Birthdays!

Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I never felt very celebratory about my birthday. It’s not that I was anti-birthday, it just never felt like that big of a deal. In fact, I feel that way about a lot of holidays — arbitrary ritual just doesn’t speak to my intense need for meaning. But what I can really get behind now is to make sure you’re spending your birthday doing something that makes you feel really alive.

Some great ways to spend a birthday:

• Sharing a meal with friends and/or family

• Meditating

• Napping

• Trying a new activity

• Visiting a new place

• Visiting a favorite place

• Watching the sunrise/sunset

• Writing to an old friend or teacher who had an impact on you

• Drinking your favorite coffee or tea

• Doodling images of grumpy cats

• Learning to knit

• Playing games with friends

You get the point, it’s whatever you want it to be. It’s so easy to get swept away in the absolute busy-ness of everything. At work and at home there is so much pressure to be productive, focused, disciplined, and in control. But birthdays are the perfect reminder that life marches on regardless, so why not pause to have some fun?

I recently attended a young adult cancer workshop, and one sentiment I shared about cancer (which likely applies to any chronic illness, even burnout) is that slowing down to heal and to take care of myself feels like I jumped out of a rushing river and I’m sitting on the bank watching everything rush by. But when I think of jumping back into the rapids, I don’t really want to jump back in. Ever maybe. I just want to invite people to come sit on the banks with me (in wellness of course).

Oy, right? Being human is pretty tiring. Worthwhile, even when sometimes it feels like its really not. But something wonderful about being human is the ability to create the conditions for ease and joy. To feel really alive.

Honestly, being human is so exhausting nowadays because we are always doing so much. What if we focused more on being? I realized that between the IVs, injections, and twelve-step relaxation routines, I had basically just diverted my over-achieving, over-working self to my wellness. It’s amazing how insidious the need to keep doing is. Spring has arrived and so has the invitation for me to take a more passive approach to healing. Less appointment, more squishiness, more space for old emotions to surface, more space for stillness, more space for me.

So what am I doing for my wellness right now?

• Biweekly acupuncture

• Sound and energy healing (exploring cymatherapy — using frequencies and sound to return balance to the body)

• Monthly bloodwork to check on inflammation levels, which continue to be high

• This week I’m getting my TSH/Tg thyroid levels checked so we’ll see how my tumor markers are looking. When we checked them in February, my TSH was finally back close to our goal. Apparently fluconazole and nystatin (both taken for candida) were interfering with the absorption of my thyroid pill, so my thyroid levels were all kinds of crazy. My goal TSH level is 0.1 or even slightly less and I was at 30. The ideal for people with thyroids is 2.2. Needless to say, I’m glad to have more balance again.

• I signed up for a weeklong meditation retreat in April, which I am the most excited to attend

All of this to say, things are feeling solidly in maintenance mode as far as cancer goes. My tumor appears to be no larger than it was in July, so if it wants to hang out (or start shrinking!) we’ll take it.

The biggest change since my last update, beyond just pulling back and letting my whole body rest more is that I’ve undertaken eating autoimmune keto. That transition was not without its grief: loss of the ease of dining out (which was already so limited due to my autoimmune paleo diet previously), loss of the ease of travel (who wants to go to Japan and eat keto?), loss of the camaraderie of being a “foodie” (which although I had given up with paleo really cemented with keto), and the resentment of wanting to take a passive approach to healing only to embark on the most restrictive diet plan. Only hard-core weight-lifters do keto right? Incidentally, keto is the top recommended diet for anti-cancer, which although isn’t news to me, is not widely known. It’s also great for keeping candida levels in check because it is low carb/low starch, which were the culprits in spawning my candida overgrowth.

Autoimmune keto simply means avoiding foods that cause common autoimmune responses in addition to maintaining ketosis. You might know that traditional keto involves dairy. A lot of dairy. Dairy that I cannot consume, lest my body revolt. In true Julia form, I’m finding the against-the-grain, non-conformist route to everything. A majority of keto recipes online have nuts or dairy, so I am getting creative and leaning heavily on the resources that do exist for autoimmune keto. My nutritionist at Remission Nutrition is wonderful and a huge support.

The biggest stressor with keto versus paleo is, when I pushed my food boundaries in paleo, it meant very temporary discomfort (i.g. clearing my throat a hundred times after eating white rice or potatoes), but with keto the stakes are higher. When you move from burning carbs to producing ketones for energy in your body, you’re starving your cancer cells (they love sugars!). So if you are starving the cells and then suddenly you introduce a huge wave of sugars (read: a cheat meal including lots of sugar or starch), the cancer cells have an absolute feast. Not what we’re going for. So, for as long as I have active cancer cells in my body, it’s critical I stick to keto pretty strictly.

The next question becomes, how long will you do keto for? Forever really. Perhaps if I’m “no disease detected” for a while I can reassess (in the case of traveling abroad and having more leeway), but there’s really no good reason to come back off of keto once I’m on it. I just started about a week ago stair-stepping my way back down on carbs and I already think I feel more energetic. Curious to see how I feel in a month from now. I’ll be fresh off a 6-night meditation retreat and fully in ketosis, so hopefully pretty darn alive.

So here’s to true wellness, resting more, doing less, more birthdays, and feeling alive!