Mexico - a Treatment Update

Hey beautiful people.

So just right off the bat, I want to share(for those that haven't heard) that after weeks of study and research, emotion, phone calls, more research, hundreds of informative emails, and so many many prayers (from all you dear ones as well:) ) the first step we decided to make towards treatment for Martin was to go to a hospital in Mexico!

Four weeks ago today while holding hands in the doctor's office was the first time we heard the word 'cancer', which was tied in with the words 'melanoma', 'aggressive', and 'metastatic'. It was exactly a week later that his diagnosis was confirmed after spending that week at a Cancer institute out of town, as well as the thoughts from several doctors about how long they thought Martin had left.

Ever since day 1 when I reached out to friends and family, as well as you guys-my online family, we have been bombarded (in the best way possible) by so much information regarding different treatment routs, unusual tricks and tinctures for healing, amazing success stories, cancer centers to consider around the world, various alternative remedies and treatment methods, all promising to do everything from simply prolonging his life to curing his cancer altogether, and we're beyond grateful for every bit of it.

Through it all several things remain absolutely sure: First, Martin is young and very healthy and strong-in every sense of the word which is a great asset, secondly we have the biggest support system- not only from all the loved ones around us, but also every single one of you who care so selflessly about us and our family, and thirdly (of course) we're going to do every and anything it takes to beat this.

So now to go back to the Mexico thing:) We saw that there was clearly an order to do things in if we wanted to get the most out of the treatments that seemed right for his case. To start off we'd already gone directly to a very renouned cancer institute to hear his options as far as conventional treatment, but had left feeling very overwhelmed and a bit confused, knowing only that we weren't ready to make a decision quite yet. Long story shorter, we decided to move forward first with some really neat alternative treatments that are available in lots of facilities-mostly outside the United States. We felt really good about coming to this hospital in Mexico for many reasons, but mostly because with the baby due in just a few weeks now we didn't want to be any farther away from home (we're just a couple of hours), they could get Martin in right away(time is of the essence), his treatments would only last three weeks (with lots of follow-up of course), and we didn't want to be away from the kiddies any longer than that.

Today marks about a week and a half of treatment, and things are going really well! Their main focus is building up his immune system to fight the cancer on it's own, instead of pumping drugs into his body that will try and fight it for him. We chose to do the out-patient option, so we typically spend about 5-9 hours at the hospital every day (when we don't spend the night), and can go home to a snuggly hotel room most nights, which is much better on us both mentally. We've joked that this is almost a fun vacation despite the obvious fact that it's...not, at all.haha We probably won't ever see the beach or swim at the hotel, and most days we end up falling in to bed exhausted way too late at night only to wake up again super early and do it all over again, but we have had some awesome food, seen some beautiful scenery, and are feeling very lucky to be here making progress! The hardest part of it all is missing our babies like crazy and not having our family all together, but we know they're being taken very good care of by close family members, and we're counting down the hours till we can hold them all again.

Phew! Sorry I feel like I've gone on for ages, and there's still so much I haven't shared. I want to stress lastly though for any concerned, that we've not closed our minds to conventional treatments at this point(as I said we'll do anything it takes), but we're also looking for the best quality of life possible for him, and since these methods are so much more gentle and 'natural'(though still with an extremely high success rate compared to conventional treatments they offered him), it made a lot of sense to try these first and see how things go:) This doesn't burn any bridges for the future or close him off to any other forms of treatment, which was important for us in order to move forward quickly.

Well I hope that I've painted a good enough picture of where we're at right now, but if you have any questions at all feel free to ask! I had big plans of posting much more while we were here, but our phones and computers are much more useless than we thought they'd be, unless we have a super good wifi connection (which is extremely rare). So, it might be feast or famine on the blog post front for the rest of the month.

Okay, ending now I promise.haha I have to say thank you again though to everyone who has sent prayers and positivity (and donations!), etc, of every kind in our direction during this whole nightmare. I'll never be able to say thank you enough or express how much every single gesture means to us. Love, love, love.