Cancer on the Lip
The bad news is that I had a patch of squamous cell carcinoma on my lip. The good news is that it now appears to be gone. Mind you, a lot of people and things were involved to make that happen. But, I thank God that I am healthy again. Wife, family and friends seem to feel the same way, for some reason.
Anyhow, it went like this:
If you have read all the excessive verbiage on this site, you may recall (and I surely wouldn’t fault you if you didn’t) that I had only half a jaw, no bottom teeth, and about 10 teeth on top. Eating was pretty much restricted to soft things because I couldn’t chew anything hard against my lower left gum. If I couldn’t make the food into mush in my mouth, like salad for instance, I would have to cut it real small and basically swallow the pieces whole.
At home I use a stick-blender to blend up salad stuff so it is easier to eat. By the way, I find a stick-blender works better than a standard blender for that. If you put the hard stuff at the bottom, like chopped carrots, and the juicy stuff at the top, like tomato and cuke, along with some olive oil, garlic, oregano, and apple cider vinegar, everything blends up pretty well. My sister-in-law tried it and said it tastes just like salad!
So, about 18 months ago I decided to have my remaining teeth pulled. They had been damaged by the radiation to the point it wasn’t really worth the effort, to say nothing of the expense, to try to repair them. The dentist replaced them with “surgical” upper plate, which is a relatively inexpensive, temporary plate that is used until the gums heal and settle down.
About November of last year, I had a permanent plate made and started using it. About the same time, a little cold-sore looking thing developed on the right side of my lower lip (the same side that had been radiated). I didn’t think much of it for awhile, but it didn’t go away and seemed to be slowly getting bigger. I finally asked my dentist about it, and he suggested I see a dermatologist.
In January, I believe, I saw the dermatologist, and he took a biopsy. A couple of weeks later, the report came back – clean! Nothing there. Not even a fungus. Only evidences of trauma, like I was biting my lip. Only, because of the way my jaw is made, I can’t close my mouth enough to make contact except on the left-rear side. Besides, I have no jawbone or gum on the right side.
So what was it? Nobody seemed to know.
But, it persisted and finally got to be about a 1/2 inch or so long. In April, I went to another dermatologist. She took another biopsy. This time the results came back positive – invasive squamous cell carcinoma.
One positive glimmer was that they didn’t feel it was related to the previous cancer. It was more likely the result of sunlight striking the lower lip. I suspect the radiation may have made that side more susceptible, but the oncologist how originally treated me said that it would have been basel cell carcinoma.
I have to be honest, I got a bit depressed for awhile.
However, I prayed about it and gradually came to the conclusion that if God could get me through the last go around, He could do it again, if that was best for everyone. Evidently He thought it was . . .
I was referred to various surgeons. Some were reluctant to tackle it because they didn’t know how far it had invaded into my cheek. They were concerned that the large amount of radiation on that side would have caused reduced blood flow thereby making it difficult to heal, especially if there were to be a lot of reconstruction.
I became more serious about my diet again. I mean, let’s face it, almost 5 years had passed so I probably got a little careless on occasion.
Of course, my wife hit the internet again, as did I, looking for alternative ways to treat it. One of us came across bloodroot, a very powerful treatment for cancer, or so it is claimed. In fact, some of the testimonials are pretty remarkable. Then again, aren’t they all for whatever product or method is being promoted?
We did become convinced that I should give it a try, and we finally settled on Cansema Salve (now sold as Amazon Salve) by Alpha Omega Labs. It wasn’t that expensive, and the person I talked to on the phone was as helpful as she could be without risking the wrath of the FDA (who had tapped their phone, no doubt).
I received it a week after I ordered it and, by then, I had thoroughly read other experiences with bloodroot. I knew it could be very painful. But, I have an advantage over most others using the paste – that side of my lip and mouth have no feeling. When they took out the right jawbone, the nerves inside it that service that side of the face went with it, too.
So you see, there’s always a blessing hidden somewhere!
I put the paste on, and could feel it working. In fact, if I hadn’t been numb, I knew I would have been in a lot of pain. As it was, I got a feeling of pretty intense pressure up the right side of my head all the way to the top, and I really did not feel very well at all.
So BE WARNED! If you use this stuff, be prepared not to enjoy life much for about 12 hours. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to harm healthy skin at all. It’s a good way to test a mole or other thing to see if it is cancerous. There is supposed to be no pain or effect at all if it isn’t cancer.
In the meantime, I saw a few more specialists and it was decided that radiation was not an option and it would have to be surgery. I fully expected it to be multiple operations. They would take out everything they could see the first one, see if they got it all by biopsying the edges, take more if need be, then reconstruct.
The bloodroot paste did not cause the cancer to go away, but maybe I didn’t use it long enough. My loved ones were urging me to get the cancer removed for fear it would spread. By the time of the operation, though, it looked a lot better than it had in January.
The first operation was the beginning of June. I only spent one night in the hospital before they booted me out. The amazing thing to everyone was how little of my lip had actually been removed! It didn’t look too bad (relatively speaking, of course).
Better news was that the surgeon did, indeed, get it all. Not only that, he did such a good job pulling things back together that he advised against reconstruction, at least for a year. That’s because if he were to take tissue from somewhere else in order to rebuild my lip, it would not have nerves so I would not be able to control it. He said it would droop and I would drool. “For some reason,” he said, “people think drooling babies are cute, but not drooling adults.” So, I’ll wait and maybe talk to a plastic surgeon in a year or so.
I do think that even though the bloodroot didn’t get rid of the cancer, God blessed the use of it in preventing the spread of the cancer.
My mouth is definitely smaller, to the point where I wondered if I would be able to get my upper plate in. But, after I healed up, I can now get it in with not to much of a struggle. My lower lip recedes, and I have to be even more careful when I speak.
One thing I discovered, though. I was used to eating with my plate in because I had it made so there is some contact with my gum on the left side, which enables me to masticate my food a little. However, the plate covers the roof of my mouth. While I was healing, I couldn’t use the plate and I discovered just how much better food tastes! So, if you have a meal with me, don’t be surprised if I take my teeth out to enjoy the food. Just don’t ask me to talk much!
Such are the vicissitudes of life. But, hey! I am well again and enjoying life! My thanks to God and all those who love me and prayed for me.
In the meantime, I am coming to terms with the probability that I am more susceptible to cancer than most people so I need to be a lot more careful with my diet. I continue with the Budwig diet, but I am also juicing and buying organic where possible.
Turkey-Syria Trip Video
It is amazing how time passes. We took over 1200 pictures on that trip to Turkey and Syria -- the curse of a new digital camera!
Since then we chose about 700 of them and created a video of the pictures, adding some pretty good music and a bit of narration.
I learned a lot in that procedure about iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD, let me tell you! One thing is that NEVER try to make 700 slides into one movie. The file was 24 GB in size! Not megabytes, but gigabytes. I had to buy a 1 terabyte external drive and format it for the Mac in order to back it up. (Windows file format won’t handle files larger than 4 GB.) Not only that, it took about 14 hours to render it down to a DVD. Then, when I sent copies to family, they crashed, so no one but us has seen the entire thing (it plays fine on our Mac, but not on our DVD player, either).
So, I have finally broken it down into 11 segments and put them up on You Tube. You can watch it below.
On the toolbar right above this line, toward the right, is a “360.” Put the pointer on that and select 480 for slightly better quality. Then, click on the box with the 4 arrows pointing out, to the right, to go to full-screen mode. If you have seen part of the video, scroll to one of the following segments. It is all supposed to play sequentially.
Enjoy.
