Fungus the bogeyman

It's been hot, so hot in fact that this morning I had to come in out of the sun. One or two midges have had little nibbles at my arms, but it was when I changed to try on a dress I'm making that I noticed these strange blotches round my abdomen. Worried, I Googled 'shingles' and having seen the gruesome pictures promptly made an appointment with the GP. I saw the one totally without people skills only this time I wasn't bothered about that.

Not shingles, he thought, but instead a fungal problem. He didn't specify which - I don't think he knew. The presription cream lists some conditions that it's effective against so I had yet more unpleasant images to Google when I got back. I'm not much more enlighted though.

Yuck - here's me with a body almost totally devoid of noxious sugars and yeasts - finding that despite that I'm host to an outbreak of fungus. I've got an antifungal cream to use and I'm sure it won't last long but, yuk, fungus. After all the care I've taken of myself in the last year and this happens!

Bicarb QED

I have great respect for Chris Woollams of Canceractive. He tells it like it really is and must spend enormous amounts of time reading research papers into cancer and related topics. I do recommend anyone who wants to gain more knowledge about the subject to subscribe to his email newsletters.

Yesterday I received the latest and in it he details some research into Sodium Bicarbonate. You'll recall a recent post of mine where I raise the subject. Here's what Chris has to say.

Asprin

Of course my ears picked up when I heard the recent media coverage of the benefits of asprin. It's so easy to think in terms of pills. Pop a pill to cure the ill. The news prompted me to look up salicylic acid. I knew it was derived from willow and of course it's obvious that it won't just be in willow.

A quick Google found this list of foods containing salicylic acid. In that list of foods containing the acid is a load of those which I put in my diet when I devised it back in November 2010. It makes no sense to pop a pill. If you can eat food rich in the desired nutrient you'll also be consuming various other things too which will, in all likelihood, be necessary to facilitate absorption. Asprin does carry a health warning. But foodstuffs? Have you ever heard of anyone suffering stomach bleeding from eating too many mushrooms?

Salt

I've just been to a salt cave - a room where you sit and relax, fully clothed, and breathe in salt air. It was lovely and in the first five seconds I could feel my sinuses loosen up. The room was inches deep in salt and the walls appeared to be salt covered. My ears were fed a diet of soothing tones and the noise of waves breaking on a shore.

Salt therapy has, according to Wikipedia, been around since the Romans. There are many things claimed for it which I haven't investigated and there are some aspects that might well benefit my own family. So I think I'll probably go back for a proper session; today's was just a taster. In fact, if any of you are interested then take a look at Salt Cave. Your first visit is absolutely free and there's no obligation to go back and have another session.

Duct tape bondage

Ah, that got you interested didn't it? First of all, apologies for not writing for you during the past couple of weeks. I don't know where the time goes but I know I'm busy. There's the local business association, for which I do quite a bit. Then there's the church restoration project and the various events which it spawns.

I've taken to promoting our pub quite heavily since we have some amazing people who've taken it over. They're really interested in the community and the food is excellent. All fresh - nothing out of a plastic bag. I can't afford to eat there all the time - though prices are very reasonable - so I have to try and encourage others so that it becomes really successful.

We have a Titanic commemorative evening coming up at the pub, where people can attend and dine "first class" or "steerage". Appropriate meals will be served depending upon the class of passenger. Of course I need to be wearing a dress of authentic 1912 design. So at the moment I'm sitting with a lot of bits of fabric around me wondering if I can use the £5 dress which I bought in a charity shop as a basis for my Titanic creation.

I've always wanted a dress form - you know a tailor's dummy. And I've come close to ordering one over the past couple of months. But I got a little put off by reading on forums about the different models and that for some it's really difficult to get the dummy adjusted to exactly the right size. Well, I know I'm anything but ordinary. I've a very long back and my arms are a bit long. My legs are actually longer than my husband's although he's taller than me! So I Googled to see if there was any way of making your own dummy.

That is why a week or so ago, with me dressed in an old T-shirt, one of our daughters and my husband spent a couple of hours covering me in duct tape. Yes, you've read that correctly. Duct tape - the silver stuff you use for taping down leads when you're doing a gig. Yards and yards of it - about two and a half rolls of the big reels. I was covered up to my neck and down to my thighs and around the tops of my arms in the stuff and then I was carefully cut out with a jagged cut down the back. I'd read that if you cut a jagged line it makes it much easier to stick it back square.

I have stuffed my dummy with the contents of an old flattened duvet - and actually I really need to find another old one, because it's stll only half filled. It could do with a stand but for the time being it's got a coat hanger in the neck and can hang from a door frame.

The one thing that has shocked me about this exercise is, depsite my weight loss, that it's soooooo big!

Pennies dropped

The homeopath I met yesterday has sent me a link to a fascinating film. I'm not going to tell you about it; best watch it yourself. You might like to do this in small stages as it's about an hour and a half long. But it is divided into chapters.

Watching this I found that many pennies dropped. My money's on the yeast theory. It would explain why I felt so strangely 'on the way out' for years before my diagnosis. It might explain why I got cancer in the first place. It certainly explains why I began to feel so much better before they'd even started treating me. And sadly, it also explains why no-one is at all interested in why my outcome should be so different from that anticipated by the chest physician and oncologist.

Warning! - if you are currently undergoing conventional cancer treatment you might like to give this a miss, as it could add to your anxiety.

Here's the link

Spring is sprung ...

.... or at least here it's trying exceptionally hard. I've just been sunbathing, not for the first time this year I have to add. I'm a believer in the theory that we evolved to be in the sun and that while it might lessen the wrinkles, staying out of the sun is unnatural. It's interesting that nowadays the "experts" are saying the same thing. So any chance of a little ray or two and the opportunity to produce some vitamin D, then I'm there lapping it up with Simba the cat. I'm also a sceptic when it comes to suncreams - if anything's unnatural then it's putting chemicals and nano particles into your body. But that's a rant for another day I think.

I've been to a networking meeting this morning, not really in the hope of finding any businesss but for fun. I had a lunch yesterday which was equally entertaining. I always come back with a large number of business cards with things scribbled on the back listing things I need to do.

Today a homeopath described herself as a health detective. I didn't realise that homeopaths entered quite so far into the holistic approach - but they do. It was when this lady gave a for-instance of grief affecting the lungs that I really sat up and took notice. Remember all the grief that came out when I did my first session of Journey therapy? All these alternatives to conventional wisdom and medicine seem to converge at various points which does, in my opinion, add up to quite a lot.