CHEMO UPDATE from Ashley

Hello All,

Al and I survived chemotherapy all right today. The intravenous benadryl makes me drunk in the silliest way (I have to stifle the giggles) and then I conk out for a few hours. Then I come to but am too groggy to do much but listen to music.

Today I listened to Nina Simone all day, to whom I was introduced by Howie and Trude in 1983 and it's been pure bliss ever since. I never get tired of Nina and for me, she works for every mood. I think, however, that today while wearing headphones I was singing along a little too loudly. People were looking at me and they weren't happy (not that people are all that happy in a chemo infusion room).

I feel the need to summarize the cancer treatments we're pursuing. First, we are doing conventional and caustic (to put it mildly) chemotherapy to try to put the cancer in remission. These drugs are carboplatin, taxol and avastin. That is all covered by insurance except for co-pays.

We are pursuing complementary therapies that are not covered by insurance and will add up to around $5000 over the next month. $4000 will be to receive 18 infusions of intravenous vitamin C. There are about a dozen research articles on the hostile environment extremely high levels of vitamin c in your plasma cause to cancer cells (while working no harm to healthy, noncancerous cells). See, e.g., this blog entry from Chapel Hillians Mark Mead, MSc and Michael Sharp, M.D.at <http://www.globalhealingoptions.com/Blog/Entries/2008/7/21_Entry_1.html>, where they reference much of this work.

The other uncovered costs are mostly nutritional, which I'll write about another time.

Speaking of nutritional therapies, the food everyone has been bringinghas been just amazing and much eaten and appreciated! Thank you.

Thank you for the dishwasher Carolina and others.

Thank you for everything.

Love,
Ashley