Who knew?

Who knew that I would feel blessed to receive a colonic for my birthday? But that is exactly what I got, along with two dozen long stem red roses (not with the colonic). I also had excellent conversations and an awesome dinner. I am much easier to please than I used to be. I spent alot of birthdays when I was little sharing the day with little sisters or Thanksgiving turkeys. We actually had one birthday where my mom put 3 candles into a pumpkin pie and told us that it was the birthday cake for all three of us,and that we should be satisfied with a small present because we were born too close to Christmas. I spent many years yearning for my own celebration, funny how we can walk around in these grown up bodies carrying our wounded, greedy child for so many years. My inner child is still alive and well but she doesn't have nearly as big a say in how I chose to feel on a daily basis.
We got some awesome news on my birthday, Doug's PSA is now 0.8, down from 6.2, a very real indicator that he is essentially free from prostate cancer. It is such validating news, something that we were hoping and praying for as a outcome of the treatment that he has been receiving, something that we knew would not be possible with conventional lymphoma treatment.
So the last couple of days have sort of run into each other, Thanksgiving came and went. We had a quiet time together, with a short visit from a friend who brought herbs and a song to cheer Doug's heart. We made bread together and put it into the dehydrator for 24 hours. Doug made an experiment using raw pinto beans to make the base for chili, something that he was told couldn't be done. One of the things I have learned about my husband in this journey is- he hates being told that something can't be done, especially if there is no reason given that satisfies his inquiring mind. So he pulverized the pinto beans, soaked the powder in water, added many spices and later made the mixture into patties which we dehydrated for quite a few hours until he ended up with beans cakes.
So after treatment yesterday, I made a veggie puree out of many vegetables one might imagine going into chili and we added the bean cakes and hot water. After letting it sit and heating it up, we ate some, it was tasty, Doug ate two bowls of it.
While watching TV after our supper I looked up raw beans in raw food preparation on the Web, and found out that red kidney beans are actually poisonous when eaten raw, as are pinto beans! So that was an interesting piece of news and probably why he was told that you can't use beans in raw food prep.
So, early this morning (2 AM) I was awakened by the lovely sounds of a very large dog vomiting in the bedroom, fortunately he hit the area rug and not the carpeting. I let him out and he tossed his cookies again. After falling asleep again I was awakened by similar sounds, only this time it was Doug on the floor of the guest bathroom, with his arms wrapped around the toilet. He vomited all his chili and acknowledged that the idea of proving people wrong might have been slightly misguided. We both slept in this morning, me from the combination of the pain meds that I took because of severe lower back pain that fired up yesterday and being woken up twice by family members puking. Doug from his usual insomnia, restlessness from the chemo and throwing up at 4 in the morning.
My article for the newsletter was finally sent off to the editor yesterday, Doug and I worked on it for the past week or so trying to get it right, we will see what the editor says.
Hoping that today brings some more checks from the insurance company, if not we will not be able to pay for last weeks treatments, sigh.....
One of the other clients yesterday was saying that she couldn't work throughout treatment because with the chemo she couldn't trust herself to make the kind of decisions that her work required. She also said that she had been telling people that they needed to have an extra $100,000 laying around in case they got sick and needed treatment. It is the truth and a very scary and sad truth. I got to speak to two of my spiritual nieces on Thanksgiving day, both have problems that could be remedied with this kind of care, neither has the resources to take advantage of the treatments/ life style changes. God forbid if I get some health issue that needs intensive treatment, we have blown our wad on Doug's care and don't have enough to finish it. Good thing I believe in a benevolent universe, eh?