New York, New York

We are back from NY! We saw a Dr. at Sloan-Kettering that sees all their unknown primary cancers. He was great. He started by apologizing that he had kept us waiting for, oh, about 45 minutes, but he was reading through all the tests, notes, reports etc. He then sat and talked with us for about an hour and did a short physical exam. He said that there is hope and lots of therapies to try (of course they are all chemo, but I really liked his attitude). He also said that I need a colonoscopy and an endoscopy - yuck - but it makes sense. They would be the last tests to perform that may "uncover" the primary tumor. He had another patient with unknown primary with metastases to the bone and they responded very well to a couple different chemos than I have tried, well enough that they no longer have tumors! Ya gotta like that :). The pathologists at the clinic were not done with the slides from the biopsies, since it took Mayo over a week to look at them, I wasn't surprised. We'll see if the Mayo doc is receptive to trying the chemos the NY doc had success with.....I have a feeling he would rather have me in a clinical trial, but we'll have the discussion!

The other big news is the new/old nutritionist. Karen Hurd in Fall Creek, WI has had many, many successes as a nutritionist, but I'm not going to be one of them. We had a phone consult on Friday and she put me on 6 servings of animals proteins, 6 servings of beans, 4 tsp of freshly minced raw garlic and if possible 5 servings of veggies a day. Also 2000 mg of vit c 4 times a day and 300,000 IU's of beta carotene daily. Couldn't do it. The garlic was oozing out of my pores, my kids wouldn't even kiss me good night. EVERYTHING else I've read talks about veggie proteins or whole grains and reducing animal proteins. Some books talk about eliminating animal proteins, but it looks to me like you should just be careful of the amount, not eliminate. Other books talk about too much beta carotene and how your body isn't able to absorb other nutrients if you're getting too much. Vit C tablets counteract the chemo and the oncologist at SK said that I shouldn't be taking that much vit c. I realize that the oncologists are not nutritionists but on this one I'll agree. So, I've started rereading the nutrition books to see if I can glean any more info from them before trying the next nutritionist. Wish me luck!

PS, the plate in my leg didn't set off the alarms at airport security. Apparently there is enough fat on top of it to minimize the effect :)-