November 21st Sunday: Three weeks at home!

The last post ended hoping that we would have more info by the following week; well we just finished our meetings in Calgary now and are home. We think we have a tentative plan in place for Charlotte’s immediate treatments. We talked to four different doctors, and still got nothing conclusive that really steered us in one direction or the other. Since just waiting for these meetings took us to week 4 post surgery we have decided to wait and see what her first MRI shows. Then we will come up with a surer plan. But backtracking a bit...............

In the weeks between our Calgary appointments we started looking at Homeopathic, Naturopathic and Integrated methods and medicine. Rob and I really have learned a lot about alternative methods for treating cancer... and there is a lot of varying ideas out there once you start looking. Our phone calls have taken us to San Francisco, a couple places in Mexico, Huston, Switzerland, Ontario and Vancouver. We have had lots of helpful suggestions and referrals from friends and blog readers. We have watched several DVDs and read countless books on different methods. We have researched everything from high dose vitamins, plant based concoctions, healing salves, and radical diet changes to DNA testing used to configure a personalized chemo regime. We have done a lot of research to try and sift through all the herbal remedies, fancy berries and plant extracts that different companies tout as cancer healers. But through it all we learned that there is no single thing that will cure her. We have learned a lot about how our diet can affect cancer and have decided that that was a good place to start.

The first thing we did for Charlotte is to try a diet change for our family. This has not been easy but I anticipate as time goes on it will get easier. We have cut out all added sugars, no candy, no baked goodies, and no frozen juice punches anymore. We have drastically limited our meat intake as well; mostly to cut out the red meat. We are also trying to eat as much raw fruits and veggies as we can. Many alternative cancer care methods rely on a vegan, raw diet. While I don’t think that this is entirely realistic for a two year old there are a lot of ideas from it that we are trying to incorporate. For someone who used to plan the entire meal around the type of meat each night this is taking some getting used to! We are trying to include some juicing and smoothies to boost her fruits and veggie intake, unfortunately as soon as the juice gets more exotic than apple-carrot she turns up her nose. The idea behind all this is that she needs to boost her immune system and be a healthy as she can. We all have cancer cells in us but usually our immune systems can keep them in check. It looks like tumours like an acidic environment and spikes in glucose in her system basically feed the tumour so we are trying to keep an even keel with those.

The second thing that we are going to add is some Naturopathic remedies. Our theory is that even if they don’t help at least they will not hurt her- more than I can say for chemo! We have spoken with three different Naturopathic/ Integrated doctors (Integrated meaning they have studied both conventional and natural methods) and have narrowed down a list of remedies that we are going to apply. We talked to integrated doctors both in Switzerland and Vancouver who independently gave us the same three remedies to try, so we plan to use these things with the Naturopath here in Cranbrook keeping a close eye on her. We have double checked this list with Charlotte’s oncologist at the Children’s Hospital and she has given us the ok on them. Reading over the list she had a little smirk on her face that showed her true thought on these ideas but she did say that none of them could interfere or harm her in anyway.