Darla in the Desert 🌵☕📰

A Healthier Gut Microbiome and Cancer Care: Why I'm Still Watching It After the Neurologist Said "Not for Parkinson's" When you're dealing with cancer, you start paying attention to everything that might help. Dave has lung cancer, and we're always looking for anything that might augment his treatment at City of Hope. You can read a recent news story about this topic here: A healthier gut microbiome may be the key to cancer care . Right now, we're getting ready for "zapping surgery" tomorrow — an image-guided ablation to destroy the larger tumor while hoping the immune system can handle the smaller ones. It's minor on paper, but cancer is cancer, and it still makes me nervous. Dave has done well with surgery in the past, even though Parkinson's adds some risk and a previous surgery left a hole in his upper jawbone, so this one brings up some pause. A few years ago, we asked our neurologist about CNM-Au8, a gold nanocrystal t...

Forest Bathing Is Real Medicine: What the Research Says and Where to Do It Forest bathing is real science — Japan has been prescribing it for decades, and the research on immunity and stress will surprise you. When I first heard the term "forest bathing" I pictured someone hauling an inflatable tub into the woods and filling it with pine needles — and then I imagined the loud pop and the sad hissing of air escaping through a zillion tiny pine needle holes. That is not what it is. But honestly, the real thing is almost as interesting as my imaginary scene. Forest bathing — shinrin-yoku in Japanese — simply means spending time in a forest environment slowly enough to actually experience it. Researchers found the therapeutic dose is somewhere between 30 minutes and two hours — enough time to let your nervous system actually settle. Walk slowly. Breathe. Listen. Put the phone down. No special equipment, no fitness requirement, no expensive membership. Jus...

Darla in the Desert: hard‑earned lessons from life, the internet, and a desert that melts your patience first. Send ice! Some conversations stay with you. I've had a couple recently with friends navigating scary medical news, and I kept saying the same things — things I wish someone had told us years ago. Time to tell our side more clearly. Dave was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma — ACC — originating in the maxillary sinus. Treatment was successful, and we had a couple of good years. Then whack-a-mole. It cropped up in the lungs — which is common with ACC. It's rare, slow-moving, and doesn't always play by the rules. It's not contagious, and no, it's not parasitic. The imaging makes that clear. Here's what I'd do differently. THE PET SCAN SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED SOONER. An FDG-PET is the scan that "lights up" active cancer. We didn't get one until this year. In my opinion, that should have been done much earlier. ...

An honest update on cancer, faith, a last-chance medication, City of Hope, a new Honda CR-V, and why we chose family over Egypt Some moments are worth holding onto. 🌵 A note on Parkinson's & cancer — keep scrolling for our important update ↓ Did you know? Research shows Parkinson's patients have a nuanced cancer picture. Overall cancer rates are actually somewhat lower than the general population — but with one important exception: melanoma risk runs about 75% higher. For those carrying certain genetic variants of Parkinson's, risks for breast, brain, and blood cancers are also elevated. The relationship is complicated — not simply "more cancer," but a shifted pattern altogether. Sources: BMJ meta-analysis of 17+ million participants (2021); NIH Mendelian randomization study (2024) I share this because so many of us are walking similar roads. In my own circle of friend...

Lost in Circles in Surprise AZ: Parkways, Ice Cream Sandwiches & Why Silver Alerts Make Total Sense 🌵 Desert Girl Goes to the City: Sun Valley Parkway, Ice Cream Sandwiches, and Two Cranky Desert People Accurate representation of us navigating Surprise AZ with no A/C at 4 PM. 🦀🦀 The Day the GPS Lost Its Mind (and Took Us With It) There are days when the desert feels like a quiet friend — and then there are days when it decides to test your patience, your marriage, and your ability to remember which road is which. We had a medical appointment on a part of town we don't usually navigate. Simple enough. Clear weather. Nothing dramatic. Except the GPS had other plans. First it sent us past the turn. Then it sent us back the other way. Then it tried to route us onto the freeway — which, as every desert person knows, is where chaos lives at 4 PM. Hard pass. By the third wrong turn, somewhere in Surprise, we were already behind. The car had been sitting in ...

I was watching Dave Mac's No Carb Life channel the other day — specifically an episode called "They Said It Would Only Get Worse" featuring a couple named Dean and Jodie. If you haven't seen it, it's worth your time. It's sitting at over 93,000 views and climbing. Dave, my husband, is battling cancer, which makes hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) especially relevant — not only for neurological conditions but also as a potential adjunct in cancer care. We have the oncologist’s approval and are waiting for the neurologist’s okay. UPDATE 05/18/26: We got more answers — and they changed everything. The new oncologist warned that HBOT could potentially make Dave’s particular cancer more aggressive. The neurologist said it probably would not worsen Parkinson’s and might even offer some secondary benefits, but it also was not considered an ideal treatment path for Parkinson’s itself. Once cancer entered ...

Darla in the Desert: hard-earned lessons from life, the internet, and a desert that melts your patience first. Send ice! It started with a simple question in a Parkinson’s caregiver group. Fishing is one of those things that quietly disappears as the disease progresses. Not all at once — just little pieces at a time. The balance. The grip. The patience for the small, frustrating parts… like trying to hook bait when your hands won’t cooperate. Someone mentioned a word I had never heard before: Tenkara . So I asked. Because here’s the thing — my husband doesn’t fish much anymore. And I’ve watched that loss happen slowly. Not just the fishing itself, but everything that came with it… the time outside, the rhythm, and the laughter with other men who understood that quiet language of the water. But our son lives near an area where fishing is still possible. So the question wasn’t just curiosity. It was about time spent with loved ones — a chance to have a fairly norm...

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Before You Read This — What Actually Happened That Day On Saturday March 21, 2026, Luke Days airshow in Glendale, Arizona recorded temperatures of 105 degrees — tarmac temperatures can run up to 20 degrees hotter, meaning ground-level heat approached 125 degrees. By end of day: over 400 people contacted by medical personnel. At least 25–30 hospitalized for heat exhaustion, dehydration and overheating. Officials confirmed roughly 90% were under 12, over 60, or had pre-existing conditions including heart disease, diabetes or pregnancy. Sunday the show was cut short. Entry stopped at 1 PM. The event ended at 3:30 instead of 5 PM. My husband has Parkinson's disease and is currently undergoing lung cancer treatment. He was in that parking lot for nearly 4 hours on Saturday. He was exactly the demographic officials were worried about. This ...