Last Post

Rona wished to have this post published after her death. She started writing it while in ICU and never had the chance to finish it. She went back to her hospital room with intense pain and several other complications. On July 28th 2019 Rona was transfered to St Christopher’s Hospice.

Rona died in the morning of July 15th 2019.

Alison and myself were with her. She left peacefuly.

Rona was an extraordinary woman. She enjoyed this blog and made many friends in this space.

Thank you all for following her.

With love and gratitute,
Mireille & Alison

 

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[here is the original blog post – it has several blank and place holder that are left as-is]

Last blog post (as at 31 May 2019)

A (premature) post

I never thought I would write this post.  I thought this post would be written in years to come, but unfortunately, life isn’t like that.  We try to control its events, but life is full of surprises.

So if you’ve been following this blog faithfully, I was alive recently, but now am dead.

The cancer got me in the end.

I was trying to drag out the blog posts, but events started galloping.

The gist of what has happened:  In November 2018 I went to Peru to do intensive plant medicine work.  I gave up my house of 22 years and took medical leave. I thought I was doing the right thing as plant medicine work had given me so much since 2014.  I hadn’t realised how homesick I would be.  And how naïve I was to place my faith in indigenous systems of medicine or a medicine practitioners which/who hadn’t really had much experience with cancer.

In March 2019 I returned after altitude sickness showed that I had fluid in the left lung.  I had the lung drained twice in Peru and on returning saw my oncologist.  My lung needed draining again.  A scan showed that there was now cancer in the lung, liver and in the spine.

So I left in November 2018 with locally-advanced cancer, and relatively fit and lively, and returned with Stage 4 cancer.

To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement.

A procedure called pleurodesis was carried out in which the sides of the chest wall are scraped and a talcum powder applied.  The theory was that the lung would expand and stick to the powder.  And this would seal any gaps so any fluid would not accumulate.  A nurse told me that there was a 35% chance the surgery wouldn’t work.  Guess what … it didn’t.

A few days after the pleurodesis, I was dressing the wound and noticed pus in the suture site.  So I went back to hospital and was immediately re-admitted for 5 days and intravenous antibiotics.

I was discharged and went back to stay with some friends.  I returned the following week for the start of chemotherapy, but the lung required draining again, so I was hospitalised and 4 days later had my first session of chemotherapy, a taxol.  The chemotherapy was to be administered on a weekly, rather than 3-weekly basis because my oncologist said that the heavier dose of the 3-weekly protocol would kill me.

That first session resulted in an infection.  So I had to remain in hospital.

I was in hospital the following xx weeks.  Each session of chemotherapy brought on an infection, or sepsis.  My blood pressure went down dangerously low, my heart beat was permanently too fast (resting of 116) and I needed supplemental oxygen, and a drain in my lung.

I was also told the following:  if a healthy person keeled over on the street with a cardiac arrest, CPR would have a 10% chance of succeeding (unlike shown in the movies).  If a person with heart issues had a cardiac attack and had CPR, there would be a 4% chance of succceding.  But if a person with cancer in the lungs or mets had CPR then the chances were 0%.

So basically, if I had a cardiac arrest I would not be resuscitated.

My lung was wonky, my heart was implicated in the cancer, although beating well with no anomalies.

It was very hard to take this news in, as well as the 12 month prognosis by my consultant.

So if you are reading this, I am writing this really quickly as there is so much to be done and I can’t sleep because I am trying to get these things done.

Thank you for reading my blog.  I hope it’s helped you.  God bless you from wherever I am.

Love and gratitude to the following people who loved me on this challenging journey:

 

Access to Medical Innovation Bill about to become law in UK

The Access to Medical Innovation Bill will set up a database to collect the methods and results of all medical innovations by individual doctors across England and Wales so that successes and failures can be seen and shared by other doctors, scientists and researchers.

Lord Maurice Saatchi who sits in the House of Lords and his team have been working to get a Medical Innovations Bill approved.  It’s only taken them 4 years.  The final step is for the Queen to formally sign it.

Apparently, this database will drive forward evidence-based, medical science.

Many doctors innovate today, in their clinics, trying new techniques and drugs – but if no one knows about these innovations, other doctors cannot adopt and perfect them.

Lord Saatchi was motivated to create the Bill after the death of his wife, from peritoneal cancer.  She was a novelist, a scholar and promoter of poetry, a publisher and a theatre producer.

I’d be interested to see how this Bill will be implemented.

I think this is supposed to be a step towards openness about cancer treatments, in particular, non-allopathic treatments.  And hopefully it will encourage doctors who have tried non-allopathic treatments to share their successes.

Whether this will protect them from the long-arm of the law who is still on the side of allopathic medicine, I have serious doubts.  Why share if all you’re going to get is a jail sentence for using B17?

I am still not clear how this will work.  Is it just a database of information?  Is it compulsory?  If it is not made compulsory, why would doctors bother with the red tape of sending in their results?  Who is going to enforce this Bill and make sure doctors toe the line?

There’s also the problem that for many non-allopathic doctors who treat cancer, there is no one set protocol.  Let me clarify:  an oncologist would have a set protocol for treating cancer, which is determined by trials and statistics.  Every oncologist would follow the same set protocol.  For a non-allopathic doctor, treatments vary according to the patient.  So there is one-size-fits-all approach.  How then to replicate any success if it’s dependent on so many variables?

And there’s the issue of the Cancer Act 1939 which persecutes any treatment (mainly non-allopathic is my understanding) that purports to be a cancer cure.  I can understand why it was put in place because cancer patients are vulnerable and desperate for cures, and there are a lot of quacks and con-men out there.

I cannot see non-allopathic doctors risking their livelihood by sending in their results.  Also, all the non-allopathic doctors I’ve come across are far too busy trying to save the lives of their patients to bother with more red tape.  And justifiably so.  I would rather a doctor be focused on me than paperwork.

What I’d like to see is the government supporting innovation, the way they do in Germany where off-label treatments are permitted, and incredible success stories exist, and doctors and clinics are willing to take risks because they are NOT persecuted for innovation.  This Medical Innovations Bill doesn’t go far enough and may in effect open a can of worms by exposing well-meaning doctors who are stepping off-piste to persecution.

What I did next … another set of infusions

So I’d tried high dose IV C, and when that didn’t work, another set of triple infusions.

This set triple infusions consisted of a vitamin cocktail, a phospholipid mix and a niacin flush.  The phospholipid mix was to do with something about the membranes of cancer cells.  I wish I’d got the explanation.  The niacin flush was to dilate [expand] the blood vessels in the body and ensure that the previous infusions were better absorbed.  They weren’t cheap – about the price of a high dose IV C.

Still alive after nearly two years … but with a change in strategy

Well, it’s been nearly two years since my diagnosis.

I wish I could say that I had sterling results with the non-allopathic approach:  intravenous vitamin C, the raw vegan diet, juicing, nutritional supplements and other infusions and treatments.

The truth is:  I didn”t.

The fact is:  the IV C didn’t work.  Or if it did, not enough to control the growth of the tumour. 

Regrets?

I’ve just been reading a Sunday Times News Review article on the top five regrets of people who are dying.  The article is taken from a book based on a blog by Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative carer, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying:  A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing”.

They are: