Iodine Therapy and Confusion

Since the last ultrasound report that showed the tumor had grown again (after shrinking the time before), I have been on the web searching for answers. There was a book I had read about called Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live without It by Dr. David Brownstein. So I ordered this from Amazon and received it last Friday. In his book he recommends supplementing your diet with Iodoral, a form of iodine and iodide. I will not attempt to get into the science of it.

I also ordered 12.5 mg Iodoral pills. I began taking a half a pill/day two Saturdays ago. I upped this to 1 pill/day last Saturday. Iodine supplementation is controversial. There are many voices on the web that say that it can be damaging to your thyroid.

Dr. Brownstein, though, makes a very convincing case that nearly all of us our seriously iodine deficient and that it is likely the cause of many cancers and thyroid disorders. In his book he outlines a plan to detoxify and restore your body’s iodine. On the one hand he makes it seem very safe and doable on your own; on the other hand he says in several places that you should work with a doctor.

I would very much like to do this, but I have been hoping to find someone to oversee it– to test my blood levels. So on Monday I called Dr. Brownstein’s holistic practice in Michigan to see if he did phone consultations or if they could recommend a doctor in the Boston area. I told the woman on the phone that I had papillary carcinoma, and she said very emphatically that they didn’t do phone consults and that even if I lived in the area, they wouldn’t treat my cancer. You need to see your oncologist for that, she told me. We can only support the treatment your oncologist prescribes.

This was discouraging, and also seems crazy. Dr. Brownstein says in several places that he supports healing the root of the problem, not removing the symptoms, which is the only thing the oncologist is interested in. She did give me the phone number of the Broda Barnes Foundation which she said could provide a referral. I looked it up, and I think the referral would be for a natural endocrinologist. Which might be what I need anyway. I called and left a message. I haven’t heard back yet.

Meanwhile I’ve been taking the Iodoral and feeling uncertain and confused and worried, and unsupported by my doctor and the healthcare community. I don’t think I have noticed any difference since beginning to take it. It may be that I need a much higher dosage. I am going to gradually increase it and will also be supplementing with Vitamin C, Celtic Sea Salt, and drinking lots of water as he recommends in his book.

But to get to the confusion. It occurred to me this morning that I am choosing confusion as a state of mind, and that it is not helping. I found this definition of confusion in The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament, a book that has been massively helpful to me.

Here it is, from 2 Corinthians, Chapter 1:

“Confusion says that the events in your life are lord over you. Confusion says the events in your life may bring you joy or sorrow, or pain or peace, or fear or safety, or danger, or frustration, or any number of feelings, thoughts and reactions. But always, confusion says the events are lord and you are subject, in all circumstances, to react accordingly to your lord.”

Then it continues:

“The true interpretation comes from who you are. You are not subject to a lord who rules over you. You are lord of your own subject. In other words, your experience is given you, because you have chosen it. And so, if you would have another experience, you must choose differently.”

This is a lesson I seem to have to relearn over and over again. I feel all sorts of confusion because I believe that there is a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do, and I am afraid to choose wrongly. I think that it is possible to have an experience that I don’t want to have– and forget that I choose the experience first.

“To learn who you are, do not seek an experience that will give you what you want. Choose instead to be independent of your experience…

Experience is not the maker of you. It is for this reason that you do have a choice. Will you let experience tell you how you are to feel? Or will you let how you feel tell experience what kind of experience it is to be?”

And so my plan for now is to quiet my mind. To let go of confusion and worries about possible outcomes. To remember that I am a creator and that my intention is to heal– not just the thyroid cancer but my split mind. I give everything the purpose that it is to have– it is I who decide the purpose.

Also I intend to continue to take Iodoral, upping the dosage by half a 12.5 mg pill each week, and to monitor the effects.

Peace.

Doing “The Work” on my fears about cancer

Writing this blog has made me realize that I have a lot more fear around thyroid cancer and cancer in general than I thought. Since I was diagnosed I have been experiencing this cycle:

I have an ultrasound scan and find out that it has grown (or once in a while not grown or shrunk)–> I feel fear about the cancer growing–>I take actions in the world to try to stop this growth (changing my diet, doing cleanses, doing alternative therapies, etc.)–> these actions along with time ease my fear–> I go back to living normally for the most part–>anxiety returns as another scan approaches–> I have a scan–>…

In each cycle, the fear that I experience lessens. When I first found out that I had cancer I went on a raw food diet for a month then loosened up to allow chicken and fish and cooked vegetables. I did this for 3 months and lost nearly 10 pounds. I was thinner than I’ve ever been. A friend was really impressed by my willpower, and I remember telling her, “It’s not willpower; it’s pure fear.”

So after many cycles, and much lessening of fear, I was under the impression that I had nearly let go of all fear of my cancer when I began to write this blog. I was searching on Google to see if it would show up in the search results, and all kinds of sites about thyroid cancer popped up. It freaked me out. I have read very little about thyroid cancer– or any kind of cancer for that matter– because I don’t want to be told anything bad. One of the listings said something about a woman’s thyroid cancer metastasizing. Yikes!

So now I see that I have more fear to root out. A friend recently reminded me of Byron Katie’s Work, and I decided I should do it on my fear that I am risking my life or my health by not having thyroid surgery. 

Here is my fearful belief: I am risking my life and health by not having thyroid surgery.

1. Is it true?  No.

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?  Definitely not.

 3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

I get very unsure of myself. I get anxious. Mostly I get anxious but don’t actually think about it. I don’t follow the thought anywhere in my mind. I just push the thought away. I avoid any remembrance of that thought—and so I haven’t wanted to talk to people who have chosen surgery. I dread the thought of talking to my doctor after a scan. I don’t want to talk to people who are going to promote surgery for me. I hide the fact that I have thyroid cancer from people because I don’t want to see that thought reflected back to me.

4. Who would you be without the thought?

Boy, I would be much less unsure about what to do. I would stop these cycles of fear and forgetting. I would be much more open about having thyroid cancer. For instance, I would definitely not turn comments off in my blog. I would be freer and happier. I would be more confident on my path of healing. I really wouldn’t care what other people thought. It would seem irrelevant.

The Turnarounds

Turnaround #1: I am not risking my life and  health by not having thyroid surgery.

 Example 1: I have had cancer for 3 years now, and if anything my health is improving. I am still alive and fully functioning.

 Example 2:  I have regular ultrasounds, and to some extent these keep watch for the cancer metastasizing. If a nearby lymph node is enlarged, it can show that the cancer has reached the lymph nodes. For the last two years of scans there have been no suspicious lymph nodes.

 Example 3: Thyroid cancer is a very slow growing type of cancer. Although surgery seems to be recommended unilaterally by conventional medicine, it appears that the timeframe is not urgent. [This example is not really bringing me peace since 3 years is a long time to wait for surgery.]

 Turnaround #2: I am risking my life and health by having thyroid surgery.

 Example 1: Any kind of surgery comes with risks. You hear this said all the time. To be anaesthetized and to be cut open are both risks to my life and health.

Example 2: Once my thyroid is removed, I will no longer have a functioning thyroid (which I do have now). This is certainly a risk to my health. I read that everyone who has thyroid surgery becomes hypothyroid. I will be dependent upon thyroid hormones for the rest of my life.

Example #3: I have read that there is a risk to your vocal chords if you have thyroid surgery—people’s voices sometimes change because of the proximity of the surgery to their vocal chords.

I don’t see any other clear turnarounds.

 

 

When the vibration of your desire supersedes your vibration of doubt

I just read this passage in The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent, and it explains exactly what I want to do. In it Abraham is addressing a man who wants to be a millionaire, and talking about a man who is a billionaire:

“Even when what he wanted and where he was were not in the same place, you would not know it to hear him tell it. In other words, he continues to tell the story the way he wants it to be–so the Universe continues to yield to him. Now there are all kinds of people who say, “Oh, he’s a braggart. Oh, of course he can talk like that; he’s a billionaire.” And we say, he was not always. He talked like that–and then he became that.

So you do not have to follow his lifestyle or his personality. But you do have to follow the success principles that he has found:  You have to talk about what you want. You have to tell it like you want it to be. You cannot face reality as it is and have reality change in any way. You have to face the parts of reality that you love and fill in the gaps with things that you get from your imagination, or from your expectation.

So here you are, and you have a lot of good things in your life, which you accentuate, talk about, appreciate, and make lists of. You make lists of Positive Aspects, and you get on Rampages of Appreciation. You look for good wherever you see it, and you feel good as much as you can.

Then you have goals and you do not know how you are going to achieve them. So then you fill those in with imagination, visualization, and pretending, and then as you start doing that, you will have a dream about it that makes it feel more real. Or you will meet somebody who is really living that way. Or you will turn on the television and somebody will be talking just like you have been imagining. Or you will pick up a book, or you will hear another interview…In other words, the Universe will help you rendezvous with whatever the vibration is that you have finally achieved.

The Universe does not know the difference between someone who has a million dollars and someone who just feels like they have a million dollars. And when you feel like you have it, your vibration is such that the Law of Attraction must line you up with things like that. And that is true whether you are talking about relationships, the building of empires, attracting people to help you in your business…it does not matter what it is–you have to find the vibration of it, and you have to practice the vibration of it until the vibration of your desire supersedes the vibration of doubt. When the vibration of your desire supersedes your vibration of doubt, bam! It happens. And then you say, “Where have you been?”

You say, “I knew you were coming. I could feel you. At first I just felt hopeful that you’d be there. But eventually, I started really trusting that you’d be there. And then, not very long ago, I knew you’d be there, and [plunk], there you are.” But the things you want cannot come until you achieve that knowing, and that knowing does not come easily because you have been practicing not knowing.

You are often not willing to admit how you feel because you are worried about what somebody else might say about how you feel. So you really have to get to the place where you do not talk so much to people who do not understand. You talk to those who do understand–or you just keep your own counsel.

Jerry wrote a paper years ago that said: Keep your ideas to yourself until they are fully developed, because he saw so many people whom he was counseling in business, whom he would see get fired up over an idea, but it was a new idea to them, and they had not practiced it long enough that it was dominant within them. It was tentative within them (and  he knew that it could go either way), and then they would go home and talk to somebody about their new idea before it was really shored up within them. And that person and their doubt and their negative commentary would activate that old vibration within this person, and then it was all over, because the seed of their financial abundance had not been allowed to germinate and get enough of a foothold that it was strong on its own.”

This is exactly the path that I am on. Increasing the vibration of my desire and letting go of my doubt and fear. And I have turned off all comments on this site because I don’t want any negative comments to distract me at this point. I want my desire, my belief and my trust to grow stronger and stronger.

Ultrasound results

Ever since my diagnosis in September 2010, I have been getting ultrasound scans of the thyroid tumor every 3-4 months. The thyroid surgeon I met with back in the very beginning told me that I had a 95% (maybe more?) chance of complete recovery if I had surgery to remove the entire thyroid. When I told her that I would like to take a stab at healing the cancer naturally, she told me that there was 0% chance that it would get smaller.

This is her belief, but it is not mine (although it does creep into my mind occasionally). I have had 11 scans to date. It has grown larger in 5 of those scans. Stayed the same in 1, and grown smaller in 2. In one scan the radiologist didn’t put down the dimensions.

I have an Excel file in which I chart the changes using the dimensions stated in the ultrasound reports. The tumor is shaped like a three-dimensional ellipse. This is called an “ellipsoid.” I found a volume calculator for ellipsoids online, and I have used that to chart the growth in volume.

It has grown from an initial volume of 62.3 to its current volume of 136.4. In the very beginning I could only see the tumor on my neck if it turned my head in just the right way or in certain lighting. I remember once going out to dinner with my family in the beginning. I went to the bathroom with my daughter and in that mirror, with that lighting, it was so apparent. And it freaked the hell out of me!  

Now it is apparent in any lighting. I will post a photo sometime in the near future. I can’t say that I like it, but it no longer scares me.