#61 Ketoflacidosis and OK not OK.

For the past week or two I've been on a regime. I wake up. I ride my bike for 45 minutes. I go to radiation. I bike home. I check out my garden, maybe clean up the yard a little and then two days out of five of the week days I pack a little green juice and a water and I drive to Toronto. I then undergo hyperthermia treatment for an hour and get back in my car and drive home. When I get home I take some supplements, I spend some time with the kids I hug them a lot and watch them play in the yard. Then I take some more supplements and drink some water and start thinking about dinner. I chug herbs and Essiac all day long too.

In between all of those activities I'm constantly monitoring my glucose levels and my ketone levels. For those who aren't familiar with what "normal" glucose levels are, a healthy person generally has a blood glucose between 4.5 and 6 and 7 depending on who you ask. But basically, in that range. When you eat sugar, your blood glucose rises, your body releases insulin and drives down the blood sugar. If you eat a whole bunch of sugar your body overcompensates by releasing a whole bunch of insulin. If this pattern continues over time, the body gets tired of releasing all that insulin and slowly the cells don't respond and you develop diabetes. This is called type two diabetes. I don't know why I explained all that, maybe just for reference. So many people have diabetes now.

Anyway, there is something associated with insulin called IgF - Insulin Growth Factor. This promotes tumor growth and as you can guess, it's something released after sugar is eaten and insulin is released. Not only do cancer cells use glucose as their primary fuel, this IgF is bad news it helps them grow and spread. Not only do cancer cells use glucose but they use glutamine - which is an amino acid that we all produce and eat everyday but is found in high amounts in meat, poultry, eggs, cabbage and some in dark greens. I get anxious when I realize that really everything feeds cancer but the best we can do are make wise choices. This is where ketosis comes in for me.

Ketones are produced when there is no glucose to burn. They are made from fats. The whole process is complicated, but if carbohydrates and proteins are restricted enough the body becomes "fat adapted" and enters a ketogenic state. This is where fat is used as fuel, not glucose, and cancer cells can't use ketones like glucose so it causes them great stress. There are some studies that say cancer cells adapt and use ketones anyway, but the leading nutritional researchers (Thomas Seyfried, Neil McKinney) advocate ketogenic diet for cancer.

So after much research and back and forth I have embarked on a therapeutic ketogenic diet for cancer. It's been about 4 weeks. It was a TOUGH four weeks. And I mean tough. I wanted to eat so many things, I just felt like an empty shell, I was constantly thinking about what I couldn't eat, trying to balance my intake, get enough fat, not too much protein and so few carbs....but now... I feel good. My diet is still so limited. I eat 80% fat, 15% protein and less than 15g of carbohydrates a day. I remind myself this is one of the most severe therapeutic diets there are so it's OK to feel like my options and culinary world are a little flacid at times. That's what it's going to take for now. So I'm doing it. I also take metformin, a diabetic drug that has been repurposed for breast cancer and helps to prevent the liver from making excess glucose and releasing it into the blood.

I measure my glucose levels and ensure that they are below 4.0 (which is low). I measure my ketones (which for a normal person would maybe be 0) I ensure they are at least 3.0 but closer to 5.0 which is hard to achieve. I do this multiple times a day. I swig MCT oil daily. I eat fat bombs, I eat greens and green juice and fish every couple days, lots of salad and nuts. I drink a chaga bullet proof each day. It's a full time job.

On top of these measures I'm taking exemestane which is an Aromatase Inhibitor. It prevents the conversion of estrogen in the body. I've read it's got some bad side effects, hot flashes, bone and joint pain, depression, moodiness and general shit quality of life. I haven't experienced these and I hope I don't but I think a lot of that has to do with my clean lifestyle and the fact that I try to keep toxins to a minimum and sleep 7-8 hours a night.

I'm also 4 weeks into my anti-depressant. It's the first time I've ever been on one and I have to say, I don't feel worse. I don't feel like I'm joyful all the time but there are moments when I don't feel like crying all the time. There are moments when I look around and think....today is the day...it's the only one I've got.

I'm not crediting the pills for that alone. I wake up each morning and tell myself three things I'm grateful for. It's not hard to pick three. I still wake up with my heart pounding, trying for the first few minutes to accept again that I battle cancer, that my life is so different, but then I immediately force myself to move past that and be grateful I have another day with my kids, with my family and to live my life.

I am 6 days away from finishing radiation. I have radiation dermatitis on much of the front of my chest and on my shoulder blade. It's like a bad sunburn that kind of blisters. It's not fun. I have to slather it multiple times a day with a special cream my naturopath made me that's full of turmeric so it turns everything yellow and I've ruined some tshirts and bed sheets but it's worth it just to get the relief from the itching and burning from the radiation. Anyone who says radiation is easy is lying. It's not like chemo but it's no walk in the park. It's tiring on another level. A mental level, you know what's it's doing to you long term, but also short term it saps energy. The body is constantly being broken down and trying to repair. It's a lot.

I've gotten a few messages asking me if I'm OK. And I'm still not quite OK. I'm getting used to the idea that battling cancer is my thing right now. I tell myself there is no cancer in my body, I try to think positively about my prognosis, no one really knows if they got it all....I have moments when I slip into that dark hole where my life is short and miserable but I pull myself out and look at my children and the sky and trees and all the beauty there is in the world.

My naturopath told me the other day that for some people cancer just is a nuisance. It's not something that kills you right away, it's just like an auto immune disease that needs to be managed.

I'm learning to let go of the fear that cancer is beyond my control. I choose how I spend my days and I'm getting more educated and making choices to improve my odds of survival. I am becoming a more positive person and I appreciate more in the small moments of the day. I also surrender to the fact that I can't predict the future and to fear it is to waste my moment.

I'm still not OK, but I'm learning how to be not OK and still carry on and enjoy life. I was never promised a perfect life, one without struggle or adversity and up until now I'd say I've had it pretty good. I'm toughening up, I'm choosing to see the bright side and I focus on the day I have and try not to predict how many more there might be.

I write to my children every single night in little journals I bought for them, which takes away from my blogging, but it helps me feel that whenever I'm gone, may it be years or decades, they will always have those days of mine to read moments to share from me.

I'm not OK but I'm learning everyday that the secret to being OK is in the breath in and the breath out. In the one moment you're in. No others are promised. There are good ones and there are bad ones, scary and hopeful and light and dark.

It's all these things that make up a life. I'm blessed to have mine in all it's complexity. It's teaching me much about myself, the world and life I hadn't considered before.

It's OK to not be OK all the time. But you can't spend all your time in dumps. That's a life wasted.

Breathe in and breathe out. Every new moment is a new level of OKness. They all pass....

It all does. All we can do is our best.