Hi Everyone!  I wanted to start out letting you know how much I have been appreciating your well-wishes and love. Your cards, phone calls, messages, physical support, etc. sustain me as I travel through this intense experience.  I haven't been able to call everyone back who has left me a message, but I think about you all the time and little by little am trying to connect with you as I'm able.    This week brought really good news from my oncologist.  Peter took me to an appointment I had made a good while ago (before the relapse) and had never cancelled when I went into the hospital.  After Dr. Polikoff agreed to do the spinal tap during this appointment, I asked him if we could postpone it until I'm finished with my healing sessions so we can verify at that time if I'm indeed in a remission.  He said OK, so I'll have the spinal tap in September when he returns from his vacation.   But I took the general appointment anyway, just so I could see him and he could see how well I'm doing.  The last time he saw me I had one foot on the other side and he didn't think I'd make it without any traditional Western treatment.

I walked into his office without a walker and he was blown away!  He told me that in all his years as an oncologist (35) he has never seen anything like this and that I'm "unique" in his experience.  He further said that if we were to give me a spinal tap that day (instead of having postponed it a month) it wouldn't show any growth of the leukemia and most likely would show less or none at all, just based on how well I looked and am doing!  He was curious to know what kind of "energy treatment" I was receiving and I told him.  He's a very conservative type of doctor, and very respected in Kaiser. He's in charge of all chemotherapy clinical trials within Kaiser, for example, and was voted "partner of the year" last year, so is quite invested in chemotherapy protocols. We were so bouyed up by his response that we actually went out to a restaurant afterwards to celebrate. However, I realized when we got home that I had overdone it and was completely exhausted.  Nevertheless, sitting in that restaurant and feeling "normal" again was a real boost to my spirit.

The other news is that I had my bloodwork done this week and it was, and still is I feel, abnormally low. I've been more tired these last two days than I've been in awhile, sleeping or resting most of the day.  My hemoglobin, for example, is 8.5 and the normal is 13.    This is what carries oxygen to the blood and muscles. They give blood transfusions when you get as low as 8.0.   I've been hovering around this number recently, but they won't transfuse me til I'm actually at 8 or below.   So I've been reading online about how to boost my hemoglobin through diet and have added some iron to the super healthy smoothies I have each day.  I hope this helps.  We'll see.  My naturally curious mind wonders why it's so low these days, but there is really no telling since what I'm doing is so unprecedented.  So I have to go on faith and trust that all will be well.....

Often I feel overwhelmed with gratitude -- gratitude that I happen to know most likely the only two people on the planet who give this treatment and they happen to live close by, gratitude that through their help and the help of all of you and the supplements I'm taking, I'm turning around a deadly form of cancer that is 93% terminal when a relapse happens, gratitude that it has brought me so much closer to my dear family and friends and to people in my past whom I needed to forgive and love again.  If the relapse hadn't have occurred I wouldn't have gone so deeply into my soul. 

Here's a quote Peter sent me this morning.... 

"I marvel not only over the capacity to see, but also for the gift of reflection, the ability to integrate each new vision with all previous experience, to know that I am connected to all that has been, all that is now, and all that is to come. I can choose to live in contemplative fidelity to each moment of radical amazement, knowing that something great is indeed happening in my soul." -- Judy Cannato from Radical Amazement

Love, Heidi