Friends,
This is a cancer update.  I’ll talk about dealing with malnourishment, and how to make biomolecules.  This post contains significant Christian content.

Hunger
I was on several antibiotics to deal with my Granulicatella adiacens infection. Probably because of this, I was often nauseated and often couldn’t hold down my meals.  At one point, I couldn’t even hold down juice or even Ensure.  I started drinking Carnation Instant Breakfast, a powdered drink I discovered in college. Unfortunately, CIB doesn’t really have enough nutrition in it to drink it that much, but it’s the only thing I could keep down at the hospital. I started losing strength and muscle mass, and lost 20 lbs during my 2 week stay.

Studies were done during World War II on how to help people who are extremely malnourished.  Because I was also on antibiotics, I didn’t fall into the same category, but it did strike me that we were taking the wrong approach.  I intend to look into this more when I am better.

Adrenaline and how to get it.
Once my effusion was drained, my doctors were eager to send me home.  Unfortunately, whenever I tried to walk, my blood pressure would drop to an alarmingly low level.  As it turns out, I was no longer able to make my own adrenaline, a signaling molecule you need as you increase your activity.  I couldn’t even walk across the room without my blood pressure dropping.  One of my doctors said I had “adrenal insufficiency”, that my adrenal gland was not active enough for some reason. I had never heard of this in a person, let alone ever had this happen to me, so I was confused.

I’m going to talk about something that many don’t understand.  Many Christians “hear” God’s voice on a regular basis.  I hear it occasionally, maybe every 2 months or so.  For me and many other Christians, this voice presents itself as a very strong idea that pushes other ideas out of your head for a moment.  When Christians say God spoke to them, this is what they mean.  I am an analytical person, so of course I have criteria for knowing when God is speaking to me.  These criteria are:

It’s not an idea you would normally have.  God’s voice has an “out of the blue” quality, like something you would never normally think about. And yes, often it’s an idea that you don’t like, like having to apologize to someone for something you did or said. God doesn’t have to tell you to do something that you already want to do!

It’s clear. Sometimes other people will say something that confirms what you heard, like using the same unusual wording that God used with you.

It matches the Bible.  God will never tell you something that does not match what the Bible teaches.

Kathy was at home and God told her that I needed to expand my diet.  Not knowing what that meant, I started with eating more colorful fruits and vegetables.  It is well known that different colors in foods mean that that food contains different molecular nutrients.  Orange foods tend to have lots of Vitamin A, acidic foods tend to have Vitamin C, purple and blue foods have lots of antioxidants, dark green vegetables often have lots of Iron, etc.  Over the next few days, I still couldn’t hold down protein like eggs and meat, but I was able to eat a variety of colorful foods.

The following day, I was able to walk without my blood pressure dropping.  The day after that, Sunday, September 15, I was finally sent home!

Don’t fear, but be smart,
Erik

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