The witch doctor

Yesterday Rich came with me to see the witch doctor. Ok, fine, his name is Dr. Thompson and he's a doctor of chiropractic. But more importantly he practices applied kinesiology, hence the witch doctor term of endearment. I first discovered the witch doctor through Gary my therapist. I was complaining about my right wrist and its supposed tendonitis or carpel tunnel. The orthopedist had just slapped a cast on it and called me cured but nothing was actually better. The chiropractor I saw was a little better but couldn't fix my wrist and just told me I needed to rest it or stop holding my son. Fat chance of either of those happening.

Gary said he had been seeing this guy and I might like him. So I made an appointment and after hunting around a bit Dr. Thompson fixed my wrist by popping my elbow! He also fixed my "jimmy leg" (restless leg syndrome) and a variety of other random things. Oh, he said I had a dairy allergy but then corrected it. And he asked me to take out my belly ring because it was blocking my energy flow. All I know is my wrist felt immediately better and I therefore loved this dude. We had several talks about how nerves work in your body and how food affects your health. I know it all sounds crazy but this guy is amazingly smart and gets fantastic results in his patients. He may be a witch doctor, but he's my witch doctor and I love him to pieces.

I've been doing fine overall but lately my wrist started hurting again as Ian insists that I carry all 42 pounds of him around. I wanted to make an appointment with the witch doctor, but I also wondered if he might have some insight on Rich to see if he could help him at all. Gary suggested that the witch doctor might have some products that could help with cell health and healing. I asked Rich to come with me and he loves me so he agreed.

We went out to his home office and I went first. Bam! My elbow popped like a firecracker going off and I felt worlds better. He also thinks he might have made my jimmy leg better in that my right hip is related to something inside my mouth. The witch doctor actually pressed on the roof of my mouth for about 30 seconds and it felt better. I have a recurring sore spot that dentists have just blown off, but I swear it feels like a tooth in the middle of my head. The witch doctor says that something is out of place up there.

After all that it was Rich's turn. The witch doctor did an "injury reset" where he corrected a lot of nerve mis-signals from various injuries. He worked on Rich's broken shoulder from the Army, his sprained ankle from high school football, his broken pinky from playing kickball, his torn ACL and MCL, his arthritis in his hands, his broken nose from volleyball, and his prostatitis. Rich was dubious at best and kept shooting me these glances like "do you believe this guy?!" The witch doctor poked and prodded and slapped and massaged and pulled and pushed. At one point Rich was convinced he was going to get out a ceremonial headdress but it was just a reference sheet on how to hold his hands.

We left with A-I enzyme to help with cell healing, cranberry pills for urinary health and some other random stuff to help with Rich's sensitivity to nightshade foods (which causes his arthritis in his hands). And once we were out in the driveway and out of ear shot of the witch doctor, Rich could truly give me his "seriously? What the hell just happened to me?!" face so that I laughed so hard I wasn't sure I could drive.

But today he took his A-I enzyme pills as directed and we'll see if he feels better.

When we were driving to the witch doctor's office yesterday I told Rich that we were close to the turn because we were passing the pet cemetery. Rich said, "I'm not sure that's a good sign if his office is next to a pet cemetary." I delivered the best deadpan line of my life and said, "oh he's a pet psychic too." There was an uncomfortable pause and Rich said, "Are you serious? Cause if you are, I'm not getting out of the car." Oh my God, I laughed and laughed and laughed.

When we were leaving, Rich said, "I should have asked him how Connor was doing. He was a good dog."

I'm not shouting! Ok, I am shouting!

Rich said that he was upset but he wasn't sure if he should be. We had just walked out the front door of the office to take a stroll around the parking lot. He said that after trying several times to reach Dr. Hausner, some woman from his office called this afternoon. She said that she had talked to Hausner and was calling to tell Rich that we should go ahead with the chemotherapy and when could he come into the office to start treatment.

What. The. I don't even know how to respond to you because what you've said is so crazy.

Rich tells her that we were waiting to hear from Hausner and he had emailed us and we wanted to know if the plan was still to try to get a K-Ras test result. We thought antibody treatment was the plan still and we live four hours away so we were hoping to have treatment local to us. That's why we had tried reaching Hausner so that he could give the right information to our local oncologist.

She casually said, "well, I can text Dr. Hausner and ask him to call you. He probably meant antibody treatment instead of chemotherapy and I just misunderstood him."

To quote Mrs. White, "flames ... on the sides of my face."

So I told Rich he was quite justified in being grumpy since I wanted to smack this woman. And now we're watching YouTube clips from a 27 year old classic movie.

Stuck in the middle with you

This weekend, I had a zit on my chin that was so deep and intense and painful that I pulled a Tobias Funke in the shower. The only way I was able to get Ian to fall asleep for a nap Sunday was to put him in the van and drive around for 20 minutes, refusing to speak to him. Because he napped so late, he was still wide awake when we got home from our company Christmas party at 10:30pm. I finally got him to give in and fall asleep at 12:21am after we had all said some things we later regretted. I also got my lab results back from Friday and my HbA1C is a miserable 7.5. Even typing that makes my stomach hurt. But I haven't had much time to dwell on that number because the last few days I've been wrestling with blood sugars like 342, 288, 63, 362, 55, and one 99. It's been the "30 or 300?" game all weekend and I feel like I'm hungover. Oh, and I gained about five pounds in the last week.

We finally heard back from Dr. Hausner after I sent him a note saying I was going to call him if I didn't get an email back. For all his adorable Czech accent in person, he has a slightly less adorable sense of written English grammar so it can make reading a note from him confusing at best. We either are going to start antibody treatment soon or he just offered to refinance our home for us.

The K-Ras evaluation that we've been waiting on has still not happened. The lab refused to do the test because there were so few cells in the mucin and they can't find a commercial lab that will do the laser capture microscopy. We're not exactly sure what is happening next. We may "bite the bullet" as Hausner said and start antibody treatment without the test result but we don't know if that's bad. Then again, we don't know if it's more bad than chemotherapy is bad which is our only other option. That or we could roll initiative and see if someone has a daily power they can use. I'm not sure, his email was very confusing.

The vague email from Hausner plus finding out he still had about seven more days of Lovenox to take (that I totally would have thrown away but he's not me) have knocked the proverbial wind out of Rich's sails. He was feeling pretty good and could see definitive progress, but last night and today he's just been incredibly discouraged. We're not in the thick of things anymore. He's going to work and driving a car. But he's not comfortable being alone with Ian and he's still physically weak in a lot of ways. We're a lot better than we were four weeks ago, but we're not back to normal by any means.

This middle part is tough. We could use some cheering up. Fart jokes, cute animals, anything like that. I'll start ...