals that are willing to befriend me while I’m here. After giving us a quick tour of our immediate surroundings and showing us how to walk to the clinic in the morning, I found it hard to say good-bye to them. The next day they left for a holiday in Italy and will have returned to New York City by the time we return from our honeymoon. I so hope our paths will cross again soon.
After staying up packing and tying up loose ends until 2 am the night before our departure and sleeping little on the overnight flight, Howard and I both crashed hard that first night. Unfortunately, we both also awoke before daylight, tossing and turning in the unaccustomed heat, our minds swirling with questions about the long-awaited appointment with Dr. Kubler in the morning.
From our hotel, it was only a 15 minute walk to the stunning, three hundred year old, three story building where he and his wife run this alternative cancer clinic. The doctor greeted us warmly but as we had been warned before coming, only invited me into his office to discuss my case. Howard had to stay in the waiting room. After friendly inquiry about our trip, he quickly became serious, saying that urachal cancer is very rare but that he has treated it before. I said that was great, and he snapped that it wasn’t “great” at all, that it’s a very serious type of cancer and being a human being after all, my case made him very sad. He said that the cells that form urachal cancer are very intelligent and are very good at avoiding most kinds of treatment. To make matters worse, it is his belief that every time we do intervene to try and kill them, they became smarter at defending themselves. The third strike against my case is that surgery not only seems to strengthen and spread the disease, it also creates scar tissue which creates a barrier that the Natural Killer Cells (NKC) find difficult to penetrate. In addition, he said that it is fairly easy for the body to attack tumor cells in the bloodstream but the lymph nodes are another matter. The outer layer of the lymph nodes is very difficult for the NKC to penetrate.
After giving me all this background on urachal cancer, he went on to say that he would not have asked me to come to the clinic if he did not think there was a chance of helping me. He promised to do his very best and to remember that only the Lord knows when and if we’ll be cured—and that sometimes, He doesn’t even know for sure since we humans are so often meddling in the process. Dr. Kübler then went on to draw diagrams and explain in detail the premise of his treatment and how it works. As described by the women who I talked to that have or are being treated by him, I found his explanations to be very clear. He spoke articulately and thoughtfully and as promised, he seems quite brilliant.
He asked me what treatments or medications I have been doing or taking. He hadn’t heard of Protocel and asked me to bring information to my next appointment. When I explained the idea behind how it works, he said he understood the strategy behind it but was curious to see what ingredients were being used in the formula. Then, I was whisked upstairs to an immaculate, white room where I met Frau Kübler, his wife, who began the process of getting me prepared to give my first blood sample. Howard was invited into the room to stand by my side while the doctor inserted the first needle. Everything seemed to be working out at first. The doctor said that my blood looked good, nice color, it was flowing easily, good pressure. Then, the machine starting acting up. Frau Kübler couldn’t make it stop beeping. They both assured me that it had nothing to do with me and fussed with it until they got it to work. But then, my “weins and wessels” (veins and vessels, said with a German accent. Both of them speak excellent English, but constantly mispronounce these two important words) stopped cooperating. The blood would flow well initially and then all of a sudden would stop.
They turned off the machine and took the needle out and tried inserting it in a different place in my arm. Same reaction. This is when Howard was asked to wait outside. The doctor became very concerned and tried another location in my other arm. He couldn’t even get the blood to start flowing there. At this point, he became very agitated, and started pacing and exclaiming that something was very wrong, that he had never seen such a thing before. He said it was like my veins were damaged, so brittle that they collapse as soon as they are touched. He presumed it was “this Protocel” and was angry that in all the communication and pages of medical documents I had shared with him, this pertinent bit of information had been left out. I apologized and lied there breathing deeply, trying to calm myself. Howard said that he could hear from the chair outside the room how extremely perplexed and frustrated both the doctor and his wife were by my situation and began to fear that they were going to say they couldn’t treat me.
Then all of a sudden, their attitude changed. They calmed down and Dr. Kübler began to hypothesize about what was making my blood do this and how to proceed. He said that we could only presume that it was a reaction to the Protocel but that cancer cells can also damage the blood, the “wessels and weins” (boy, did I have a hard time controlling my nervous laughter every time they both used these terms—which was a lot!). So he took a blood sample to have analyzed in his lab to make sure there wasn’t something wrong with the blood itself and so he could better understand my unusual reactions to the needles. It seems that they can only collect the blood sample from my arms and since he’d tried in four or five different places on my arms already, it was time for me to leave and come back the next day to try again. At this point, the atmosphere had lightened considerably and I was able to joke that I promised I really was from this planet. Frau Kübler is a big fan of Harry Potter and said that she wished she had his magic wand to wave over me. She recommended that I do lots of arm exercises and drink 3 liters of water before my next appointment.
Howard and I left the clinic shaking our heads. Seems my propensity for being “a special case” has followed me all the way across the Atlantic Ocean! But, I was not ready to give up. I was not going to come all this way to be turned away so quickly. The fighter in me was ready to go “mano o mano” with the good doctor.
To make a very long story short-er, I swam twice and walked a ton, dranks lots of water and showed up for my appointment the next morning. I gave the doctor my bottle of Protocel and the information we’d printed about it from the web. He studied it carefully and talked about how acidic the formula is and how it could very well be effecting my “wein” walls. He also showed me the analysis from my blood sample and said that all my ranges were either fine or in the tolerable area. Thus, my blood was not necessarily the culprit in this mystery. He also said that since my doctors in the US have nothing to offer me but surgery to remove tumors once they’ve formed, he didn’t blame me for taking matters into my own hands and trying any miracle cure that sounded good. He also said that we can’t be sure–perhaps the Protocel has actually been a factor in keeping me alive and so healthy up to now.
Then we went back upstairs and I was instructed to bathe my arms for five minutes in a basin of very hot water so as to help the “weins” open up. Afterwards, he tried twice again to take my blood but without success. Both he and his wife urged me not to despair and he recommended that Howard and I go on our Italian honeymoon and have the best time ever. During that time, he suggested that I quit taking the Protocel. We made an appointment for three weeks in the future, August 14, to return and try again. Howard and I left the clinic shaking our heads again at the unpredictable twists and turns this healing path keeps offering us.
As we walked back to our hotel, I told Howard that instead of feeling afraid and anxious about what had happened at the clinic, I felt inexpiably giddy. Howard suggested that even though we don’t know whether I’m going to be able to get this treatment or not, at least we finally know that we’re going to Italy for three weeks! Those plans have been so up in the air for several months. I also refuse to accept that I won’t be able to get be helped by Dr. Kübler but, if that is the case, then I trust that there’s some better treatment out there waiting for me. What else am I to believe?
On a metaphysical aside, I drove all the way to Ontario two days before leaving on our trip to consult a Vedic Astrologer about my health condition and future. I’ve never been that interested in getting a formal reading (especially since I’ve got the world’s best astrologer in my friend Jane who continually and generously updates me on my chart) but another friend recommended this Bombay native who has been practicing this ancient Indian science for 40 years and who holds a very auspicious title in these matters. He not only read this friend’s chart but also did a healing puja (ritual) related to the information found in her chart. I couldn’t get over how different she looked and acted and she couldn’t stop relating how completely different and better she felt. I didn’t act immediately on her recommendation to see him, but found that it kept returning as a possible way to look at the major changes and uncertainties that lie ahead in my life in the coming months. Anyway, the pertinent information—to this story—that he gave me was that he could see in chart that my health condition had been very serious and difficult for the past two years but that it would be greatly improving in at the end of October. I had told him that I had cancer but I hadn’t said anything about when I was diagnosed two years ago or that I was heading off to a clinic in Germany or that my treatment was scheduled to last until the end of October. He also consulted my chart several times to be sure, and then said to the best of his knowledge, I am to live a long life and that the cancer will not cause my death. Very nice things to hear, certainly! And they do resonate with my own feelings about this disease and my destiny.
So, today is Saturday. We’ve only been here three days but it already feels like a lifetime. Both Howard and I love München, with its incredible architecture, parks, the emerald green and surfable River Isar, and outside cafes. We’re looking forward to returning in three weeks but now I must go upstairs and wake him so that we can pack and get to the train station. Today, we travel over the Alps and should arrive in Florence, Italy at 8 o’clock this evening—ready to consume big bowls of pasta and maybe even a small glass of wine! Tomorrow, we pick up our rental car and drive to our Agriturismo farm stay in a small town in Tuscany. The following weekend, we meet my good friend Diane in Florence for a long weekend of sightseeing and eating. Then we have another week in a farmhouse in Umbria, followed by a week in Rome. On the 13th of August, we’ll take the train back to München, and hope that all the rubber-ball-in-my-hands-pumping and swimming I plan to do while in Italy in combination with laying off the Protocel will have sufficiently helped my “weins and wessels” so that Dr. Kübler can finally get the blood sample he needs and I may be treated at his clinic.
However, I am not looking forward to August 17—which I know will arrive too quicky and is when Howard is scheduled to fly back home. It has been so wonderful and necessary to be here in Germany with him. I can’t imagine trying to figure out all these new things by myself. Not only has it been a big help that he studied German in middle school—and remembers a lot of it, but he’s also a fabulous map-reader and all around fantastic traveling partner! Not to mention, my sweet, sweet husband!
OK, bast ya! You deserve a medal for reading all this. I’ll try to be more succinct in the future or write more often. I do have a handy, new laptop but realize how spoiled I’ve been having internet connection at my fingertips at home. I’ve still got to figure out the whole internet café situation, so please be patient. I’ll try and write again from Italy once or twice but will surely let you all know how my appointment with Dr. K goes when I return München.
Hugs and kisses and love to you all!
Kathleen

Howard Health