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The day before Sophie’s fourth birthday, she had
her last MRI at St. Jude. At this time we were beginning to see
signs of the tumor progressing. She was having a hard time standing
with support. She was throwing up more often and was more tired.
Although her MRI showed areas of enhancement, her doctor was still
reluctant to say that it was progression because she still was only
two months past radiation. He told us that if it was progression, we
would see an increase in symptoms very quickly --- and we did. While
at St. Jude for the MRI, we were given a wheelchair, and we realized
that Sophie would probably never walk again. The second week in
July, Sophie was granted her Make-A-Wish trip on a Disney cruise. We
were a little nervous to go because we didn’t want to be away from
home if things got worse. Sophie threw up at the airport, but said
she still wanted to go. What a great decision! We made some very
happy memories with Sophie on that trip. After we returned she told
us repeatedly that she wanted to go on another Disney Cruise. We
never got to go, but I know that every day is a Disney Cruise for
Sophie in heaven.
We met with two different spiritual healers on two different
occasions. In addition, we discovered DMSO/sodium bicarbonate as a
treatment option. The plan of care was for 36 daily IV treatments,
and from what we read, we decided to give it a chance. We headed to
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and met with a doctor there who prescribed the
treatment. He explained to us that he had seen DMSO work in about
30% of cancer patients. He told us that it works for some because it
has the ability to change the cell’s mitochondria enough so that it
becomes a foreign body, and the immune system will attack it. (The
reason why our immune system doesn’t naturally fight the cancer
cells is because they are a part of the body’s own cells.) DMSO also
has the ability to cross the blood brain barrier – something
traditional chemotherapy agents cannot do.
We completed ten treatments there before Sophie’s condition
worsened. The rapid decline we saw in Sophie made us decide to bring
her home to continue the treatment. During this time we began to
gradually decrease Sophie’s steroid dose to allow her body to have a
normal response to the DMSO. (Steroids prevent the body from
responding as it should.) She had a tough time coming off the
steroids after having been on them for so long, and spent many days
with a bowl in her lap because she was too weak to go to the
bathroom to throw up as often as she had to. The DMSO was given
intravenously through Sophie’s port. She hated having the port
touched and accessed throughout this entire ordeal. We completed 45
treatments and having not seen any significant change, we
discontinued the treatments, feeling Sophie and we had given this
treatment option a fair chance. In hindsight, I still believe that
the logic behind DMSO makes sense. Unfortunately for Sophie I think
we started this too late. If I had to do it again, I would have
started this treatment during radiation while the tumor was
“stunted.” Upon returning home Sophie had many scary bouts of
continuous vomiting. Some of these may have been due to the steroid
reduction, but also due to the pressure of her progressing tumor.
In the meantime, a doctor in Brazil who works in the “natural”
health field informed us about a person in California who had had
success in shrinking tumors using a PER machine. This is pulsed
energy machine that focuses on normalizing the energy fields in the
body. More specifically, the machine has been shown to put cancer
cells into remission by normalizing the voltage of the unhealthy
cells. We “rented” the machine from the owner/manufacturer in
California and completed the treatments with Sophie 3-4 times a day.
Again, although it is hard to say what the effects were, we do
believe this is something that had we started earlier would’ve
helped Sophie.
We considered traveling to Pennsylvania for a treatment during which
Sophie’s blood would be cleansed. This involved removing blood from
her body, cleaning it with a laser, and then replacing it.
Unfortunately we heard about this treatment rather late, and at the
time, we did not think traveling with Sophie so far from home again
was the best thing for her.
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