Day 5 of Treatment - Friday, October 8, 2021

Phew, I made it through the first week.  Some days have definitely been more challenging than others but I think I have had every treatment option at this point and will refine and repeat to best meet my needs over the next two weeks.  

My first treatment today was a 20-minute treatment, oxyvenierung (oxyvenation for short) or intravenous oxygen therapy, to build the immune system, a major focus of most all treatments.  Of course, a weakened immune system will always lead to chronic disease of some sort, in my case cancer.  Based on the 40 infusions of either maximum dose or low dose chemotherapy these past 4+ years, my immune system has really been challenged with a toxic load.  Add in the fact that I have also been taking an antibiotic for about 10 months...my immune system needs a major overhaul!  Even before that, my immune system wasn't "up to speed" or I wouldn't have gotten cancer.    

Well, the nurse takes a small needle (used in pediatrics) and inserts it into vein of the hand.  Then you basically get oxygen pumped into the vein for a number of minutes based on how you respond to the treatment.  Sometimes people will cough after receiving such.  I know a fellow patient who has received several more of these than I have, coughs a bit and explains it is from this procedure.  

The goal is to increase circulatory function by opening more of the most common blood vessels in the body known as capillaries.  These tiny "tubes" are the exchange vessels between blood and tissues.  So, by opening these, one can increase the delivery of vitamins and micronutrients thereafter.  It just so happens that this treatment typically occurs before a round of infusions.  Ah-ha!😁

Indeed, after intravenous oxygen therapy I had my first IPT or insulin potentiation therapy treatment.  To get best treatment results, the patient is asked to be "sober" (Germany term for fasting) or have no food 12 hours prior to IPT.  The idea is to have the lowest glucose level possible so that the insulin that one is given drives the blood glucose to about 50 mg/dL or a little lower.  There are many finger pricks throughout this process to monitor glucose levels.  

Insulin, as you might know, is a hormone that facilitates the transport of glucose into the cell from the blood stream.  When glucose leaves the blood and is taken up by the cancer cell (which loves sugar!), the  membrane of the cancer cell is more inclined to take in other substances as well.  In many cases, this is when chemotherapy or other botanicals will be given so everything has a greater impact on the cancer cell since it is uptaking the glucose and the botanical (more later on these!)  Using this method also lessens the side effects from the toxic chemo drugs (assuming you are getting them).  

In my case, I received no chemotherapy since currently I have no evidence of disease BUT I did receive several natural botanical anticancer agents including artesunate, turmeric extract (curcumin), amygdylin (laetrile or vitamin B17), and vitamin C, one bag of fluid after another.  My blood glucose was monitored and I was given insulin to encourage a glucose level at 50 or below for the duration of the infusions.  

Earlier this summer I was watching and/or listening to many videos and podcasts of naturopathic, complementary, integrative doctors from various clinics/practices around the world.  Because I wanted to explore possibilities for alternative methods of treatment in the States where it might be more cost effective because of insurance coverage, I searched for places where they might have the most synergistic treatments (kind of like attacking the "problem" from multiple directions) since this made sense to me as being more hopeful than merely infusing chemotherapy drugs to kill the cancer.  

The Nevada Center in Carson City, NV led by Dr. Frank Shallenberger "popped up" in a Google search as being a place where IPT, several oxygen therapies, chelation therapy and nutritional IV therapies appear to be common.  Even though I didn't choose this clinic for treatment, I appreciate the article written by the Doctor entitled, "Why Alternative Docs Can Cure Problems That Conventional Docs Can't".   It helped me understand the difference between an allopathic (conventional western) medical approach and an orthomolecular (alternative) medical one (used by Shallenberger and Arcadia Clinic/Dr. Saupe, for instance). If you are uncertain of the difference, it might be worth the read. 

https://www.antiagingmedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/A-Message-From-Dr.-Shallenberger-2018.pdf

I'm looking forward to a weekend without any treatments.  The weather is supposed to be favorable so I will spend time outside and not in a reclined position (as much as on treatment days 😆!).