(In this episode, The Meddlesome will be partially unmasked! Yes - you do care!)
I would recommend a soft, fluffy towelling dressing-gown to help you get in the mood for this, the most recent and bizarre twist in the tale. Make yourself a mug of hot chocolate (organic) and put on your favourite, soothing music.
You thought you were going to get a break while Our Hero waited for the next meeting with the oncologist when they would rationally discuss the conventional ‘options.’ You thought he would be quietly getting on with his tinctures (astragalus, milk thistle, curcumin and dandelion), with his mistletoe, and with all those excellent and welcome vibes. (And a nice hot bath now that the plumbing is working again!)
Think again.
Today Our Hero (wrap around shades, hat, etc firmly in place to protect photo-sensitised skin) was out visiting his friends in the local Tesco; not just in search of food but to find two very large fluffy towels and a couple of soft blankets. This is in preparation for a friend of a friend who is flying over from Stockholm to administer a very gentle sort of massage which is particularly good at generating oxytocin – a hormone produced by the pituitary gland. Towels, blankets, soothing music and 24 degrees are required. (For goodness sake, this is Cold Comfort Cottage, in the far North of Scotland! 24 degrees?) And no, he is not giving birth.
This is where I go off ‘script’ and put some cards on the table. There are many things about our life just now that I would have found hard to believe possible thirteen months ago when Our Hero was originally diagnosed as being terminally ill with oesophageal cancer, not least that my seemingly perfectly fit fifty-one year old husband would be found to have a cancer about which neither of us had ever heard. I would, however, have found it just as hard to believe that I would have welcomed into my cynical, and probably rather narrow, sphere of existence all the ‘complimentary’ medicines and treatments which now we whole-heartedly welcome.
I have been Google-eyed with all the research I have been doing and clearly something has been working. The Mistletoe? Cytotoxic properties and boosts the immune system. Milk thistle? Wonderful for the liver. Astragalus? Seems to slow tumour growth. Curcumin? Kills oesophageal cancer cells. And so on. There is science out there, although it some of it hasn’t yet become mainstream.
But Reiki? Acupuncture? Meditation? And - dare I say it - prayer?
This brings me to oxytocin. A wonder hormone.
When the very kind offer was made (slightly alarming to both of us given Our Hero’s extreme thinness and our straightened financial circumstances) that this friend of a friend would fly over to gently apply this massage technique which would produce lots of oxytocin, I was googling again. To cut a long story short (you must do your own googling) there are many oxytocin receptors in some types of cancer cells and oxytocin acts as a growth regulator. The pharmaceutical companies are beginning to get very excited by all this.
Reiki, acupuncture, meditation, massage and music and other soothing things all increase the production of oxytocin. (Oh, yes – and sex too, if you are up to it!)
So here is to oxytocin. Go to it, my friends.
Now, I must work out how to raise the temperature in Cold Comfort Cottage.
No, I don’t want any suggestions.
