CANCER VISUALS

I am feeling less tired today. I find the most irritating side effect treatment is my loss of taste buds, my food is so bland and it is tempting to add salt to food - though I have learned this doesn't work as I can't really taste that either!

My new regime includes fruit and vegetable juices. I got a juicer for Christmas (though I am currently shopping for an upgrade to get the maximum benefits, I really think it is worth investing in one of the mega juicers if you are going to use it as much as I do - more than twice daily.) If anyone has any advice on this I'd be more than happy to hear from you I'm a bit overwhelmed! I had tasted carrot juice before but had not been that impressed - wow fresh fruit & veggie juice tastes fantastic - I highly recommend Carrot, Apple, Orange, Broccoli and Ginger as a basic.

I have read that to get the maximum benefits from the relaxation and visualization experience it is best to do 20 minutes three times a day and I am now trying to work that into every day so that it becomes an integral part of my life.

1st thing in the morning, when I get home from work and last thing at night. I also do a kind of blood cell workout on the walk to and from the bus to work.

So there are two different kinds of visualization process for me:-

The first, I lie down and get into relaxation mode - deep breathing in thru the nose out thru the mouth, then relaxing each section of the body from my face down to my toes. It sometimes helps to actually tense up the muscles first in order to feel the tension going out of them and thereby relaxing totally.

Then I imagine myself in a relaxing place - my current place is a hot whirlpool bath. I only have a shower in the house where I live so it gives me the chance to have a relaxing bath if only in my mind!! I relax for a time and then get into my visualization.

I see the chemo as a stream of red liquid ( one of my drugs is red and I think this is easier to focus on) the liquid is hot and toxic and sprays from my Hickman line into my bloodstream, some of my army of blood cells comes under the attack but those that don't follow behind the chemo. I then imagine the sites where I know my Cancer is. I visualize the Mr Reed cells as already melted at this stage in my treatment I am already imagining all the cancer as dead. The Chemo and the white cells are simply doing a clean up operation and making sure that there are no secret survivors lurking anywhere.

So the chemo drenches the whole site in this red liquid it gets into every corner and nook and cranny - and runs out.

The white cells I imagine in three groups - which I will detail in a minute in the rebuilding part of my visualization - the clean up operation follows, the white cells pick up, sweep up, scrape off and hose down all the dead cancer cells and wash them down a big hole. This big hole carries the dead waste and toxic chemo and flushes out of the body. Every time I "go" (we all know what I mean), every time I blow my nose, any thing natural coming out of my body is carrying dead cancer and toxins and getting rid of them. It is constantly coming out of every pore, every time I shower.

I'm getting rid of cancer, every time I go to the toilet, wash my hair - the cancer is coming out.

I then go through my rebuilding, I see the Blort bumping against the bone marrow for some reason my subconscious has provided the soundtrack the Jackson's "Can you feel it?" which seems to be perfect. I see the + signs popping into white cells which go off shooting round the blood stream, but I also imagine an army of worker white cells. I have a computer game "Age of Empires" which has men you click on to make do stuff. I see these strong constantly moving men as my workers, they sweep and clean and hose down the dead cancer, while the shooting white cells go around my bloodstream fighting infection and checking out all is okay.

And then we come to the Neutrophils - imagine if you can, a very soft fluffy bright green loving intelligent cuddly creature they are extremely affectionate and caring to me but the most terrifyingly vicious monster in the world to cancer and illness, they give me the reassurance that my white counts are up and that they are fighting any cancer that may still be alive in my body. You wouldn't want to meet these fella's on a dark night.

I then imagine my Red blood cells - similar to the army of white, but in red (nothing too complicated here folks) they march around the body with bundles of nutrients, oxygen and good stuff. I see the red blood cells filling in the gaps in my cancer sites with healthy tissue where the cancer was, is now living healthy flesh. This is where I tell myself I'm healthy and rebuilt and can get on with life.

This is pretty much my daily routine.