It’s less than 24 hours before we leave for Germany and we’re both ready to get this party started. If all goes well we’ll land in Munich on Monday morning and Paul will start treatment immediately.

THANKS to everyone who has called, texted, emailed or signed up to receive this blog via email. We just sent the link yesterday and we really appreciate your support and good wishes.  You guys rock!

For the past few months we’ve spent countless hours reading, researching and trying to contact anyone we could find who had experience with the Marinus am Stein clinic (specifically looking for men who had been treated for prostate cancer.)

Dr. Weber from Marinus provided the names of a few men that Paul was able to speak with, but we were very interested in finding an objective source that wasn’t referred by the clinic.

Viva la Google! (I knew my cyberstalking skills would pay off some day.) I was able to find a couple of blogs written by patient’s who had stayed at the Marinus clinic. That led us to a number of former patients who were willing to speak with us:

Mike and Debbie Lord shared their experience during two visits to Marinus. Debbie was kind enough to speak with me by phone and then continued to go above and beyond by tracking down and providing us with contact information for two men who had previously been treated for prostate cancer at the clinic. Paul was able to correspond with both gentlemen via email and had two phone calls with a man in California who was kind enough to send us a detailed email full of tips (and photos) that really helped us prepare for our trip. P.S. The Lord’s are still dealing with Mike’s cancer so please keep them in your thoughts.

The Jitterbug with Cancer blog provided a detailed day-by-day account of what the Marinus clinic experience was like — both positive and negative.  I’m someone who likes to know what to expect, so I was very grateful to get a “heads up” about some of the potential challenges we might run into.

On the positive side, everyone we spoke with said that they saw improved results and were significantly helped (although not always completely cured) by the treatment they received at Marinus. Their willingness to share their experiences with us so openly has truly been a gift.

We’re committed to paying their kindness forward via this blog in the hope that it will be useful to others who are considering alternative cancer treatment.

We’ll post again once we get to Germany and get settled (or possibly sooner if I can’t sleep tonight.)