Update on Christine

Christine Neall’s Brain Tumor Update #23
Sabbath, August 4, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

We are thankful to be back home again now after a couple of thousand miles and seven weeks of travel this past summer. It was a busy summer but we are grateful for the chance to see many family and friends and to attend a 3 weeks lifestyle session at Uchee Pines Health Institute in Seale Alabama. We had to leave home a week earlier than anticipated to go and help care for Christine’s mother who had become seriously ill and was admitted to the hospital. Thankfully she has been recovering well though it looked very serious for a while. We also were two weeks later in returning than we were anticipating so our hopes for work around home and gardening this summer have met with little fruit but we are thankful indeed for the time spent together as family. Every day is precious and we cherish the time we can spend together.

We are especially grateful for the chance to visit Uchee Pines and learn from the many experienced people there. Dr. Agatha Thrash was Christine’s attending physician and it was wonderful to connect with her again and learn from her incredible wealth of knowledge. She is such a wonderful, caring lady, with a firm faith in the Lord. We were indeed blessed and inspired by all the dedicated people we met, especially Christine’s Lifestyle Counselor, Rukiya Charles who treated her so expertly each day.

Christine underwent hyperthermia (fever treatments) 5 days a week and was able to use their Mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Chamber to recover in after them and even to sleep in at nights. We are thankful for the things we learned as far as diet and lifestyle which have helped us tweak our protocol to better equip the Christine in the fight against cancer. We also had some positive changes in Christine’s blood work while there. Using cilantro smoothies, they were able to chelate out the high levels of copper in Christine’s blood which was one of our goals. We learned many different strategies which we hope may prove beneficial in preventing the cancer from growing or upgrading into a more aggressive form.

We just arrived back home again after another visit to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland for another MRI and checkup on Christine’s brain tumor. We are thankful that the MRI still indicates a stable brain tumor with no new growth. The doctor said that the tumor is acting more like a low grade oligodendroglioma since it has been a year now since the operation and the tumor looks just about like it did one year ago, post-op. She said that a year is a good long time to observe these things since they know how they act so it is a good sign. They do not treat low grade tumors but just monitor them so she thought it might be reasonable to continue to monitor it for now and delay treatment so Christine can continue to breastfeed our precious daughter. Christine is such a good mother wanting to do the best thing for Ella and her health. We are so very grateful for the good news of no growth and we are earnestly hoping and praying that with God’s blessing on the things we have learned at Uchee and Nutritional Solutions we may delay the progression of the tumor indefinitely. Thank you for your continued prayers for us in this regard.

For the most part Christine is pretty much normal except for a some speech aphasia (which means she can’t find or express words very well). Some days are more pronounced than others but were are thankful that is the only residual effect of the surgery and tumor at the moment. We wish to ask for your continued prayers in our behalf as these types of tumors tend to upgrade to more aggressive types over time and can suddenly change.

Elliot is doing well and talking more than ever. He enjoys doing flips onto the couch and loves swimming in the pool. He just broke his arm on his last day of being 2 (he’s now 3). Ella is 8 months now and still smiles at everyone just about continuously.

I pray this finds each of you in good health and enjoying God’s blessing on your lives. We certainly are enjoying the same and thankful for every new day.

Blessings,

Rob Neall