My Cancer Book : The Beginning

Friday November 13, 2020

I woke with a lingering feeling of discontent and unrest even though there is nothing apparent that is bothering me. Apart from a slight headache and not quite enough sleep I appear to be doing OK.

I’m currently toying with a ketogenic diet. My meals have been a bit erratic lately although I am eating most of the things that I should.

The two main things on the agenda today are a biopsy at Knox Hospital and our trip to my family’s Red Hill property to prepare for our upcoming AirBnB guests.

Saturday November 14, 2020

Yesterday I had my biopsy on the cyst that was recently found in my throat . The biopsy wasn’t as bad as I thought, my throat is still a bit tender from the pricking, poking and prodding that the doctor did getting the samples out for pathology. I feel pretty confident that all will be well.

I’m currently into my 80s music playlist in my perpetual search for music that has impacted my life. A trip down memory lane. I never thought that I would re-visit music from earlier decades but recently I’ve realized that there is no point in cutting myself off from the past. I have spent so much time subjecting myself to new music, music is like a huge ocean. I am ready to swim.

Tuesday November 17, 2020

I woke in fright this morning at 5.40 a.m from a dream that could have been a scene from a high paced thriller. My wife Georgie and I were in a taxi in some exotic locale. It felt like we were in Beirut or could have been the market in the Mumbai slums. The taxi driver seemed amiable enough albeit frustrated and slightly pissed off with our sketchy directions. The taxi stopped, the driver got out and another man approached. This all happened so quickly, we remained in the back seat. The two of them took the external handles off the doors which meant that we were trapped in the back seat of a rusty old car in the midst of what felt like a hostile neighbourhood.
I was just starting to freak out, trapped in the dream when I awoke.

It is several hours later now, I was convinced that I would be able to recall every aspect of the dream but alas, that was then and now it’s now.

Tuesday November 24, 2020

I had an appointment with Sophie, my GP today to get the results of the pathology from the biopsy I did on November 13.
I walked into her room just before 2.25 p.m, after the pre-amble she looked at me sadly and said “I’m sorry, I don’t have good news! It looks like you have cancer.”

What a moment that was. I remained stoic, didn’t cave in, there was a distinct moment of shock and disbelief.

In that moment my life changed.

After I left I sat in my car like a stunned mullet. Time stopped as I tried to digest this new reality. Initially I went numb. I felt like I had been forced onto a tightrope above a distant gorge, one false step and I was going down.

As soon as this moment of shock passed I forced a shift toward optimism and thought to myself “Fuck it, I’m going to handle this.”

There wasn’t much point in trying to understand what was happening. All I could vaguely understand from it was that there were signs of malignancy in my lymph cells from the cyst that had been spotted when I was having a catscan and ultrasound a few weeks earlier when I was trying to get to the bottom of my fainting and dizzy moments.

I sat in the car for minutes that felt like hours.

When I arrived home I told my wife, Georgie and and rang my daughter, Allissa with what little I did know about the diagnosis. Since then I have experienced a range of emotions and thoughts. I still have a “healthy” optimism that I will turn this around but I must admit I am getting deeply philosophical about my existence.

I have to admit that I got a bit “heavy” emotionally. Death seemed to be a somewhat more tangible possibility, although I’m certainly not as down in the dumps as I could be.

In a funny way I feel that I have let the team, as well as myself down. I have to remember that it’s not quite 2 years since I first turned the corner and decided to get healthy and cut out all of those things that could stop me from recovering and going on to live a long life. Whatever damage I had done in the preceding years earlier than February 2019 was now manifesting.

Karma was collecting its debt. There was no way that I could undo any of that earlier self abuse and negative lifestyle apart from continuing to streamline an extremely healthy direction in the manner I lived my life.

You can’t change what is actually happening to you right now but you do have the power to control how you respond to it.

I think that I now understand this concept a bit more . Not that there is anything particularly bad happening to me in my life right now, apart from discovering that I have cancer!

Wednesday November 25, 2020

Yesterday I received the news that I have some sort of malignancy on a nymph node in my neck. Looks like I have cancer. The report says “The features are consistent with squamous cell carcinoma.”

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t concerned, I am terrified. The diagnosis has resulted in a cacophony of thoughts, feelings but also potential solutions.

Underlying everything is a cautious optimism that I do have a chance of beating this with enough self discipline, information and research.

I am already engaged in many positive actions toward my health but now I have to “up my game” and do whatever is necessary to not fuel the cancer cells and to do whatever I can to kill them off. I’m in a pretty tricky situation. I know zilch about cancer and will need to do voluminous research in order to gain an understanding of the way cancer cells function.

Right now the most important thing is that everything that goes into my mouth is clean and nutritious. Like the smoothie I’m drinking, it’s full of vegetables and certainly isn’t a taste sensation but it is good, clean food that fills me up and potentially makes me healthier. I’ve given it a name ….. “The Yarra River” mainly because that is what it looks like. Mud from the bottom of the Yarra.

I am in unknown territory. I visited my GP again today. She has given me a referral to an oncologist. That is the next logical step. To find out a) if it is cancer b) what sort of cancer it is and c) what stage it has advanced to if it turns out to be cancer.

With this information I can move onto my next steps.

Thank goodness that I have an infra red sauna at home. This should help with detoxification. Plus I’m eating low carb, exercising, toying with mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Saturday November 28, 2020

Over the past 3-4 days I have been immersed in a world of mystery, optimistic hope, research, youtube clips, deep thoughts, self discipline and a certain glumness that is underlying my external apparency of normality.

I don’t need to share my experiences with anyone else apart from my Georgie, my daughter Allissa, my son Finn plus a few very close friends and relatives.

This is my journey and the outcome will be based largely on what I learn and do from hereon out.

This morning I realized that my next big step is to understand the terminology related to cancer. There really is no point in continuing to read reams of articles without having at least a basic understanding of the words that are scattered throughout them.

So far it looks like my biggest weapon will be my own immune system strengthened by fasting, nutrition, IV Vit C and oxygen therapy coupled with good sleep, exercise, infrared saunas and anything else that detoxifies my body and creates a healthy environment in which the cancer cells slow down proliferating.

Georgie made two appointments for next week. One with an oncologist next Friday and another with a plastic surgeon who deals with cancer.

I’ve got to get an accurate diagnosis of the cancer, find out where it is located in my body and what it is doing to me.

I’ve found that reading articles and listening to podcasts by researchers like Valter Longo, Rhonda Patrick and others is the most rewarding thing to do because while they do not make outlandish promises about curing cancer they discuss research that offers a great deal of hope and aligns with where I am at in regard to my lifestyle.

I’ve spent my whole life convinced that the things that I have discovered along the way are always the very best only to discover later that there is something else that might be even better, more thorough, more relevant, more functional and workable. But I’m OK with this because the human race keeps getting better and wiser at understanding itself as well as becoming more skilled and knowledgeable at just about everything.
So all in all yesterday was a better day spent mainly in the present, full of new information and consequent hope.

Sunday November 29, 2020

I had a dream last night. Well the truth is that I have lucid dreams every night that are quite often so real that I wake still wondering whether the emotion I am feeling is real or if it’s connected to the dream.
Anyway the gist of it was that I was in Bali with Georgie and we ran into my friend Peter Russo. Peter had set up a warong and had a nice little place out in the rice paddies. The main point of my dream was that I drank spirits, ate crispy hot chips and got stoned, three things that I won’t be doing in the immediate or even distant future. I felt a pleasant guiltiness but at the same time had to do all of these things as covertly as possible so the others wouldn’t be aware that I was indulging. That’s me isn’t it. “If I’m only doing things to hurt myself and no-one else knows then it doesn’t really matter.”
Those are not sage words! Karma catches up. Cause and effect. Responsibility. The number one person you have to be honest with is yourself and if you can’t do that the laws of the universe will catch up.

One of the pleasures of the keto diet that I have followed over the past 18 months is that I have been cooking in grass fed butter, lots of it, so with a bit of garlic and chilli almost anything tastes great. I’ll just eat smarter and healthier and just enough to get the nutrition that I need to have enough energy to go for long walks and feel as good as humanly possible. I’ll supplement this with M.C.T oil, curcumin powder, a few vitamins and minerals, olive – coconut – avocado oils, some lemon juice.
The goal is to have as little glucose, fructose, sugar and carbs as is humanly possible. I want my body running as much as possible on ketones as opposed to glucose. More on that later.

My visualisation is that I am the life force of a tree, my body is the trunk and roots and my microbiome is the soil. Somewhere in that mix there is a big rock that is obstructing the health of the tree. My attention will be on the soil. I plan to make it as healthy and full of rich minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients and healing properties as is possible. I’ll let the arborists take care of the rock.
The theory is that whatever damage that is done by the arborists in their efforts to remove the rock will be countered by the health of the soil. And please note, I am not blind to the fact that the soil may have not been perfect to start with.

There is much work to do.

Monday November 30, 2020

It’s nice to have support and know that there are people who care. My friends are so incredibly important, my foes (mutant cancer cells) are also important insofar as my understanding of them goes in order to adopt a strategy and last but not least my “philosophical pragmatism” or state of mind is my weapon to stay on top of this whole shitty experience.

I must give the illusion (or maybe it’s real) of optimism to others because that’s the one thing that keeps coming back to me “You are so full of optimism …”
That is sort of reassuring. I just hope that the optimism continues throughout this new page of my life.
What I’m really secretly hoping for is that the pathologist fudged the original results although I’m not going to give myself the luxury of kidding myself.

I’m so damn lucky that I’ve spent the past two years pulling my body and health into shape. The permanent mutation of the cells and DNA can take decades to occur so really whatever is happening now has been sitting in the background for a long time, biding its time and slowly mutating my cells to the point of no return.

That’s one thing that I have to face up to. Once the cancer takes root and the process of apoptosis (the death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development) stops happening it appears that there is no returning to normal. It’s not like “Oh, I’ll live an even healthier lifestyle now and everything will return to normal.” No, it is a bit more complex than that.

I am on a journey to educate myself as thoroughly as possible but as usual I am impatient so I jump all over the place searching for new strands of information and clarification. Overall I am getting a concept of what cancer is but there is so much to discover.

One really good source of information has been Dr Valter Longo who has done decades of research on the benefits of fasting, what happens on a cellular level, especially to differentiate between normal cells and cancer cells.

So far it appears that I’m eating the right foods, I had to make some slight changes but essentially it’s lots of leafy green and cruciferous vegetables, no processed food or sugars, a small amount of very clean protein, clean fats like olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, vitamin supplements, no snacking.

I feel like some sort of observer as opposed to being a full blown participant. Maybe that’s a good place to be. Having a bit of distance between myself and my body could be a good thing. I still firmly see myself as being somewhat seperate to my body and even my mind but I’m not kidding myself that I’m not responsible for the whole kit and caboodle and what is happening to me.
Reassuringly I am still very optimistic.

I call it “being pragmatically philosophical and having optimistic denial”.

I feel like a firefly glowing brightly.

The first time I saw a firefly was in the mid 1980s in the hills just outside Ubud, Bali. I was thrilled and swept away by the magic of these tiny insects glowing in the dark and in some ways it summed up the magic of life.

Even though I still don’t know exactly what is happening with my body and at what stage the cancer is at I still have a flash of hope that the magic that creates life on this planet will be enough to get me through my current crisis. I am still in a state of “Optimistic Denial” although I am not kidding myself and I’m doing as much reading and research as I can based on what I currently know and can understand.

My next big steps are to a) find out what type of cancer I have and at what stage it is at and b) to understand the mechanics and nature of cancer.

I am waiting on an appointment with an oncologist (cancer specialist) as well as information on my latest biopsies.

Overall I am doing quite well. I feel pretty normal or even better than normal physically. My thoughts are under control although I fell down the rabbit hole into the mystery of death and eternity for a while last night. Not necessarily a good place to go deep diving but I do still need to confront whatever comes up. I just have to be careful when it comes to moments like this.

I have also started a few simple actions that get me more into the present moment and in their simplicity are very powerful. Firstly I perceive my location and then become aware of my relationship to every sense that I can that exists ….. sound, smell, temperature, visual, pressure, even the sensations in my body. This is a very simple potent act, I wonder why I haven’t consciously done it all of my life. The other is a simple game I play where I notice all the colours around me. I’ve always been aware that I love colour but not aware of the degree of it’s richness, diversity and intensity.

Based on what I currently know, I am eating very well. Loads of raw vegetables, water, just enough protein, an occasional black coffee but absolutely no indulgences and nothing that will spike my insulin levels. No sugar, no fructose, no simple carbohydrates, no processed foods, no nasty commercial fats or oils. Everything I eat is primary food. The next step is to morph into as much organic produce as is financially possible. My primary purpose for food now is nutrition, fuel and its medicinal properties.

I am getting about 8 hours of sleep but I must admit I wake a couple of times but go back into my dreams pretty quickly.

I am keeping myself hungry and just consuming what my body needs to function well. I must be getting enough calories because there is definitely no lack of energy. I’ve got to get the macro-nutrient balance right but that will happen over the next few days. One of the interesting and pleasant
by-products of this is the magic of taste. When I ate my salmon, asparagus and mushrooms last night my taste buds experienced intense pleasure. Really, the taste was amazing and it was interesting to notice the intensity of taste diminishing as I got more satiated.

Whatever happens next, whatever fears that arise, I am grateful for my existence. Life and consciousness is a gift that is easy to devalue when there is no awareness of what it might be like to not have it.

Overall I feel like I am swimming in a sea of sensation, magic and creation and I would like to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Yes, I feel like a firefly.

Going up against cancer is a big deal which requires a huge amount of self discipline and effort. This battle is a moment in time when you really must decide whether you are going to cast your fate to the wind or to dedicate all of your efforts and resources toward fighting it.

The battle against this deadly manifestation of mutant cell proliferation is going to be part of your life from the moment you are diagnosed until the moment that you die. Hopefully this moment will be many years down the road from when you find out that cancer is lingering in your body.

Tuesday December 1, 2020

Am I kidding myself?

I’m feeling so full of energy, so damn good physically that I’m starting to wonder whether I’m pretending, although I’m kidding myself. It’s quite strange. I went to see my podiatrist yesterday afternoon and spoke about my cancer diagnosis like it was a small blimp in a far distant landscape. “Oh, it’s a storm in a teacup. I’ll get over it!”
I talked Georgie into coming up to the hills for a walk. She agreed but felt a bit tired after about 20 mins of walking along the Tourist Rd near Mt Dandenong so we agreed that she would turn around and I would keep going until she picked me up in the car. I even started jogging which is something I hadn’t done for years.

While listening to Barber’s “Adagio” with the volume turned up high in my ears, I was overwhelmed by the intense beauty of life and being in the hills. I drifted into a dreamlike state and started contemplating my funeral arrangements, just in case my prognosis was the worst possible outcome. I didn’t want my funeral to be dull, I began planning a real big production, thinking about what I could say to my friends and family, I even conceptually created a lengthy dissertation . This moment evolved into a full blown extravaganza, all in my mind, with me creating special music, unique playlists and even videos. However, I eventually pulled myself out of my imagination and simply enjoyed my surroundings.

I’m pretty certain that it was around this point in time that I decided that the best possible option was to survive, I really had no intention of dying just yet. A funeral would not be necessary at this point in my life!

I admit that I’m a bit crazy, but I don’t take myself too seriously. My mind is always racing with new ideas, which excites me, I can be like a dying fire being rekindled.

At the same time, I can’t help but wonder if I’m unknowingly dying, despite feeling fantastic. However, I refuse to let those thoughts bring me down. I choose to stay positive and enjoy the good feelings while they last.

So yesterday was a good day. At 10 a.m I did an hour in a hyperbaric oxygen tank. The theory is that cancer cells tend to thrive in a low oxygen environment so I plan to give the little fuckers a jolt by doing oxygen therapy a few times a week, something I had already started doing before my diagnosis.

We had an appointment with a surgeon in Dandenong at 1.30 pm . My ex wife Melanie was kind enough to contact one of her customers who is a plastic surgeon, which might seem weird when you think about cancer but when you think about it, lots of Australians get skin cancer so he has great contacts with Monash Hospital and the cancer teams that operate there. It looks like he has been able to help us fast track the appointments and tests that I will need as a next step.

The next immediate actions that are needed are an MRI, a PET scan and a somewhat abrasive investigation with cameras up my nose and down my throat. Once this is done we have a meeting with the cancer team at Monash Hospital to get their feedback.

I am hoping that by some magic that this might happen this week or by next Thursday at the latest. Magically I just got a call from James’s (plastic surgeon) rooms to let me know that the appointment at Dandenong Hospital will be this Thursday afternoon so I’m now waiting on a call to get an exact time.
The power of intention! Kismet, magic, postulates, the power of wives, ex-wives and daughters … I don’t care what you call it. My truth is that it is some cosmic or spiritual quirk that does exist.

I’m not completely off with the pixies. I do have moments of intense introspection but I don’t allow myself to stay there for too long. It seems much more productive to have my head just above the clouds where the sky is blue. I am also spending large blocks of time listening to podcasts by eminent cancer researchers of which I can understand only maybe 25%, but it all helps. My understanding is growing , that is how it works for me. Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

In terms of nutrition I feel that I am doing the best possible for myself. Raw vegetables mashed and blended into almost unpalatable drinks but full of nutrition, clean oils to keep me firing up and supply energy and just enough protein to do it’s job. The most exotic thing I’m having apart from that are Brazil Nuts and my morning black espresso but surprisingly everything tastes better than it did last week and it must be doing me good because my energy levels are 50% higher than they were a week ago as well.

So far I have every reason to remain supremely optimistic. And I will.
It’s now 3.30 pm I’ve spent a couple of hours getting some work done , I’m as speedy as The Roadrunner. I’ll need to get out walking a bit more, not too much time at home sitting on my butt. Georgie and I had a sauna and swim this morning. Finn has gone to Yarraville with his friend Luca.

Wednesday December 2, 2020

Yesterday seems like an eternity ago and last Tuesday seems like another lifetime. Time is appearing to go slower but not at all in a bad way. I think it’s more that I am appreciating every moment and being far more aware of what happens in one day and night.

Yesterday was a bit of a mish mash with nothing really standing out apart from Allissa’s move and a visit last night to John and Flora’s home. I’ve known them both for almost 50 years, especially Flora who I met almost 50 years ago when she was just turning 16.

Georgie and I went for an hour long walk around 4 p.m which was pleasant enough. When I came home I made my vegetable smoothies which I am now contemplating a name change for. “The Yarra River” is far too brutal, even though it is very descriptive of the colour and consistency of the concoction that is supplying me with huge amounts of micronutrients etc. I’m not going to rush into this re-naming process but it’s going to have to sound a bit more appealing and romantic. I made 2 litres, even adding some cauliflower, broccoli and brussel sprouts. Some may feel that I am punishing myself!

Then, in true Gary Collier style I skulled about a litre of my concoction in less than 90 seconds without even considering that it contained as many vegetables as some people would eat in a month. After my 3 huge mugs I really couldn’t fit another mouthful. In actual fact that was it for the night. I was full to the brim and wasn’t even tempted to put another morsel into my mouth.
The problem was that I set off on another walk. The plan was to walk in the direction of John and Floras house, which is about 8-9 kms away and get as far as I could before Georgie picked me up to finish the trip in the car. About 1-2 kms into the walk I started feeling a bit nauseous. Conflicted thoughts and emotions arose because at first I thought I might be experiencing my first negative symptoms in relation to my new condition. But then I realized that my digestive system was letting me know that I had overdone things by gulping down so much smoothie so damn fast. Lesson learned.
I walked for at least 5 kms and Georgie pulled up beside me. Great walk with wonderful music in my ears and a huge appreciation for my surroundings.

About 2/3 into the walk a mother turned the corner pushing her child in a large wheel chair. The mother was young and pretty with a big, generous smile. It shocked me to look at the child who was malformed with what looked like cerebral palsy. We exchanged pleasantries and then they were gone. What rung home was that we are all presented with our challenges in life. Once again, what hit me was that it is how you respond that matters. Shit happens to the best of us.

Thursday December 3, 2020

There is so much to learn about cancer, without a grounding in biochemistry it is so bloody hard to understand. The technical terms and concepts are way beyond me so I glean what I can and slowly, very slowly and arduously I am putting together a jigsaw puzzle that is starting to take some sort of vague shape.

On a positive note most of the data and research that makes sense to me is very similar to what I am already doing. Somehow I started preparing for this journey without even being aware that I was going on it.

It appears that the ideal diet is a low carb, low calorie, high fat and medium protein diet rich in leafy green veggies, cruciferous veggies and clean oils with a bit of fish or meat thrown in from time to time.

The area that confuses the shit out of me is glutamine and it’s roll in cancer proliferation. It is a non essential amino acid that the body creates itself that is normally used to help create healthy white blood cells and strengthen the immune system. In it’s interaction with normal cells it is a good thing. From what I understand, cancer is a metabolic condition and the cancer cells are fed by glucose, glutamine and a low oxygen environment (simple version). The cancer cells use 10 times more glucose than normal cells. They contain damaged mitochondria and run off fermentation. The rules that apply to cancer cells are totally contrary to the rules of normal, healthy cells.

Since my diagnosis on November 24 I have upped my game on my diet and cut back on snacking and anything that might get my insulin levels spiking. Just 2 simple nutritious meals a day. I have been following a pretty strict time restricted eating regime of around 18-6 (that’s 18 hours fasting and an eating window of 6 hours). I tested my blood glucose 2 days ago and it was 4.5 and my ketones were at 1.9 which is smack in the middle of “nutritional ketosis”, the name Dr Stephen Phinney coined to differentiate a healthy ketone level from the toxic higher levels that a Type 1 Diabetic would experience.. This seems to be a good thing. I also appear to have gone into a fat burning period due to the ketosis and have lost about 3 kg in the past 8 days. The big loss is possibly because I have been stuck on 90 kgs all year and haven’t budged. Some may see this as a problem but I feel really healthy and full of energy and believe that my best possible weight is going to be around 80 kgs. I am currently 87kgs, 20 kgs down on what I was 2 years ago.

On a positive note, most of my chronic conditions that I experienced before I decided to turn my health around are resolved. Over the past 2 years I have handled numerous adverse conditions. Obesity, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver, low B12, unfit, alcohol addiction.

There are probably others that I have left out but I’m feeling pretty damn good about what I have achieved through my efforts.

Even though my diagnosis completely sucks, the point is that I am in a much stronger position now to fight the cancer than I have been anytime in the past 20 years.

I had unwittingly already begun the processes that will put me in a stronger position to fight cancer naturally and to aid my healthy cells to protect themselves against any “standard of care” treatments that I might have to have.
So, to sum it up, my ideal situation is to a) do my tests (PET Scan, MRI and any other tests need to locate the primary source of cancer and b) continue my healthy diet and lifestyle which I will tweak and modify until I feel that I’ve got it as right as I can, plus c) find out that the cancer hasn’t gone out of control and is not proliferating and metasticizing beyond control, d) getting my own team together that consists of an oncologist, a complimentary doctor (who is sympathetic to what I am already doing), a ketogenic dietician who can help me modify my macronutrients and calories, my daughter to help with the right supplements and anyone else who can help guide me through this situation and e) I will do hyperbaric oxygen therapy twice a week and have as many infra red saunas as is possible, continue to walk 1-2 hours each day and do any other “natural” therapies and protocols that I can get my head around.

Friday December 4, 2020

After several false starts this morning I am finally tapping on the keyboard although writing with my fountain pen is still one of the pure pleasures of life. I own a simple $80 Lamy beginner’s pen that I use every day. I’ve had it for almost a year now and have never once come close to misplacing it. It’s almost like an extension of my body.

OK. So where I am at?

New oncologist today. We have an appointment at 2 pm in the city. It’s just exploratory and to gather information and contacts. What I’m really looking for is a metabolic oncologist, but more on that later.
I have a PET scan on Tuesday at Moorabbin Hospital in Centre Rd, East Bentleigh. Oh shit, this is where I spent my teenage years. It’s just down the road from my old High School. How ironical is that?

Apart from that it’s been intensive research. Hours and hours of it. Oh my god, I still have so far to go, so much to learn. The concepts are moving into place as are a few details but the finer biochemical points remain an enigma. Still, I plan to continue the research and will become as knowledgable as is humanly possible as a weapon against whatever condition might exist.

I’m reading new research as well as mainstream data but as I said yesterday the big hurdle at the moment is still the terminology but even my understanding of that is slowly getting better.

Overall I still feel great. In some ways better than I was before I found out on November 24. That may sound strange but the intense focus and discipline that I am applying is helping me to create space between myself and the situation. It’s a bit like “me and it”. Please don’t get me wrong, I know that it’s my body that is being effected but in more of a “spiritual” approach “I” can remain objective and treat my body with good nutrition and the best possible supplements and enhance my mind/brain with novel information that will help me make the best possible decisions for myself.

Overall I am not feeling too stressed. I get a bit speedy, a bit anxious sometimes but that passes quickly. I make it pass as there is no value in feeling that way.

Remember the post the other day with the analogy of the tree and the tree’s root systems and the soil? Well, working on the soil seems to be working even though there is a lot more to do to enhance it even more to protect “the tree”.

I have come across a researcher in the past few days named Professor Thomas Seyfried from Boston College. His research has lead him to the conclusion that cancer is a metabolic disease of the mitochondria in the cells and that it relies on the supply of glucose and glutamine to “feed” itself and proliferate in a low oxygen environment in order to use fermentation to survive. Also cancer cells operate on the command that they must survive and they are not willing to give themselves up for the greater good through apoptosis, the bodies natural way of clearing out damaged cells and replacing them with new cells.

Saturday December 5, 2020

Another day of feeling pretty good, if not almost fabulous for most of the day.
We visited an oncologist yesterday, he was a nice enough guy who really didn’t say a lot except that my best chance to survive is to stringently follow the mainstream “standard of care”. We paid our money and left. What I got out of it more than anything else was that I am going to have to work really hard searching for a complimentary doctor who can help me use methods that are alternative to the mainstream in conjunction with any other treatment that I have.
The light of hope that shines on me right now is that even though I don’t know where the primary source is that it might not be so far down the road and the treatment may not be quite so harsh. Once the tumour is handled I feel relatively confident on maintaining a state of remission (based on what I know and understand so far).

So that’s what I’m hoping for. OK, so next week is a big one. Monday is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Pranic Healing. I have no idea what the results of pranic healing will be. It deals with the chakras and the aura and is purported to help to heal the energy flows around the body. Why not I say! If I’m willing to pay $230 to have a pleasant but useless 15 minute talk to an oncologist then why not pay $130 to someone to spend 60-90 mins “repairing my aura”.

Tuesday is the big one. That’s when I go to Monash Hospital in East Bentleigh to have the PET scan and then Wednesday morning it’s the MRI at Clayton and on Thursday I get the results and have a meeting with the head and neck team at Monash Hospital who will tell me where the cancer is at and do staging which works out how bad (or not so bad) the tumour is, whether it has metasticized and what the suggested/recommended treatment is.

By Friday I will know a lot more and hopefully I will still feel on top of it both physically and mentally.

On other fronts. I went into a pretty good level of ketosis yesterday. When I did the tests at 8.30 pm my ketone reading was 3.1 and my blood sugar was 4.9. I’ve got to be careful that I have just the right amount of nutrition while maintaining this level of ketosis. I’ve done so much research on ketones and I’m 99% certain that if I can get my body’s metabolism using ketones for energy as opposed to glucose I have a chance of slowing the growth of the cancer cells. This is the first stage of the press/pulse therapy that I have been studying so much over the past few days. There are a couple of other things that I can do here but “slowly-slowly”.
I’ll make an appointment with my GP for Monday afternoon and try to explain my plan so I can get her on my side. What I want her to OK next is intravenous Vic C drips. These are part of the pulse treatment along with 3 hyperbaric oxygen treatments a week. Cancer thrives in a low oxygen environment so the simplistic version is that higher levels of oxygen will be hostile to the cancer cells.
Another thing on next weeks To Do list is to go to Sunlighten in South Melbourne and check out their hyperbaric oxygen therapy tanks.

Sunday December 6, 2020

Every day brings a new challenge.
I’ve got my body into nutritional ketosis. How do I know this? I’m doing daily glucose and ketone blood tests and the figures tell me what’s happening plus I have found a calculator online to work out what my GKI (Glucose Ketone Index) is. Yesterday it was 1.9 which is pretty good as I need to keep it under 3. I am getting all the nutrition that I need but have cut down on calories. I haven’t been hungry at all and feel bright, energetic, focused and in control.
One thing that I hadn’t taken into consideration is the responsibility that I have towards others. I finally decided to let my sisters know yesterday. I had been holding out as I didn’t want to throw a spanner in the works before Christmas. After getting the test dates back late this week I re-considered and put together a message that I hoped wouldn’t be too harsh and shocking.

Here’s what I wrote.
“Hi to you guys. I’m sending this as a text because it’s easier for me to do. Sorry if it’s upsetting.
I had an enlarged lymph node on my neck that was discovered by an ultrasound when I was having tests for my dizzy spells. I finally got the results of a biopsy that I had done on the lymph node recently (November 24). I was holding out saying anything until I got more info but I reckon it’s time to let you know.
The results weren’t great and it appears that I have some malignancy in this lymph gland and the features are consistent with “squamous cell carcinoma” which can be either a skin cancer or a cancer of the digestive tract, more than likely the latter as I haven’t any signs of skin cancer.
Anyway, it’s early days and the next step is MRI (Tuesday), PET scan (Wednesday) and a meeting with the head and neck oncology team at Monash (Thursday). I was very lucky to find a surgeon who has helped fast track everything. Ironically most of the tests and meetings are happening in East Bentleigh!
No need to freak out yet. I have told Allissa but have not told Finn yet. Georgie is handling things well.
I am feeling healthier than I have in 20 years. Actually I feel great. I’m eating really, really well. Sleeping well. Doing lots of very long walks and generally doing anything that is going to make my body fight whatever is happening.
You know me when I get extreme.
Based on the information that I have so far I may have to have surgery and then possibly radiation therapy but I will augment this with other natural therapies as is appropriate and with the guidance of the oncologist. This will be clearer after the test results are back. My main goal is to keep my body as healthy and strong as possible to combat any effects that may happen depending on the extent and what treatment I will need.
I really don’t feel like I’m going to die just yet (but anything is possible). I feel very positive and it’s not getting me down. I’m sorry for this shitty news. If you want to ring me it’s fine or send texts, whatever you feel comfortable with. If you ring maybe you could do it tomorrow but whatever. I’m around.
Love you both and I promise that I will do whatever is humanly possible to get through this and live a long, happy and healthy life. It’s up to you whether you tell your kids but I reckon you should consider getting through Christmas first.”

The thing is that the well being of those who care for you is tremendously important to the overall situation. If they are feeling positive, loved, appreciated, listened to, the end result is not only them feeling better about what’s happening but conversely it will rub off on me as well.
There is no room for conflict when you have a life threatening illness. Stress is one of the drivers of cancer growth. Cortisol levels rise, blood glucose levels rise and then things go out of control.
So there’s another policy for my cancer rule book. It’s all about cause and effect, responsibility and self discipline.
“Make sure that all communications go well with family and friends. Always answer communications and acknowledge any help or advice that is given. If there is a conflict or misunderstanding do everything in my power to resolve it as quickly as possible by whatever means possible. Keep everybody informed on the latest developments as simply and concisely as I am able.”
I just made that up as I went along but I feel pretty good about it.
It’s really important to maintain emotional objectivity and take into account that the people who care about you are also going through some weird shit as well and to that degree I have my own responsibility to make things as easy as possible for them.
Cancer has so many connotations. I have to admit that until 2 weeks ago it was just a “toxic” word that I had little to no real understanding of. Over that same period I have been spending hours each day trying to understand what it is and how it functions. As I’ve said in earlier entries a) the more I learn, the more in control that I feel and b) the data that I study will help me make more responsible decisions when they need to be made.
I am ultimately responsible for curing my own condition and making the decisions about how I go about doing it.

Monday December 7, 2020

This coming week will in many ways define my future.

It’s not as if anything will change apart from “diagnosis” but by Thursday afternoon I will know a lot more precisely where my cancer is at after a battery of tests this coming Tuesday and Wednesday.

My biggest challenge this week will be to fully realise that “to handle any problem, condition or situation the first thing you have to do is to honestly confront it”, one of the wiser things that I had learned from my years in Scientology. To confront something simply means to me to look at it for what it is, to accept it. This should then give me more clarity in evaluating it and working out a more concise plan of action to move forward.
Resisting what is, getting anxious and nervous, freaking out and worrying will achieve nothing except raising my stress levels and consequently my cortisol levels which will raise my blood glucose and insulin and send me backwards plus it will also make me impossible to be around. Not a condition that I really want to be in.

So, really the best approach is to stoically, and with a smile on my face, move forward and continue to do all of the successful actions that I have been doing that have worked so far.

I’m doing very well on my diet and my GKI (Glucose ketone Index) is constantly below 3, which is where I want it to be. I got a bit carried away last night and ate about 8 strawberries and a decent quantity of thick cream. I must say that it was bloody delicious but certainly not something that I will be doing again in the immediate future.

Mentally, I’ve been surprisingly calm and focused. So as Thursday approaches that’s where I want to be. It’s a bit like the lottery really.

Having said that there are no symptoms, no fatigue, no pain, no visual manifestations, no big changes in my body which in itself has to be a positive sign.

I am about to head off for one hour of oxygen therapy and then a visit to a Pranic Healing Practitioner. Who knows?

Addendum : Monday 5.20 p.m
I just headed out for a walk and after a few minutes it started hailing. The weather is like life, all over the place, up and down and even topsy turvy. So now I am back at home waiting to see if there will be any respite ( in both the weather and life).

The Pranic Healing was interesting. The practitioner’s name is Ambika Achanta, originally from Hyperabad in Southern India. I liked her, nice person and seems quite knowledgable and serious about her practise. The session went for about 90 minutes. I had a few sensations while she “cleansed” me, not certain whether they were related but it did seem so. I had a funny tingling in my throat, a stuttering feeling on the right side of my groin and at one point my gut felt very, very heavy, almost like I had concrete in it. I felt pretty good after we finished and decided to do a series of “healings”. She told me that my chakras were blocked and that the most congestion was in my throat chakra which certainly makes sense.

I’ve spent the rest of the day feeling rather agitated and a bit crabby. Is it related? About 5 p.m I got hot, sort of like a short lived hot flush and a bit sweaty.
It’s now 6.10 p.m and the rain is still pouring down but the sun is shining and a few birds are singing.
I just got a call from Finn. He’s just been pulled over by the police and it looks like his car isn’t registered. I’ve just made a big fat and juicy decision that he doesn’t get a huge fine and he doesn’t lose his license. There is a 28 grace period to get the car registered after the rego runs out. Fingers crossed.

Tuesday December 8, 2020

I’ve never really looked at life like this before. “The Three Of Us”

Mind, Body, Spirit.
I am “me” or what I will call spirit. I have ideas, creative impulses and respond to external stimuli. I am the viewer of my memories and observer of my emotions. I use the information and data that I have collected and found empirically workable to base my actions on. I can also be impulsive, adventurous and erratic.
I have a body that I use to get around and to experience the sensations of being a human being. It is my vehicle but it is also to a degree my identity. I look at it in the mirror, I dress it in clothing that I feel good about. I let it get fat and pasty and then I repair it and make it slim and glowing. It is my possession and sometimes I confuse it with “me”. In many ways it is my most treasured possession and maybe that is why I have always (or up until recently) struggled with death. My body also has trillions of cells and is packed with exogenous bacteria and virus that are seperate entities to my own cells. So my body is somewhat of an extension of “me” that I use to represent myself to the external world and the other people that inhabit it. My brain is also an integral part of my body.
Then there is the third member of “the group”. My mind. I must admit that although I believe the mind and brain to have two seperate functions, this is based on a gut feeling and if you asked me to explain, I simply could not. Having said that I do know that I have memories and mental pictures, I can hear sounds and smell smells, I can create a visual of birds flying or rain falling, I can imagine the sensation of feeling cold and wet, I can conjure up the feeling of claustrophobia. I can go swimming in my mental images and explore my past. I have memories of my experiences which I know are always available because sometimes an external stimuli triggers a memory that I have never re-experienced. Some of these memories are abstract, shimmering and some are clear and well defined. I am also very scared of losing my memories. That’s another liability of death.
How do I know this? Well, even if I have been re-incarnating for millennia I do not have easy access to my memories from these past lifetimes when I was teamed up with a different body, family and circumstances. Looking at this from my current understanding this makes sense because life could get pretty complicated if you did remember everything about your existence. Old grudges, lost loves, old social positions, old financial positions et al would create a chaos that would be hard to bear. So based on this observation I sort of have to accept amnesia as some sort of protective mechanism. Who knows?
Then there’s always the possibility that the lights just go out and what you have spent decades creating in the context of memories and experience, consciousness, accumulated joy, creativeness or even pain and hardship just disappears like a candle being blown out.
So “the group” has to break up one day. No matter what. Either completely or just losing one or more “members”. Losing the body is an inevitable part of existence, so that one’s a no brainer. I suppose it is like anything that you covet or simply love having in your space. You don’t want to lose it and the fear of loss could be exacerbated by the countless losses that you have had throughout eternity.
This is all speculation.
What I do know is that at this moment in time my group, my “three of us” is a composite of me, my mind and my body and I would like to keep it that way for as long as is possible within the bounds of health and happiness.

My blood sugar was up this morning at 5.8 and at the same time my ketones were lower at 1.4 giving me a GKI of 4.14 which is the highest I have been over the past few days. What changed? I didn’t have my green smoothie yesterday and I ate low carb seed crackers at dinner time. I don’t think my calories were out the roof though or my carbs for that matter. What this leads me to believe is that I need to work out carb measurements as well as macros. I probably won’t be able to do this right now as I have my PET scan this morning. But I must do it sometime today. The other thing that I would like to do today is to visit Sunlighten and check out their hyperbaric oxygen pods. I’ll also keep a food diary. I must buy a small book to write in or create a chart on my IOS devices.

Wednesday December 9, 2020

Yesterday is over. Amongst other things we unwittingly went on a tour of half or possibly more of the old suburbs that I have lived in including South Melbourne.

The standout experience for the day was my PET Scan. Don’t let the sweet sounding name fool you. Pet’s are normally loving and sweet but this was more of a malevolent experience where I had a brew of radioactive glucose injected into my body after which I waited for the toxic goop to make it’s way through my body to finally arrive at whatever damaged cells were waiting with joy to take whatever nourishment they could from it in order to light up for the scan. The idea is that cancer loves sugar, it thrives on it, which is why I don’t touch it or anything that converts quickly into glucose.

I was then placed on a narrow plank, which in itself would have been OK but no, there was more. I was then asked to lower my pants so my zip wouldn’t show up on the scan, still OK but then I was given a square object and asked to hold it over my groin area with my hands at the base, my wrists were then restrained with a belt like object then another strap was placed under the plank and around my elbows. By this time I felt like I was auditioning for a role in the 2020 version of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. To take it to the next level my head, which was in a cradle had 2 wedges jammed in on each side next to my ears so it felt so constrained that it felt like I was just about to get shock treatment at which point I just closed my eyes and started doing some deep breathing. My strategy with moments like this is to conjure up images of lying on a beach and just relaxing in the sun. This worked for about 60 seconds and then the plank started moving. My thing is not to open my eyes, a slight moment of panic and claustrophobia ensued but I grabbed myself and returned to my lovely warm beach with the sun coming out from behind the clouds from time to time. 30 minutes later I was out the front door looking up at the sky which I appreciated more than I had in a long, long time. Not only that but all of this happened in East Bentleigh where I spent my teenage years growing up in a suburban wasteland bereft of any culture or benevolence. How ironical is that?

Thursday December 10, 2020

Hello Putu
Firstly, please accept my very deepest sympathies about your father’s passing. I hope it was peaceful for him and that you and your family are all OK. It is a huge loss to lose your parents. I was lucky, both my Mum and Dad both lived until 90.
I am sorry about not getting back to you sooner. My life got changed 2 weeks ago about a medical problem which the doctors have found and I have been having many appointments at the hospital and doctors. Today I have a meeting with doctors to get my results and find out what is happening. My mind has been totally caught up in this and I have not done anything else. We have not mentioned this to Purnami so don’t say anything to her yet. The most important reason that I wanted to keep the villa going was for Purnami. I did not expect to make any money from it but I hoped that we could make a bit of money towards her wages. We had one guest who paid a little more than 2,000,000. I will send Purnami 1,000,000 for you from this when Georgie next sends money. There is one girl who may be interested in staying longer term and Georgie will ring her later today to discuss with her. If she did stay that would be fabulous. I fear that this Covid pandemic will have very long term effects on the whole planet including Bali. We have tied all of our money up in the renovations at Villa Tusk and we are hoping and praying that healthy people will return to Bali in the near future but I am still very concerned that they will bring the virus with them. After what we had to do in Victoria to get rid of it I understand what a huge sacrifice has to be made. All businesses closed down for several months and we all had to stay at home. Now we only allow a few people in and they have to pay many thousands of dollars to stay in hotel quarantine for 2 weeks before coming out! If I had money I would offer you a smaller amount for one year but unfortunately I have no money. I do not know the situation closely but it looks like there are many, many villas available in Bali and people are offering very, very cheap prices. The “tourists” will know this and use it to their advantage. The one advantage that we have together is a) AirBnB and B) the furniture and decorations that we have in the villa. Put together with your villa and your furniture plus the beautiful Purnami, what we offer is a lot better than most other lower priced places. I really want to do whatever I can to make this work so it is good for you but I do not know how possible it is. If we move out furniture out and leave the villa as it was you may be able to get some bookings but honestly, based on the number of villas I don’t know how likely this is. It is a horrible time for all of us and I am sorry that I could not have been more helpful to make this bad time better for you. Please think about this and let me know what you really think is best for you. I do not want to make a profit from the villa. I was hoping to just keep it going until things get better and to continue to pay Purnami and your wife’s brother their monthly wage.
Putu, I will wait for your response before I write a proposal. There is very little that I can offer you with any certainty and I do not want to create false hope. We are still getting requests from AirBnB, some are genuine and some are not. I am keeping the price the same so we can negotiate when the time comes. If we make it lower, we will still have to negotiate. I will await your answer. Your friendship is very important to me and Georgie and I do not want to do anything to endanger it. As soon as I hear and based on the report from the hospital I will do the proposal as soon as I hear from you.
If you want me to translate this message to Bahasa please let me know and I will resend it. I will wait for your response before I write a proposal. There is very little that I can offer you with any certainty and I do not want to create false hope. We are still getting requests.

Friday December 11, 2020

About yesterday.
On the drive to the hospital yesterday morning I tried really hard to present a positive and brave face. This was the same drive that I did when visiting my parents during their last days. Underlying this “positivity” was a feeling that the ensuing hours were in some way going to define my future.

Whatever was happening to my body and its cells was already happening but the information that I was about to receive was going to potentially end the honeymoon of optimism that had embraced me over the prior 2 weeks.

After arriving we sat in an almost empty waiting area and did what one does in a waiting area, we waited. After about 40 minutes and a few more arrivals we were summoned by a youngish looking guy who introduced himself as Rob, an associate of James, the surgeon who had fortuitously fast tracked my PET Scan, MRI and meeting with the surgical/oncology team.

Rob launched into his talk and out of left field said that the only thing that had showed up on the PET Scan was the lymph node that had been biopsied and on further questioning he also said that nothing had showed up on the MRI.

Yes, this was positive. Firstly it meant that my body was far from being riddled with cancer and secondly that my immune system may have been able to do it’s job and destroy any tumours that had existed as a primary source of cancer.
To say that I felt a huge sense of relief is a huge understatement. I actually felt ecstatic, a huge weight of uncertainty had lifted off me.

After a bit more discussion we were sent back to the waiting area, the next meeting was scheduled with the Head and Neck team for 2.30 p.m. Georgie went to get some food and I rang Allissa and told her the news, I actually had tears of joy and relief as I spoke to her. I sent a few texts to the people who knew about my situation telling them the good news and waited as the room filled up with old blokes of my vintage, some a bit older but mostly cantankerous old bastards accompanied by their surly wives.

I was so lucky to have Georgie sitting close to me, looking young, healthy and tastefully dressed.

Around about this time I had a thought. “If I make it through this I am going to treat life as an art form.” I didn’t define what I meant by this but that will come as time goes by. I like the idea of pursuing that thought.

Allissa arrived but due to the virus restrictions she had to sit in the car park. We planned to have her on loud speaker during the meeting.

The second meeting started at about 3 p.m, we were summoned into the same room which now had 2 more youngish guys who turned out to be the head and neck specialists with Alicia and Rob who had been there earlier.
This meeting was a bit more serious. The doctor doing all the talking was named George. He was quite cut and dried. This time it sounded a bit more serious and even though I was still full of hope, George’s demeanour diluted my elation somewhat.

I did have cancer in my body in the lymph node, they were unable to find the primary source but this did not mean that there wasn’t a hidden tumour lurking somewhere in my body, I would more than likely have to have surgery on my neck to remove the lymph nodes which would reward me with a “cool scar” and other possible consequences. Nothing was really certain apart from what had already been said , more exploration needed to be done.

After this sobering discussion I was informed that the next port of call was the mouth and throat team who would do further testing to attempt to determine whether there were any primary tumours skulking in the shadows.

The mouth and throat doctor was named Ryan. I felt an instant affinity toward him. If anyone was going to get intimate with me and stick cameras up my nose and their fingers down my throat this was the guy. And by the way, he didn’t disappoint. I don’t remember the exact sequence but briefly he explained that his job was to search for where the cancer might have originated. At this point I thought that the camera’s up the nose and down the throat were going to happen under sedation. I was wrong, yes the big stuff happens when I am out to it but the exploration was about to begin. He took me into a seperate room and explained what he was going to do. A small camera up my nose and down into my throat. He guided me with instructions. “Stick your tongue out as far as you can”, I felt like a NZ rugby player. “Then say AHHHH”, I did this for so long that it started to feel like a Tibetan mantra, after more convolutions he finally guided the camera into my throat. All was well. Then a bit of “deep throat” finger work and back to Georgie.

He found nothing obvious. But he did tell me that I would need an operation on my throat to remove any left over tissue left from when I had my tonsils out 60 years earlier and also some more tissue from the base of my tongue. This will be sent to pathology. I’ll also be having another biopsy of the abnormal, cancerous lymph node … this time a bigger one than I first had. According to Ryan, I will be in a lot of pain for about 2 weeks after the operation and eating won’t be fun.

So, this first operation will happen in the next 30 days. Possibly on Monday December 21. The results will determine the next steps.
It appears likely that I will be having the neck surgery sometime in the new year but there is a slight chance that they will use radiation. It all hinges on the results after the first operation and the pathology.
The neck surgery is about 2-3 hours and apparently is quite intense.
There was a general consensus that I am doing all the right things and that I should keep this up. They also seemed to think that I was fit and healthy enough to get through the operations relatively unscathed.
Here’s what I am hoping.
My immune system was in good enough condition to wipe out the primary tumour and what is left is concentrated in this lymph node in the left side of my neck. The cancer cells that remain will be killed off and I will live happily ever after eating very healthy food, doing lots of exercise and any other “therapies” that will keep my body and cells healthy and happy. I will live a long and adventurous life fill of travel, creativity and good health.
Fingers crossed.

Saturday December 12, 2020

Each day of my life is taking on an almost paramount outlook. Not that it’s exciting by some other standards but the days are going slower which means that I can appreciate everything that happens a bit more. My conscious connection with my environment is more intense than it has been in many decades. When I look at the world around me I see more beauty than I have in a really long time.

I found out yesterday that I am having my first surgery on Monday, December 14. I have been asked to report to Moorabbin Hospital at 8 a.m. Who knows what the day might bring but it was unexpected. The best I had hoped for was Monday December 21, so now I’m a week ahead of my own best expectations.

In the past week or so I have had 2 Pranic Healing sessions. No matter what I do I can’t remember the name of the lady doing them, it is a lovely Indian name that for some reason I just cannot get my head around. That aside, when you do something that you know very little about there is always a certain amount of faith. I have listened to a few podcasts and YouTube clips on Chakras but there is too much to learn so I am casting my fate to the wind and simply looking for changes, empirical changes in my body and habits.

Overall I feel pretty damn good but this could be due to many different factors as there are so many diverse actions that I am taking at the moment. By the way, her name is Ambika. I will have to “chant” her name so I can remember it.

The one really significant change is my sleep. The last 3 nights have been profoundly different than usual. I’ve been going to sleep around midnight. I drop off pretty quickly but I’m still decked out with headphones and listening to a podcast. Then I wake at around 7.30 a.m feeling refreshed, if it wasn’t so chilly in the mornings I could just bound out of bed and go about my day. Somehow I’m feeling that I am experiencing a deeper sleep. Maybe the deep sleep stage has increased in duration. I have not been testing this so it’s really only a gut feeling but it’s enough to assume that I am getting results plus Ambika did say to me that she could feel a change in my energy field and chakras during our second session.

I’ve also been having infra red saunas every day. I have started using the detoxification program on the control panel properly. The thing with an IR sauna is that it’s purpose and function is to raise the core body temperature by 2-3 degrees. This helps the body give up it’s toxins through sweat. It is a deeper process. After 5 years of owning the sauna, I am still stuck in the old habit of expecting external heat and external body warming. After all this time I am now transitioning to accepting that I don’t need to feel the heat like I used to in the traditional hot sauna. I am sweating profusely either way and for some reason I am appreciating the jump into the still cold pool at the end even more than I have in the past.

I also had a long and intimate discussion with my sister Lynette yesterday. We don’t talk all that much but we have a tacit love for each other that goes back to the 1950s and 60s when we spent almost every day together.

Last words for the morning before I get back in the sauna. I had a long conversation with Trinidad yesterday morning. What a bizarre relationship I have with the man who stole my wife 26 years ago. We don’t sit next to each other and talk physically but we do talk on the phone and via texts. I can say almost anything to him and I do. The talks we have are like musical jams. They go anywhere that we randomly take them, history, philosophy, geography, life, death, we never really talk about people or offer each other opinions about other people’s lives. What a good sign this is. I always come away from our conversations feeling that I have learnt something. I told him yesterday what a good friend he is, no embarrassment just the truth.

At this stage of my life I don’t have 100s of close friends, just a few. These friends have been with me for decades and they are incredibly important to me. I can rely on them to be there for me and I can say honestly that I love them.

Sunday December 13, 2020

Around 60 years ago I had my tonsils out. I don’t really know why but back then it was a thing. “They get infected, if they aren’t in your throat there’s nothing to be infected, they don’t die if they don’t have them, so rip them out”. Maybe that was the reason, maybe not but interestingly, I don’t recall anything about the operation except one minuscule misty conceptual moment of being in the corridor outside the operating room and being administered chloroform which was the predecessor to anaesthesia. I don’t recall worrying or being nervous before the operation but I’m pretty certain that all of those emotions would have been there in abundance. This all happened back in or around 1960 when I lived in an Australia flavoured by The White Australia Policy. I can’t believe the powers that be had the audacity to even call it that. Something worth looking into one day.

Now here we are all these years later and Australia is one of the most successful multi-cultural countries on the planet. Of course there is still racism but I suspect all or most of the intolerances are just there now because of ignorance about each other’s daily cultures, religious idiosyncrasies, clothing and food etc and once the ice is broken all it takes for a new group to integrate is about one generation and then we all call them Aussies. The current (I mean a couple of decades) batch of Sudanese will be potentially our first batch of exogenous black Aussies, so we seem to be moving forward in leaps and bounds. Of course the first nation people have been in Australia for tens of thousand years.

Back to the tonsils thing.
Tomorrow I’m back to hospital to have what was left over of my tonsils from my childhood operation removed plus a few other bits and pieces that I’m told that I won’t miss. This is all part of this new, unsuspected cancer journey that I am on. The doctors are looking for something that could be a tumour. I firmly believe the main tumour has been wiped out by my immune system but there is always the chance that there are a “colony of mutant cells” hiding away in my body.
This tissue plus a new biopsy that will be done with a bigger needle than the first time, will be then sent to pathology.
My main responsibility to myself today if to eat a healthy nutritious lunch, go for a long walk, have an hour of oxygen therapy and have a bloody good nights sleep.
Yes, I am a bit nervous but it’s no-where near unbearable.
I slept in this morning mainly because I was wide awake at midnight for some unknown reason. I need to have 8 hours sleep so I put my feet on the ground at 10.30 a.m and turned the sauna on, made myself a pot of black coffee and started typing. Now it’s 11 a.m and the day is moving along at roller coaster speed.

Monday December 14, 2020

One of life’s amazing wonders is how you can bond with a person at some point in your life and then no matter how many years go by, how many moments of silence there are, all of a sudden you are back in touch and it is as if no time has passed and the magic that pulled you together in some distant past is still there. It must be some sort of “spiritual chemistry”.
I got a message from a dear friend this morning. We’ve only seen each other for a few days in the past 40 years and had a few conversations but out friendship is still as fresh and exciting as it was when we first met in the late 1970s.
What a nice way to start my day.

Today I’m off to the Moorabbin Hospital down the end of the street from my old high school. “We honour the school of our youth. In dignity wisdom and truth”… the opening words to our school song written by the then living (1960s) piano player, Mrs Cartwright. She seemed ancient back then but may have only been in her 40s. That’s what youth does to you, everyone older than you looks and most of the time acts ancient.

So “we’ll see what tomorrow may bring” the words from a song by Traffic, one of my favourite bands back then.

The other thing that I’m scratching my head about this morning is a phone conversation that I had with an old and dear friend yesterday. She can be my staunchest ally at times and at others my nemesis. I had given her the web address of my blog which covers my life throughout 2020. Hundreds of pages of words covering all sorts of subjects, viewpoints, emotions and other assorted bits and pieces and she instantly beelined in to anything I have written about Scientology like a post pubescent boy searching for descriptions of sex in an illicit novel. A bit like a Christian searching for something negative that I may have written about the church, Jesus Christ or my faith or lack of it. Not all the fabulous epiphanies that I had experienced.

So there we are on the day before my operation and she brings this up.

Apparently I wrote something that offended her sensibilities somewhere in all of these words. This could have waited for another day, another discussion but for her it was tantamount to sacrilege and a premium ticket to purgatory.

It is now just past 1 P.M, operation is over and the anaesthetic has almost completely worn off. I feel surprisingly well apart from a croaky voice and some gravel and pain in my throat. Pre operation was cool, calm and collected. Nurses and Doctors were all fabulous and with a bit of deep breathing I approached surgery with my usual optimism. Georgie was with me pre-operation and only left when they wheeled me out. The operation was called a tonsillectomy and a pandendoscopy. They took some tissue from my throat and put cameras throughout my body looking for signs of cancer.

Tuesday December 15, 2020

My consciousness aroused and started lighting up at about 7.30 a.m. My plan had been to go to go to sleep at about 9 p.m but alas, I had a snorer next to me, the lights were on and the general bustle of a public hospital ward was not conducive to shut eye. Overall I probably had about 5 hours of decent sleep, the best part seemed to be after 5.30 a.m when the nurse woke me to take my blood pressure.

It looks like this part of the preliminary journey is done now. Georgie will pick me up when the doctors give me the OK to pack my bag.

Which ever way I look at it and whatever to outcome of the current diagnosis cycle I am going to have to lift my game even more than I have been. I should buy Thomas Seyfried’s book “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease”, it appears that he is the present day father of this theory and it rings true for me after a huge amount of research.

The next data I need to pursue is about the nature of cancer and the splitting of cells. I do know that creating a low sugar and consequently low insulin and well oxygenated environment in my body is my primary weapon but I also unfortunately know that the “standard of care” is going to be part of my treatment. That is what I now have to prepare my body for.

There’s no point in asking “Why me?”. Karma is like an income tax, you always have to pay in the end and ultimately my own condition is my responsibility. All I can do now is to be the best version of myself that is possible.

Reaching for health, compassion, forgiveness, love, enthusiasm, exhilaration, creativity, calmness, self exploration and self love. These are my weapons.
I’m taking this experience and turning it into a positive one, consciously taking any lessons that are to be learned on board. I truely believe that I can come out the other end a stronger, more disciplined, worthwhile and overall happier person with a greater appreciation for life and a huge thirst for knowledge.
I’m home now. I’ve just been watching a documentary featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band called Letter to You. It has inspired me to have a go at writing some songs. I’ve got a few lines. It’s 4.05 in the afternoon and I’m feeling some sort of nervous energy like I need to be creating a years output in one afternoon when, really, I don’t need to be creating anything at all.

Just recovering from the operation, that should be my primary task.

Before I left the hospital this morning I set myself the task of engaging old Bill in the bed next door in conversation. I tried twice during the first 24 hours to say hello but I got no reaction and then last night he snored like he was dreaming about being in the trenches in France and being poisoned with mustard gas. It kept all of us in the room awake most of the night. Anyway, after I got dressed the nurses pulled the curtains back and I somehow broke the ice and we had the most wonderful discussion about his life. He didn’t really ask me anything about myself but I’m used to this. The majority of people who you meet for the first time don’t do that. All you have to do is ask the right questions. I heard about his whole life, his wife dying at 38, his 50 year old ice addicted son and his career in the RAAF flying F18s in Australia, Vietnam and elsewhere. It ended up being quite cathartic but mainly for him. He is terribly overweight now at 75 and I even tried to give him some pointers on sugar, carbs and insulin resistance. Who knows, some of it may have sunken in. I don’t know. I’ll probably never hear from him again although I did leave him my contact details.

Wednesday December 16, 2020

Weird. My clarity of mind and brain has been assuaged by the painkillers that have been put into my body since the operation on Monday morning. I felt pretty good yesterday morning when I was still at the hospital but as the day went on I started getting a nervous feeling in my gut and then I really blew it and took an endone which acted like an emotional and physical pile driver sapping out my positivity and optimism.

Yes, my throat is sore and my voice croaky but not enough to fuck up everything that I have strived for over the past 3 weeks. I had genuinely forgotten what exogenous stimulants can do to body and mind.

I feel like I have slid down a corkscrew into some sort of perfidy toward myself and my survival.

So there you have it. I need to be fully in control of my emotions and my physical well being and the only way I can do this from recent experience is putting the best possible fuel in my body with no exceptions, having good sleep, lots of gentle exercise and learning as much as I can about potentially beating cancer.

I went down the rabbit hole of despair for a while last night after taking one endone tablet. Negativity breeds more negativity. Gloom perpetuates more gloom. It’s only when I keep my head above the clouds and breathe in the fresh air of positivity and look at the blue sky that is always there that I am where I need to be spiritually, physically and mentally.

I can beat this motherfucker if I stay in the right head space.

Negativity will just fuck with my stress levels and it all goes downhill from there.
I need to be kind, compassionate, tolerant and disciplined with myself. I need to love myself. Love every moment of life. Every breath. Every smell. Every note of music. I need to pour love out of my heart to the world around me and any people I come in contact with, either in person or digitally.

If ethical behaviour is comprised of contemplating optimum survival then I need to be ethical.
I’m too in love with life to let it slide away.

Doors open and doors close. That is a theme that I need to explore over the coming weeks. It’s just something that came up this morning when I was doing some deep breathing, which by the way was fabulous. The other area for me to take a good hard look at is my confidence in relationship to my creativity. Who knows what I will find.

My throat hurts like crazy this morning. Obviously all of the medication has worn off and what I’m left with is a gauged tonsil on the left side of my throat and the back of my tongue. This caused a bit of difficulty getting to sleep last night but when I did finally get to sleep it was deep and relaxing.

Apart from the almost unbearable pain I feel a lot more positive this morning. That’s the one thing I’ve got to be aware of more than anything else – positivity – keeping my head above the clouds and being fully in the present. Any negativity can just fuck off.

I’m booked for a Pranic healing session at 11 am this morning and then I’ll try to fit an oxygen therapy in after that. We just got a call from Monash and they made an appointment for 2 pm this coming Friday for another biopsy on my lymph node.

I’m wondering a bit more about the journey to come, whether it will be long, short, full of love and support or lonely. I know I have Georgie, Allissa and Nett right there on my case which is comforting. Each of them have there own unique qualities to offer.

Life is beautiful.

As far as food goes I’m useless right now. I tried avocado and some smoked salmon for lunch and it felt like it was ripping a hole in my throat. The best I can tolerate is coconut yoghurt, thick cream and blueberries. I’m missing out on my veggies for a few days but will get back onto the green smoothies tomorrow. I gave in and started taking pain killers last night. I have had trouble swallowing all day and the drugs take the edge off while at the same time making me relatively lethargic and a touch apathetic although I can still assume a social front.
Pranic Healing session went well. Ambika is lovely. I’m pretty certain it is making a difference but I have to admit at the same time that there is a fair amount of faith involved. The oxygen session after the healing session was well worthwhile. I’m back for more on Friday. I also had a 2 hour infrared sauna later in the afternoon and then jumped in my pool.

Thursday December 17, 2020

How is it that we can experience amnesia omitting people to whom we were once close, even sometimes like brothers?

I haven’t had many “best friends” during my life but somebody who fits that definition or should I say did way back in the early 1970s was my dear friend Barry Munyard. We were Baz and Gaz, we shopped at The House of Merrivale like dandies, dedicated followers of fashion for a while until we chose the furs, denims, jewellery and robes and silken Chinese jackets of hippiedom. We did drugs together, smoked marijuana, dropped acid and explored the new freedoms and values of the early years of that fluid decade.

Jazz fusion, drugs, gurus, political/anti-war demonstrations, girls and boys, hippies, living in the country, hitch-hiking, not working … this was my decade of big changes and Barry was there at the beginning. This was the decade when I left home, I left work, I played in bands, I lived in share houses, I started funny little businesses, I met Flora, I met Melanie, I “met” L Ron Hubbard and I became a father, I worked as a baker and became a candle and hand made knitting needle maker amongst many other short careers like street cleaning, driving a truck and even hay baling.

So much change in such a short amount of time.

Every new week an unimagined and sometimes seminal experience. Moving lock, stock and barrel to a little cottage in Healesville, far away from friends and familiarity. Last minute decisions to hitch-hike up the Hume Highway to Sydney late in the cool early evening and arriving in Glebe the next morning, living with squatters who didn’t give a shit for society’s rules. Sharing countless houses with crazy people who came and went as they pleased. A procession of faces and experiences that shaped the rest of my life and my attitudes to it.

Barry was there at the beginning.

We met in the Display Dept at Myer, Chadstone. Barry arrived a couple of years later than I did. A boy from Oakleigh like some actor playing a role in a Fellini movie, actually Satyricon comes to mind. We hung out together at work even getting stoned on the job. I may have still been my junior a.k.a apprentice when I first met him. He supplanted the straighter, more Bondish 60’s style debonair Donald Baird as my best friend. Don lived close by to my home and picked me up each morning in his flashy green Triumph sports car to drive me to Chadstone, with the hood down, through the streets of suburbia. He went on to become an internationally famous pole vaulter.

I was playing in a blues band at the time, when I turned 18 with the help of my Dad I purchased a 1958 grey Holden Station Wagon that cost me $200 and gave me many years of service and road trips. We drove to so many places together in that car, got up to so much mischief.

I don’t remember too many things that Barry and I did together (probably due to a significant level of substance abuse) but overall back then he seemed more adventurous and willing to experiment than I did. If I remember rightly his Dad had a buzz cut and looked like the Ozzie Nelson Dad in an American sitcom family TV show that starred Ricky Nelson. We both had sisters but they were younger and far removed from our lives.

Barry was more suspicious of Gurus than I was, I’ll give him that and smart he was. I got vaguely involved with a guy named Dave who looked more like a bikie than a guru. Barry was far more sceptical than me and decided that he would find enlightenment through LSD as opposed to faux Indian mysticism. Luckily I pulled the plug on the Guru just in the nick of time, but that’s another story. It only took me about 2 more years to find another ‘guru’ which in some ways ended my close friendship with Barry.

We were in the full swing of our friendship when I met Flora in the latter part of 1972. I had met Flora briefly after a gig we had gone to when I was living in Middle Park and soon after Barry and I drove to the S.K.I.F camp somewhere on the Mornington Peninsula where we were planning on spending the night with this group of young left wing middle class Jewish kids. Flora was there when we arrived after driving there in the grey Holden that I mentioned earlier. Later that night we dropped acid and ended up spending the night sitting in some grotty swamp that became a wonderland as the moon rose higher in the sky. Barry was convinced that he could fly and kept jumping off a small cliff calling out to everyone to “look at him flying”, while I sat with my head cradled in the lap of a rather large Russian Jewish girl named Tanya. What a crazy night that was but in some ways it epitomised our friendship “discovery of the great unknown”.
Flora and I moved up to a cottage in Don Rd called Rosemary Lodge, Healesville sometime in 1973 after we had travelled to Nimbin in May of that year to attend the first hippy Aquarius Festival which was one of the seminal events in the history of Australian Hippies. The rent in Healesville was $10 per week. Barry stayed with us at Healesville quite often, eventually moving up to a property a few kilometres away where he worked with a jewellery designer. Other friends moved to a farm diagonally across from ours so we had quite a community. We occasionally took L.S.D but if I remember rightly Barry seemed to drop a trip almost every “other” day.

I came back to Melbourne in early 1975 after Flora and I ended our relationship and got into Scientology which sent us on separate pathways. I hitched a ride back to town and got picked up by a guy riding a motor cycle who was on his way to satsang.

I spent a bit of time with Barry again in or around 1986 when he lived in Merimbula where he had settled after travelling the world in the prior 10 years. He lived with his American wife and 2 young children. They had set up a kite business which seemed quite appropriate and even exotic.

It was another 10 years until we crossed paths again in 1996. We met in Brunswick St for a meal together. Ironically he had “cool scars” on his throat as a result of an operation to remove throat cancer.

Friday December 18, 2020

I have a love hate relationship happening with pain killers since my operation last Monday. On Tuesday I glibly stated that I wouldn’t be taking any drugs unless I really, really had to, it didn’t take long before my pain tolerance was reached. I gave in to the little white tablets.

The left side of my throat is still in excruciating pain which makes swallowing an arduous task. I’m living on liquid meals like green smoothies, coconut yoghurt with blueberries and mashed cauliflower. I tried a salad a few days ago and realised that mush was the way to go for now. This morning I lay in bed drifting through murky dreams of loss and despair but couldn’t convince myself to bound out of bed because I was convinced that things would come good, they didn’t. As soon as my feet hit the ground I realised that being awake was a far superior condition to be in.

I listened to more Professor Thomas Seyfried interviews last night and now I am pretty much thoroughly convinced that his theories on cancer as a metabolic disease of the mitochondria are the right path to follow.

Cancer cells thriving in a state of fermentation makes sense to me as a person with no real background in genes and biochemistry. It just makes sense that by getting your glucose levels down, insulin levels stable and your oxygen levels up that you are helping to create a hostile environment for the cancer cells. Like everything else on this planet the goal of the Cancer cells is to survive and they have returned to an ancient pathway that all living organisms used when there was no oxygen on earth, fermentation. I make kombucha quite often. And I am constantly amazed at the speed with which the new baby scoby grows in the big glass jar of sugary water.

Today will be my last major test before the next fateful meeting with the Head and Neck team on Christmas Eve. As much as I don’t always like this quality of glib optimism I am still going to hold onto it for now and have decided that the outcome will be positive, any cancer cells that are in my body will be malevolent and hibernating like a big white bear in the arctic circle.