Cancer Journal

 I went in this morning to have my PSA# checked again.  I got the results a little while ago and the number remains too low to be detectable.   Good news that I should be nothing but enthusiastic about.  I do feel a little like the Los Angeles weatherman who has nothing but blue skies and sunshine to report on.  (That was a movie.  I don't know its name.  Weather in S. California has gotten more turbulent since it was made.)  In my last blog, I reported that a steady diet of good news has made life more ordinary than when I had 3-7 years to live.  They haven't changed that number but I do figure to see how my 10 year old grandson does in college. Jan Carroll, generous and thoughtful woman that she is, commented on the last blog that the trick was "to work toward creating a practice of remembering, seeing and feeling life as more precious, of nurturing a sense of wonder."  and yes, that has to be right.  It does call f...

  I w nt in this morning to have my PSA# checked again.  I got the results a little while ago and the number remains too low to be detectable.  Good news that I should be nothing but enthusiastic about.  I do feel a little like the Los Angeles weatherman who has nothing but blue skies and sunshine to report on.  (That was a movie; I don't know it's name. Weather in S. California has gotten more turbulent since it was made.) In my last blog, I reported that a steady diet of good news has made life more ordinary than it had been when I had 3-7 years to live.  They haven't changed that number but I do figure to see how my 10 year old grandson does in college.   Jan Carroll, generous and thoughtful woman that she is, commented on the last blog that the trick was   " to work toward creating a practice of remembering, seeing and feeling life as more precious, of nurturing a sense of wonder." ( As you can see, I have mastered copy and paste) an...

 My sister emailed me an article from the Atlantic  by a prominent Christian writer and pastor, Timothy Heller called "Growing My Faith in the Face of Death", March 7, 2021.  He reports that he has received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, a form of cancer for which life expectancy is calculated in months. not years. Although he had counseled many who were facing death, he reports a challenge in actually doing what he had counseled.  He states that we carry an unconscious assumption of a kind of immortality and are affronted when the assumption falls apart.  But then there is an adjustment to the prospect of impending death.  That adjustment occurs in mental reconciling but also emotional acceptance.  He reports that the old Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards noted that people can all say that honey is sweet and you can totally accept that that is true.  However, this is altogether different from putting a spoonful of honey in your mouth.  T...

 Today, I will speak on the subject of "resistant starch."  Some may ask what that has to do with cancer.  As it happens, I put "resistant starch" and "cancer" into Google search and got a report that there are 648,000 hits for the association of those two terms.  That's enough of an association in the Schaefer household.  For anyone who comments that a Google hit is not what it used to be, I will ignore you.   Let me explain what resistant starch is.  It is starch--pasta, potato, rice etc. that does not get digested in either the stomach or the small intestine but remains intact until it reaches the large intestine where it serves as nutrition for the microbiome that inhabits that organ.  It therefor avoids all the bad things that starch does, namely weight gain, bumping up an insulin response and its various other adverse effects  and then provides the benefits associated with well fed microbiome which they are finding out more and mor...

     More about my appointment with Dr. Gering.  She said that Mayo Clinic, my primary health care provider, "plays with her."  I should say!  She felt my throat, thought the thyroid seemed funny, put in an order at Mayo for an ultrasound and I got a call from Mayo the next day to set up ultrasound appointment.  It put me in mind to sing a little of, "The farmer and the cowboy should be friends."        Dr. Gering encourages an organic food diet.  I have a hard time with the price which is foolish because the price difference is trivial and I can handle it.  Nonetheless...  I tell her that I like polenta which is a fancy term for corn meal mush.  I'm pretty sure it's one of the things the little rabbit says "good night"  to in "Good Night Moon"  Anyway, she mentions glyphosates. I tell her I buy it at Weavers.  That cuts no mustard with her.  Weavers is a country store, run by Amish, with...

      Besides Mayo Clinic, I doctor at Spero Wellness Clinic which bills itself as complimentary, not alternative medicine. It's practice is functional medicine.  To quote Dr. Kristie Gering, its director, "The functional medicine philosophy is searching for and attempting to correct the root cause of a problem rather than simply using medication for symptom management.  The functional treatment approach utilizes food & lifestyle first, then targets herbs, nutritional supplements and other modalities second and then medications if needed."     Since November, I have been getting Vitamin C infusions, 100 grams per week.  It takes about three hours and I have pleasant visits with whomever I share the treatment room with.  A young fellow has heart irregularities after contracting the corona virus.  Vitamin C is a potentially effective treatment for that.  The lady who hates cancer that I wrote a poem about  is now cancer ...