It’s been 3 months since I wrote that my cancer markers (CA27.29) had gone down for five months in a row. I continue to have a blood test every month. In August it went up slightly, in September it went down about 25 points, and in October it went up 4.6 points. Hardly worth mentioning, but I want it to go down every month.

This monthly test is the only evidence I have that my cancer is still active. I don’t have any symptoms (except a tiny lump under my arm), and I haven’t had a PET scan since last December.

I’m continuing to take Femara, an aromatase inhibitor, and I think that is doing the heavy lifting in knocking the cancer marker numbers down. I am also using Cannabis, but only at night. I’ve been told it is much more useful against cancer if it’s kept in the body all the time, so I’m going to try that this month if I can. When I tried it before I had a hard time functioning during the day because of the high. I’m going to experiment with the dose and the proportion of CBD to THC and see if I can keep something in my system and still be functional.

I think I could also be more consistent with my meditations, ala Joe Dispenza. I learned a special kind of meditation in the workshop I did with him in March. I have his CDs, but I’ve been having a challenge finding the time to listen to them on a daily basis.

I’m also working with an energy healer in Sacramento. One of the nine factors in Radical Remission is to “release suppressed emotions held in the body.” In order to release them, they have to be un-suppressed, or brought into consciousness. The energy healer is helping me to do that. In a session with her recently, I got in touch with fear that went back to when I was in my mother’s womb and my mother was afraid. She had been told she would die if she went into labor because of her heart condition, so she was terrified during her entire pregnancy. (I had a planned Caesarean birth before my mother went into labor.) The healer said I had taken on that fear on a cellular level, and it isn’t mine. Whenever I feel it now, I ask the spirit of my mother to help me release it.

In my Director’s Reflections in the monthly Healing Journeys email, I am writing about the workshop we just offered with Michael Finkelstein on Loving Your Body. As a result of that workshop, I understand more deeply how stress feeds cancer, and what I can do about it. So I’m trying to be more aware of what triggers a sympathetic response in my body, and use the stress reducing techniques I’ve learned. It’s tricky to do in this crazy election season because I can get triggered by the radio and TV every day. Hopefully this trigger won’t be replaced by a worse one in November.

I’m reading Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change, by Pema Chodron, in which she reminds me that all suffering is caused by wanting things to be different than what they are. My happiness doesn’t come from external circumstances or from not having cancer. I don’t need to be cancer-free to live a joyful and grateful life. Today I am feeling much gratitude. In the past few months I have heard from some of you that you read my blog and it is meaningful to you. I am grateful for our connections.