Little Heroes share…
I asked Irina to tell her story and she wrote it beautifully…please comment to let her know you are sending prayers and loving thoughts her way.
Nothing changes us as much as kids do! After baby #2 i became more and more interested in homeopathy: essential oils, coconut oil everything, diy baby wipes, detergent you name it! I watched many documentaries that made me believe that everything around us is toxic, that one in every 5 people will have cancer and with a family of 5 i was determined to avoid it. My kids barely had cake on their birthday, sugar was very limited, we ate mainly keto, we stayed active. I was also getting paranoid, i secretly hated my husband for buying bread! ( i know it is awful đ©); i often had anxiety attacks in the grocery stores. Kombucha, water kefir – we grew it. Gardening was a must. At every birthday party we went to, i was the mom that rolled her eyes at the desserts. What i’m trying to say is that i became a person that was always afraid of something, always hard on my family for no reason other that diet, i felt lonely too. As empowering as the holistic diy medicine can be, for me it became a place of very little trust in others, a place of a constant chase of a new cure, herbal tea, supplement, new must have EO….
So when i noticed that if i turn my neck at a certain angle, it looks like my lymph nodes are sticking out a little – i did what i knew best : made some new lotions with EO, increased my turmeric intake, better vitamin D and VitaminB complex, joined a gym with sauna, purchased a skin brush for improved circulation. But nothing changed. 6 months later i finally went to my family doctor. My labs were great, i had no symptoms of anything except those swollen lymph nodes. Because i was young and healthy they delayed a scan, there was no reason to even think i could have cancer. I was sent to an ENT…
It took 2 visits there for someone to look inside my nose, there they found a tumor. And yet, because i was young and healthy and had no cancer symptoms, they doubted cancer. Eventually the scan and the biopsy confirmed that i had nasopharyngeal cancer caused by EB virus -a virus so common that 90% adult actually carry it. The only odd thing was that normally that type of cancer, even though very rare, happens mainly to smoking men in their 40’s, I clearly didnt fit the profile.
I always thought in case of such diagnosis i will be on my way to Mexico. And yet here i stood extremely mad : i did everything not to be in this position, people looked at me saying ” but you look healthy”. All my healthy eating, my EO, my teas and herbs ….. nothing stopped the very rare mutation that can occur in our cells. I was mad and i felt like i let everyone down. I felt like a fake and a joke because all my natural remedies and all the health life style did nothing for me.
I was also afraid knowing from many internet sources that the Cancer clinics a pushy, very cold in their attitudes towards patients and only care about pushing you with chemo. Yet, in my research on possible Mexico trip, stories about people who were scammed in every shape and manner started to pop in my search. The natural cancer clinics locally are very expensive and are not covered by insurance.
I put my all my faith in God, my case was considered treatable, my husband has great insurance – i considered my situation as a very good one to be and we moved on with traditional radiation and chemo combo with more chemo to come. I didnt fully gave up on what i now call my woodoo life style đ, i kept drinking my detox teas and used coconut oil and EO to help with burn from radiation. After 7 weeks they could not belive that from outside i had no burns at all. My mouth was damaged permanently, but pulling with coconut oil helped me greatly, they still suggest that trick to many radiation patients. When we started chemo i had to scale back the EO, nausea was very bad and every EO smelled awful and intoxicating. It was a rough summer. We were hoping for a clean scan in the fall.
What i did lear through his was something new to me: people where there to help in every possible way: the doctors and nurses were were compassionate and kind, my friends came in with so much help and support! I was not alone anymore, you see it is good to believe in yourself, but it is better to believe in others too!
The fall scan showed something weird on my hip. My type of cancer never goes into a hip….. everything else looked perfect, my labs were great. More investigation proved that indeed , the cancer spread to the bone. More radiation was scheduled right away. A regular check up during radiation cause my doctor to be suspicious of pain in both of my hips. An emergency scan revealed that my cancer took off like a wild fire in my bones. Yet my labs looked good.
Next we did immunotherapy – the answer to all the answers! But it failed on me. We went back to crappy chemo because nothing else works on me. Meanwhile, my labs still look good.
I had many ups and downs, my cancer keeps on spreading. Now i joke more often about EO and the new health trends, i let my kids eat fast food once in a while, we even have desserts at the house. My friends were and still are a great support system for me and my family and that is the most amazing thing to me. That was my life lesson: i dont have to do it all alone, i dint have to isolate and protect myself from everything and everybody. At this point i went past my expectation date. The doctors are not sure how i made it so far, yet every time the disease progresses in does it in a very unusual way. I became a very interesting study case.
Now i try to live everyday to the fullest i can, however it may look that day. It is all a gift, a very generous gift to me and my family. I’m thankful for the people who supported me and helped me along the way. I thankful for my lesson: life is a gift, a gift you share with others, live with others, it doesnt have to a constant battlefield. Trust in people, and above all trust in God and not unto thy own understanding.
