Settling Into the Treatment Routine
April 2019
Sure enough, as the naturopath promised, the sense of overwhelm slowly started to dissipate as I incorporated each new part of the Kelley Protocol into my daily life and things started to settle into a regular routine. It took several weeks to receive my pancreatic enzymes which gave me time to complete the liver cleanse that had to be done before I could start the enzymes. This was not a pleasant ordeal as I felt quite nauseous after swallowing the liver-cleansing concoction. Im assuming that this meant that I have a lot of toxins in my liver and gallbladder that need to be gotten rid of. Since starting this protocol, I’ve noticed that my appetite is very weak. Since I lost so much weight while on vegan, raw vegan and all-fruit diets, I knew I could not afford to lose my appetite. I’m still not sure what is causing that. At first I attributed it to the very limited diet I’m restricted to, but I found that my appetite was not stimulated by the thought of a big, juicy cheeseburger either. I realized that my appetite seemed to rebound considerably on the days I was off of the enzymes, so perhaps that is the mysterious factor making the difference. I’ve come up with some creative ways to get my nutrients in such as smoothies and wraps made from sautéed veggies in coconut wraps. At least I’m not losing weight and I’m holding my own in that regard.
Important Point: My naturopath informed me that high doses of Vitamin C deactivate the pancreatic enzymes! So if you’re doing high-dose Vitamin C IV’s, you’ll need to decide if you want to continue those or do the pancreatic enzyme protocol. If you continue to do both at the same time, it looks like you’ll just be throwing money away on the enzymes and not deriving any benefit from them.
My naturopath introduced me to the idea of injecting myself with mistletoe extract. This is an extremely popular anti-cancer remedy that has been used in Germany and Europe for over 100 years. I didn’t rule it out, but felt I had enough on my plate just settling into the basics of the Kelley Protocol. I asked if we could re-visit that down the road and he agreed that we’d do that. You may remember that Suzanne Sommers used mistletoe in her recovery from breast cancer.
Much to my disappointment, my swollen feet and ankles and severe joint and muscle pain not only remained, but seemed to intensify. I tried a number of tactics to isolate the culprit causing the problems, all to no avail: an elimination diet to rule out possible allergies, increasing my thyroid medication, medical tests to rule out blood clots, heart problems and autoimmune illnesses. Nothing worked. I have to take excessive amounts of ibuprofen to remain functional, which I know is very dangerous as it can cause kidney and heart failure. Because these symptoms came on so suddenly after being bitten several times on New Year’s Eve, I asked my naturopath if this could possibly be Lyme disease. He replied that it certainly fit the time line of the way that Lyme develops and progresses and that it is not spread only by ticks. He said that such an infection would need to be cleared to free up the immune system to attack the cancer. Given this, he suggested that rather than spend $800 on a test that might give a “false negative” result, we could proceed to treat it as if I have Lyme disease by using very potent herbal formulas. I agreed to this as I suffer horrible side effects from antibiotics (the usual treatment for Lyme disease). It’s very early days in this particular treatment, but I’ll keep you posted as time goes on.
In mid-April, I became more receptive to the idea of trying the mistletoe extract since I had become more and more comfortable with the Kelley protocol. The naturopath had to order the vials of mistletoe extract for me and I had to order the syringes and needles. The thought of injecting myself with a needle didn’t exactly thrill me but I figured I could get through it. And I did. The idea is to slowly build up the dosage injected (which is done every other day). A normal reaction is to see a pink patch of skin at the site of the injection, no larger than 2 inches in diameter. Anything larger than this is considered an excessive reaction requiring that I drop back to a lower dosage. This has been a real exercise in patience as I experience normal and excessive reactions, the last one being quite large! There is definite soreness, pain and swelling at the injection site, but this is a desired, delayed-type cellular immune response. Yay????? The purported benefits of mistletoe therapy are that they not only fight cancer but they improve the patient’s quality of life. Most patients are reported to quickly experience an improvement in their general condition, sleep, appetite, as well as performance. Mistletoe can also relieve pain caused by tumors, strengthen the immune system and reduce side effects from chemo and radiation. They jury is still out on all of that in my case; it’s just too early report anything of substance at this point. I’ll definitely keep you posted, however.