Back from Land of Landscapes

We got back this week from a great trip in Arizona. We spent the first day with the TGEN Research group in Phoenix. It was a good news sorta no new news scenario. They agreed the latest scan showed no sign of disease. At this time there is no maintenance treatment available for pancreas cancer. If there were to be a recurrence than I am now set up to work with them for treatment. I did learn a little more about what could develop down the road and how to better use my supplemental enzymes. This latter discovery has made a huge difference in my daily gastric experiences. Instead of taking two pills with each meal I now take three, 30 minutes before I eat. It has helped tremendously. The next twelve months is a critical period for the possibility of a new occurrence. After that the stats jump to five years and then beyond. Hopefully I will be able to contact them again in 15-20 years.

The rest of our trip was really a blast. We realized it was the first out of town trip we had taken in a long, long while that was just Cathy and I and no commitments. I forgot how beautiful and varied the landscapes of Arizona are. We went from the galleries of Scottsdale to the desert of Phoenix, to the deserts, cactus and mountains of Tucson, to the Red Rocks and vortexes of Sedona, to the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon and finally to the snow and quaintness of Flagstaff. It sounded like a lot in a short period of time but our pace was casual and we met a bunch of really nice people along the way. Cat took some great pics which I am sure she will soon be sharing, we met an Aztec Elder who passed his healing blessings on to me, decided we might return to Tucson in November for their "Day of the Dead" celebration, were overwhelmed with the wonders of Sedona, and charted a private plane to fly us to and over the depths of the Grand Canyon (still one of my most favorite places to be).

One thing I am working on is to find a good nutritionist who has both an understanding of cancer and the physiology of my surgery. I am open to any recommendations. I know that improving my diet will help my daily comfort and it would be nice to quit eating foods that feed cancer cells and consume those that fight them. Red meat is now maybe a once a quarter treat as opposed to a multiple weekly event. Refined sugars are bad all around. I made a great discovery a few weeks ago: Blue Agave Sweetener. It comes in liquid form, tastes (to me) like sugar and is organic. I think it also will be an adequate recipe substitute as well and hopefully I will not read anything harmful about my discovery.

In the meantime I will get scanned every 4-6 months, keep posting and start taking advantage of each day disease free. As I might have mentioned before I am accustomed to being in treatment for the last year. There definitely were many negative side effects but it also was a time of having people around me that were taking care of me. Time to rediscover normalcy, a daunting task I think.