Today is recovery day from treatment 1 yesterday. What a cool experience! Dr. Williams' driving service picked Brent and me up from the hotel at 9 am to go to the  hospital. Mexico City is really busy and the drivers are really aggressive. There aren't any lines for the lanes so everyone is just driving everywhere and scooters and motorcycles zoom around the traffic. The driver told us that many people on bikes are actually robbers! We're safe though; Dr. Wiliams' team is taking great care of us and everyone has been so helpful and kind. Being at the hospital and just seeing the general surroundings remind me of how blessed we are in America. The hospital is a very nice one for this area, but much of their equipment is second hand from the States. Everything was really clean and well cared for. The hospital staff was attentive and accurate. Every hand that touched me was healing and caring, all that one can ask for! They were a bit behind schedule so my procedure didn't end up starting around 5 pm. It was about an hour and a half long and went really well. Dr. Williams said that he is targeting two golfball sized tumors on my liver and there are two (likely more) smaller lesions close by. He said it's really common for mets to reoccur near the cut edge of an organ because the body's attempts to heal the surgical wound actually end up nourishing the remaining cancer! Man, cancer is tricky little beast. Anyway, he froze the bigger tumor and left it in there to be my cancer vaccine. The immune system recruitment has begun! Next week I believe he will ablate the other larger tumor and start injecting the immunotherapies and chemotherapies into the tumors. He said that there has been surprisingly little growth of the tumors since my last CT scan on April 12th. I attribute this success to the mountain of supplements I'm taking, the IV therapies I've been doing with Dr. Allderdice at Sage, and the spiritual and emotional work. So tally one for complimentary alternative medicine! I am continuing to learn so much from my treatment that I'll be able to pass on to my patients and others. In a way, it's kind of really fun. I ended up staying the night in the hospital because it was so late when I was finally done. My room was comfortable and the staff actually let me sleep, a welcome change from my other hospital experiences. I was happily surprised by my dinner and breakfast. Hospital food isn't generally known to be good or healthy, but this was! I had fresh vegetables and soup that were clearly made from scratch and breakfast was fresh berries and an omelet. American hospitals definitely have some things to learn from the Mexican ones. 

The next fun things I learned were that recent COVID infection can make the immune therapy I'm doing work better! Shows you that the Universe has a sense of humor (and a plan!). I guess getting COVID right before this trip was a blessing after all. The second funny thing is that a junk food diet can help too! You will never hear me say that, so soak it in! In my previous chemotherapy treatments, I would fast for 3-5 days around chemo as it enhances the therapy and reduces the damage to healthy cells. I thought that of course this would be the case with this therapy and that I should continue on my low carb diet. Not so! Turns out that retrospective studies suggest that the standard American diet (aptly nicknamed SAD), which is pro-inflammatory and generally thought of as really bad for you, can help immunotherapies work better. In a similar way as COVID, the inflammation actually enhances the inflammatory cascade that immunotherapy uses as its main mode of action. So, bring on the french fries! I'm still kind of trippin over this. It goes against my nature! So we'll see how to balance this all out. 

Anyway, I was discharged this morning and generally just laid low at the hotel. I'm sore in my ribs from the incision, fatigued and my belly aches a little, but overall I feel wonderful. It's amazing that my body is currently in the process of teaching my immune system to identify the cancer. Seek and destroy! Off to bed soon. We'll be leaving for Cabo at 10:30 am and there I'll stay for the next 21 days. My next treatment has yet to be scheduled, but will likely be next Wednesday or Thursday. Be well my friends!