Still Vertical!

The title of this post refers to a running joke I had going when I was soliciting comments about starting a blog. I had said that every morning when I got up I would post a blog letting everyone that I was still vertical. Wait for the post about the web cams!!

I heard from my brother, Bill, last night. It was good to talk to him even considering the circumstances. He was kind enough to let me do most of the rambling, but we had a bunch to catch up on. Bill, I promise to let you 'ramble on' sometime soon.

And BTW, Bill asked that I tell my kids, Ben (now you know why the H. Ben!) and Amy, that he said hello! Consider it done.

Most of you know that conventional doctors and I don't go to the same church; we don't worship the same god. Even in this situation I'm in, I've found that they treat the symptom and not the root cause. But it takes time to find the root cause and most insurance companies won't pay for that. So, it doesn't get done.

As an aside, I don't usually feel that way about surgeons. They are the engineers of the human body. When they cut, they usually have something concrete to work on. Like the little kid with a hammer thinks the whole world is a nail, sometimes surgeons believe that only by cutting will they be able to solve a problem, though.

So, as I sit here drinking my updated version of an old Ojibwa herbal tea, I am reminded of how I first learned of it. Actually, Bill brought it to mind last night.

One time I came home from Illinois for a weekend and found a bottle of Essiac in mom's refrigerator. It seems that this herbal tea was considered by some to have anti-cancer properties. Bill told me that several folks from his work had claimed that the tea had worked "miracles" for them. So I looked into it for future reference.

When Bill called last night I was touched to hear that he had dug out his book that talked about the Essiac formula and was going to tell me about this tea. I had to chuckle as I raised my "DAD" mug and took a sip of my hot Flor Essence tea. It is the updated version of the Essiac tea.

I ran out to the National Cancer Institute's article on Essiac / Flor Essence, http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/essiac/patient/23.cdr#Section_23, to see what they had to say. It's one of those ambiguous reports; some studies say it doesn't work while others indicate that there may be some some benefits to it. BTW, I'll clean up the HTML stuff once I learn how!

All I can say for me is that it does seem to ease some of the stomach pain. Whether I'll be able to take it during chemo- and radiation therapy remains to be seen.

But thanks, Bill, for reminding me about the Essiac herbal tea.

Well, the alarm has gone off; time to get up and go to work. Later!