Monday Dec 18 Update

Today is really cold in Tijuana! We never expected it to be so cold here. It’s 57 now, but it was 47 this morning when we walked to the clinic. It’s a good thing, because if I’d realized it was going to be this cold I would have tried to pack MORE clothes! That would have been a disaster! When we checked in the first night, the bellhop asked us with dismay if we were staying one night! We told him, we’d be here a month and he relaxed a little over our 4 huge bags. We had enough clothing to get us by, but we really look goofy to the locals. We walked over to the clinic this morning, and there were two ladies sitting outside the building in boots, winter coats and scarves around their necks and heads. We walked up in our jeans and jackets, but I had on flip-flops. I was headed to the hyperthermia chamber, so I intended to go in there with cold toes to help to chill us out. It worked! Today was the best day yet in the chamber!

My mother-in-law would have just memorized this scripture, but she was something else! I copied it down and taped it above my head to the chamber and it was a comfort to me:

“My soul put all your faith in God; for from him comes my hope. He only is my Rock and my salvation; he is my high tower; I will not be greatly moved. In God is my salvation, and my glory; the Rock of my strength, and my safe place.” Psalms 62: 5-7

Today I had another IPT treatment with some chemotherapy. If you haven’t read about IPT, it’s really an interesting concept. You should read about it because someone you know and love will need to know about it and use it if at all possible. It’s kind of a deal where the doctors take the cancer’s own traits and turn them around and smack them in the rump with them. In lay terms, they heat me up in the chamber, which is no big deal to my healthy cells. The cancer cells get real pathetic over the heat, though. When they are way down and out, the doctors run in with some chemotherapy and the cancer cells gulp it up like a milk shake, only it’s poison to them. I really get a charge out of it. You should have heard the cheering in the chamber this morning. It was like a great game where Hobart is winning already and one of our guys intercepts a pass and runs in for yet another touchdown. When they use IPT the doses of chemotherapy can be very small because they are so effective. That way, they do the job on the cancer, but they don’t cause all the negative side effects that usual doses of chemotherapy do. I haven’t been sick at all and I fully expect to keep all my hair.

My veins are getting tight with the nurse. You know I have great veins for donating blood, but I guess they want some different vein for this IV dripping. She had to stick me more times that I wanted to count (or be stuck!) this morning. I ended up with the IV catheter in the back of my hand, which is really uncomfortable, but relative to all the horrible things I can imagine, it’s a piece of cake. I’m going to have to change that to a piece of fruit. Cake is leaving my vocabulary because sugar feeds cancer. We’ll be having birthday fruit I guess, and giving praise and thanks! Love you all! Thanks for looking, caring and praying!