I arrived at Hallwangen on Saturday, and stayed two days at the BelVital hotel. Nice place overall but the claustrophobic bathrooms took a bit of getting used to. On Sunday I drove to the Hallwang Clinic to check the place out. From the outside, it looked like a nice place nestled on a hill in a small german town. I’ll be moving into the clinic on Monday and I expect to be spending a lot of time here over the coming months.
Hallwang proved to be quite a depressing place initially. Its a clinic that also treats terminal cancer patients, those that traditional medicine had given up on and were sent home or to a hospice to die. Emotionally I found it quite distressing, seeing people unable to walk or even feed themselves. This is not something you get to see in typical chemo infusion wards. I always try to be positive, but I could not help thinking that this could be me in a few months. After a few days I came to terms with it and am back to my optimistic self. I guess meeting Pete and Tedd in person whom I only had known through skype and forums had a lot to do with it. In many ways kindred spirits willing to also go down the road less travelled.
As soon as I got in, I had an initial consultation with the hallwang doctors, and was started on some IV drips. I was also booked in for Chemoembolization with Prof. Vogl the following day. Great, I had only just arrived and was being shipped off to Frankfurt. Everything seems to be done very quickly here. Hyperthermia the day after and the big one, Removab at the end of the week. Then another six hour drive to Duderstadt for my first dendritic cell vaccine. I may also drive back to the Prague clinic for a week, before returning to Hallwang. I am however very tempted to stop all treatment after the vaccine and go on another 10 day dry fast. My immune system went into overdrive last time, and this could be just what the dendritic vaccine needs.
