Our Last Day, Our Last Post

John's last treatment. Wow. It's so nice to be done. Everyone has been so amazingly wonderful here at IBC, it's almost like leaving good friends. John says he's glad it's all over, but he's going to miss everyone. He's really ready to start his summer and be a kid. He has a few restrictions: he must continue on the Alivazato's diet for 30 more days, we have to watch his body temperature for 30 days and he needs to rest an hour everyday for 30 days. All of it with the exception of resting should be easy. John's numbers were, again, perfect today. He can't get any healthier at this point.
Dr. Vazquez has been so great - I wish all American doctors were like him. He's friendly, open, honest, funny, caring. We haven't met too many like that at all, sadly.
Elias - John's nurse is great! What a gentle guy and he knows how to handle a needle and grown men who are afraid of needles (we saw two this week!).
Socorro - For a lady who's job it is to take thousands and thousands of dollars from people to pay for the treatments, she's really a sweet, sweet woman.
Julio, Jose and the cooks - They're meals were surely different than American, but they were quite tasty! By the way, Carl loved the cactus!!
We'll end with two photos:




John's last, last treatment. Elias is removing the IV catheter and John is happy!!

John and Andrea celebrating the treatment being over by having a pillow fight.

Thanks to all of you who've been following us, praying for John and believing in the choice we made for John. There were plenty of people who thought (and still think) we are completely off our rockers....we've been called bad parents and accused of practicing "voodoo." All I can do is shake my head at such closed-mindedness and hope for the best. But for the rest of you, thank you. Your support has made our journey just that much easier. You truly find out who your friends are when you do something that is against the grain.

Love,

John, Tracie, Carl and Andrea

Adios, mis amigos!!

Our Last San Diego Weekend

Went to San Diego this weekend for the last time. Had a lot of fun with Lisa, Rob, Rachel, Jacob and Carl's mom, Bonnie.


On the trolley from San Ysidro, north to SD. We traveled all the way northeast, near Qualcomm Stadium. We had a clinic driver take us to the border where it took about 25 minutes to get across, then boarded the trolley here in San Ysidro ("san yuh see dro"). It took another 45 minutes to get to Grantville, where Lisa met us.





The kids and Carl went boogie boarding at Torrey Pines State Beach in Torrey Pines, CA. It was an overcast/hazey day. Inland, it was 96, here at the ocean it was 74. I just stayed on the beach, working my tan and taking pictures. It was so nice!! I love the ocean.





John coming in on a wave. Surf's up, Baby!

Anj coming in on a wave. Hang Loose!!










Andrea is letting Jacob's pet snake (gack!!) crawl on her.









We met my pacermaker-sister Kristine and her family, Justus (husband), Addy and Travis for dinner at The Chart House in Cardiff-by-the-Sea (actual name of a California city), right on the beach. It was gorgeous and delicious!!

Last post tomorrow, we leave the clinic at 3:30 for our 6:00 p.m. flight. Arrive Minneapolis at 11:45 p.m. and drive home. We are all very, very excited to sleep in our own beds.

Uneventful Day, Eventful Night

Wednesday and yesterday were relatively quiet...John had his treatment and we sat through our day "keeping busy" the way we all do at the clinic. While we would not seem busy out in the real world, we're quite busy within these four walls. It takes a lot of time and energy keeping spirits up, listening to incredible stories of will and fight, sharing a passion for healing and praying. Not to mention eating, laughing and shooting the $h*t.

There is a man here from Maui. He had a bad dream Wed night and kicked so violently in his dream that he broke his right femur! I kid you not. Turns out, his melanoma has spread to his bones. His bone cancer is bad enough that his femur broke from the force of his kick. This guy is amazing - I went to talk to him and he's thanking God for the incident. I get where he's coming from, but wow! He thanks God for it because without the strange circumstance of how his leg broke, he would not have known his cancer spread. He had surgery last night: they scraped out the cancer, inserted a rod in his femur and set the rod with surgical cement. Again, wow! I'm so anxious this morning to know how he's doing.

Now, if that wasn't enough for us here, we were visited again by La Policia Thursday night. They've been around a few times since we got here, but we got pictures this time!! Well, John got pictures. We sent him out into the street with the camera to get a few shots. He's the next embedded Fox News Reporter, you know. Anyway, the police were gathered at the top of the road that night. A few nights earlier, there were about 25 of them everywhere. One of the cooks said the mayor was in town and they were there protecting him. But, we don't know that for sure.

John got a shot of them as the drove away. Notice how Carl is inside the gate, checking things out. By the way, these police are local, not federal. The federales are in black trucks with (usually) 4 guys in the back.

Oh! I forgot to tell you that Carl tried actupunture yesterday. I wish I'd had the camera!!! He's going to try acu-suction on Monday to pull all the dead blood out of his upper back. He's been having a lot of problems with his right shoulder. According to Mr. I-don't-speak-English-or-Spanish,-only-Korean, this will help him feel better. Another patient here did it a few years ago and she swears by it. It's very affordable (remember, we are in Mexico - everything is affordable!) so why not? I'll try to get some pictures for you!

We are off to SD for the last time today. Will be back early Monday for John's treatment. Adios!

Thursday

Only five more treatments left...then no more! Yeaaaa!!!! John's pretty happy. Especially because they put his new catheter IV in a spot where there's a lot of arm movement and the needle keeps hitting his vein which causes him some unexpected surprises of pain. Elias, the nurse says there's a lot of nerves on the walls of veins (to protect them). John gets to feel them every so often. He'll just have to suck it up for a couple of more days, then they can replace it. For now, though, when it moves, we've learned how to wiggle it around so it moves away from the vein wall. Think of it like when your fork hits your amalgam filling...zing! He'll survive.

Anj went up to San Diego today to be with Rachel for a few days. We're trying to arrange some travel again this weekend, too; it's actually very stressful. It's hard having to depend on others to cart you around. I hope Anj has fun, though, with Rachel. They're like two peas in a pod, so they ought to have fun together.

After I dropped off Anj in San Deigo, I went for an hour run downtown along Harbor Dr. This follows the ocean-front, it's like the tourist spot for SD. There were a lot of people; runners, walkers, jugglers, magicians, tin-men (some guy spray-painted silver acting like a robot for money), shoppers and homeless people. I ran from the trolley Transfer Station to the airport and back. It was beautiful run. There was a cruise ship in port, so that was really cool to see up close like I did. I came back across the border, had a little lunch and went swimming at IMDET again. Got a good workout in today. Am still greatly missing my bike, but with a 100 mile ride planned for next Friday, I'll get reacquainted fast.

Did a naughty thing today and walked to the gift shop across the street. Bought a Pepsi (God, I love Pepsi, especially when I don't have it for 4 or 5 days) and m&m's. Both are forbidden on clinic grounds. But, so totally unlike me, I had a hankering for them so I bucked the system and drank my Pepsi with dinner and had my m&m's for dessert. The patients had papaya juice and baked apple. Ha! I think I got the better deal. :) I got some grief for it, though, from one of the patients so I was nice enough to keep my pop can hidden during the meal.

Seems to be a party next door tonight at the local restaurant. Maybe I'll have to go check it out - wonder if they have beer? Since I already broke the rules with pop and candy, why not go all the way??

Adios, mis amigos. Buenas noches.

Fun Day at Bufadora

La Bufadora, Ensenada
The mist coming up from the hole. Pretty cool, hey?? If you click on the picture, it'll open in a new window and you can see it bigger.

The orange things on the rocks are living Starfish. (I would suggest opening this to a bigger photo. It's pretty darn cool in gi-normous view.)

Main Street of Bufadora. These vendors are relentless. They will grab at you, push items into your face, shove flyers into your hands...it's very, very annoying. But, I did get an amazing deal on cowboys boots! We also got a great Father's Day gift for my dad. Can't tell you cuz he reads the blog. If he reads it here, then the surprise will be ruined when we see him next. Sorry.

Carl, Anj and John on the rocks above the blowhole waiting to be sprayed.

Andrea and John at the wall waiting to get sprayed even more!

John lost his tooth during lunch! Can the Tooth Fairy cross borders? Does s/he need a passport? Now these are questions that need to be answered!

Some of the people in our group. That's Doug from Idaho on the end (left) and Angelica from California on the other end. The three empty chairs are me and Melvin and Susan Yoder. Being Amish, they didn't want their photo taken. Check out the background, too. It's so beautiful there.

Tuesday

John's new friend, Jesse from Georgia. What a great kid with fantastic manners!! "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am" all the time! He's here with his grandma who's getting a booster treatment for breast cancer. She's a 6-year survivor, too.

Another day at the clinic. John had his treatment and a half today...his body is really taking the treatments well. No more turning beet red! He's accepting all the laetrile really well. That's great. All his numbers are so good - this means his body is at a very good state of homestatsis. Many of the people here are doing well this time around - all except one. He was being treated for lung cancer and had some pretty bad numbers (there's no confidentiality around here) but yet sat outside his apartment everyday, smoking like a chimney. Doesn't make sense to me. Why would someone spend the thousands of dollars it costs to come here, yet not change their lifestyle to accommodate the treatment? Well, anyway...there are some great people here - no surprise there. Here they are:

Larry - treated for lung cancer, first time here but wife came here and survived 3 years breast cancer, lives in Idaho

Doug - treated for prostate cancer, 6 year survivor, lives in Idaho

Angelica - treated for lupus, first time, lives in California

Susan and Melvin - treated for rheumatoid arthritis (Susan) and just better health (Melvin), from Indiana (they're Amish and know our Amish friends Esther and Glen from the last time we were here)

Moses - treated for prostate cancer, first time here, lives in Indiana (he's Amish, too)

So, there we go. That's everyone, except who's in the hospital but they're too sick to become friendly with - they're really focused on getting better, not making friends. One man, from Boston, is barely 3o. He has some kind of cancer and when he first got here, he cried constantly and his parents came because they didn't think he'd live. But, now he's feeding himself, sitting up and his parents left since he's doing so well. Amazing miracles everyday here.

So I found a place to swim: www.imdet.tijuana.gob.mx/index.asp. It's like an outdoor YMCA - basketball, track, outdoor track and field stadium, 2 pools, weight room, floor classes, etc. Everything you could want for working out, except spin classes. I've been swimming everyday in the 50 m pool. Wowza! What a difference from a 25 yd pool at our Y at home. It's so great to do long swims in a long pool! Everyone is really friendly - they let me practice in the 50 m pool with the swim team, as opposed to the small 25 m pool. All that to do and it only costs $250 pesos (about $2.00 American). Really, a deal!! If you go to the website, click on the "galarias" link. That's photo galleries - they photos of their recent triathlon. Wish I could've been here for that!!!

Tomorrow we go to Ensenada to visit La Bufadora.

Pictures Finally

We finally got some pictures downloaded off the new camera. Here's what's going on here in our live in TJ:

This is our "house." It's a small, 3-bedroom house with a kitchen, dining room, living room and bathroom. It's actually pretty nice...We have a housekeeper who comes every morning to clean (change linens, clean, do dishes...I could easily get used to that!!) and she'll do laundry if you ask. Her name is Lupe and she's very, very thorough. When she's not cleaning the apartments for the clinic, she's running the restaurant next door.

The cats still run around the clinic grounds - there seems to be two more of them. Maybe a few months old, so makes sense they seem new to us.

More pics tomorrow. Buenas noches. Habla luego.