We have just arrived back in Hamilton after spending a week in Canandaigua with Lennie’s sister and father. His 2 daughters and the new baby at 3 months old flew up from Florida to stay with us. It was a little family reunion that I thought might do Lennie the world of good, just to re-connect with family, despite the 2 1/2 hour drive.
His sister has a gorgeous home on a hill above one of New York’s finger lakes, so it was a little like being at a resort, but without the staff. I did most of the cooking to make sure that Lennie ate as well as possible even though I am trying to force food into him at times. We fight over his food all the time. If he likes it he will eat, like the pancakes I made with quinoa flour and farm eggs and almond milk. He managed to eat 5, but when it came to steamed vegetables and homemade bean soup he suddenly had lost his appetite. Sadly the diarrhea has continued, along with the hemorrhoids and his weight has now dropped to 190 this morning.
It almost broke my heart when Lennie told me that at his present rate of losing 2 pounds per week that he only had about 15 weeks left before he was too weak and malnourished to fight any longer. So we two have made a pact and that is that he will eat whatever I give him for 1 week to see if we can improve his bowels. I have started him on a very bland diet of oatmeal, bananas, cooked apples, blueberries and just a few other plain foods that are usually well-tolerated. About a week ago Lennie started taking in earnest essential fatty acids in a 9 – 3 ratio of Efamol brand of Evening Primrose Oil and Carlson’s Cod Liver Oil. He had started on these back last August after a fatty acid expert (Paul Beatty) had talked to me, but we did not take them in the specified dose, nor had we added the Cod Liver Oil to our regimen. As of last week I have taken him off all other supplements just to try and get his bowels working again.
This morning we went to a Chinese medicine master in Mississauga who came highly recomended by a woman who was in end stage colon cancer with only about 3 months to live. That was over 6 years ago, thanks to Paul Beatty with the fatty acids and Master Lee. Master Lee looked at Lennie’s eyes and tongue, both of which are ancient practices of diagnosing illness. He did acupuncture, acupressure and gave him a mixture of different herbs to stop the diarrhea and a peppermint oil infusion for the hemorrhoids and another ancient remedy of applying crushed garlic to a specific point of the soles of his feet overnight to help his intestinal tract.
Strangely this brings back to my mind an incident about 25 years ago when a friend of mine who was in those days ‘into’ acupressure. She had shown me the area of my foot that was for digestion and it was the exact same spot that Master Lee marked. I can’t say exactly what is working, but Lennie took 2 doses of the herbs and is now sleeping. His diarrhea stopped this afternoon and so far has not returned. After a very poor appetite over the past couple of weeks, he ate his entire supper and had a second helping.
I like to believe that throughout our lives there are constant open doors that the universe places infront of us, but invisible to mortal being. These doors can only be felt by our psyche or our intuition. Most people may choose to ignore these feelings, but for those of us who step through some of these doors, we are rewarded with the help that others have to offer. These two men came to us when we needed their help. They were always there, but unseen to us until the universe set them in our path and us in theirs. I refuse to believe that Lennie has only 15 weeks left and I won’t let him believe it either. I keep reminding him that he has come from stage 4 to stage 2 in less than a year. That is an incredible feat to accomplish without surgery, or chemo. It is just the pain and the diarrhea that have worn him down to the depths of despair. So now he sleeps – with his garlic bound feet – and tomorrow will dawn a brighter day.
Vehementer vive, valde ama,
Kathryn