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Ask TracyFood: food and chemotherapy? Answer: Chris knows! 16 December 2008 2:28 pm

Posted by Tracy in : advice,eating,friends,guest post,health,interviews,nutrition , trackback

So a month ago, my friend Ed Parker wrote me a question:

Hello Tracy,

I have a friend whose father suffers from lack of appetite due to chemotherapy. I’m trying to get some menus together for him and wondering if you know of any websites or information reference to food and chemotherapy….

Thanks,

Eddie

While I don’t know a lot about nutrition, I probably know even less about cancer and chemotherapy. However, one of the greatest things I keep learning as I get older is that I don’t need to know everything — I just need to know how to ask people who know stuff I don’t. So, enter the guest post!

My friend Christine does know a thing or two about cancer and chemo both, so after reading Eddie’s message, I wrote some email, asked a bunch of questions, and got more answer than I can fit in one TracyFood entry. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting her wisdom in a few installments, and thinking of more questions to ask, in case it turns out we’re serious about writing a book like we keep talking about over instant messages. Here we go…

* * * * *

I started my questions with a wimpy disclaimer:

I’m guessing there’s about as many different responses to chemotherapy as there are cancer patients (and also there’s different kinds of chemo, and blah blah blah), so I know there’s probably no universal answers for any of this, and I’m asking about you specifically. (If you want to tell me some general stuff that seems to be fairly universal, that’s great, but I can also get that from the Internets, which are not as interesting as you.) So.

Then it was time to get down to business.

Tracy: What are your physical reactions to chemotherapy?

Christine: My least favorite reactions to chemotherapy are nausea and heartburn. Most other side effects I can handle — hair loss, thin skin, diarrhea, etc. all seem pretty manageable. Nausea and loss of appetite.

T: Mental? Emotional? Spiritual?

C: Chemo brain is a reality. It can affect your concentration, your short term memory, and after a while it’s a joint mental/spiritual reaction as well. Once, with the first round of chemotherapy, standing on the porch at a friend’s house, my husband and daughter were cavorting in their swimming pool, and I remember thinking, “I wonder if I ever get to be alive again, like them”. It’s like being on the other side of a veil, or a piece of glass all the time, in the same way that depression separates you. This time, with a lower dose, it has not been so bad — let’s hope that continues.

Emotional — one of the drugs I get seems to have a hit on my hormones like crazy PMS. I almost always cry about 30 minutes after the Taxol is begun, and it makes me more weepy for the three days after the chemotherapy. I also seem to have more ups and downs.

Spiritual — how much space do you have? I think cancer patients have to face a lot of existential crises sooner than most people. It makes you face death, or at least the fear of death, at a younger age than I think anything else does. The up side of this is that it certainly makes me more present day to day — the sweet things in life feels very sweet. It also makes me more introspective — am I doing everything I can to keep my balance? Meditate, talk with friends, exercise, go more slowly (not an easy one for me…) and to separate the Witness from the turbulence on the surface.

T: Are your reactions different this time around from your first round of chemo?

C: They are. I have a much better idea of what to expect, and although we are all grieving, I think we are getting through the grieving process more easily. The first time you ever do chemotherapy, it’s pretty daunting. We’ve all heard horror stories about vomiting for 12 straight hours. That’s never actually happened to me — management of nausea has gotten far better. Now, although my stomach gets upset beforehand, in many ways it’s pretty routine.

The family is also MUCH better of knowing how to ask for help, and for accepting it when people offer. Our standard response when people offer to help is, sure! Bring dinner over, and come fold laundry! I have a couple of friends, my darling Jenny being one of them, who is the best person EVER to take along to a doctor’s appointment or a beastly medical procedure. Our senses of humor are really similar — slightly cynical and grouchy — and she can ALWAYS make me laugh, and she doesn’t freak if I cry. It’s SO hard for Kevin to see me in pain, that he is not the best person to have to sit with me in the recovery room or the infusion center.

* * * * *

Keep an eye out for Chris’s next guest post, which gets into more specifics about food. Meanwhile, check out her blog, Butterfly Soup.

  • http://www.culiblog.org Debra Solomon

    Excellent Blog Tracy and a great series on ChemoFood. I’ve read them backwards, so I’m at the start now.

    I have been wondering about chemo-patients and the healthful effects of lacto-fermented foods. Would it be wise, useful and/or palatable to dish up some kimchi or sparkling glass of kombucha to someone undergoing chemo?

    Can the chemo/radiation really tell the good cells from the bad ones?

    The palatability issue (and change in taste) is important here. Whether or not the lacto-ferments would aid wellness, they still might not be considered desirable.

    What do you think?

    Warm regards,

    Debra

  • http://www.tracyfood.com Tracy

    Hi Debra! Thanks for writing! (I’m a big fan of your Culiblog.)

    My quick guess about fermented foods and chemo is that they might be too acidic for a chemo patient’s ravaged digestive system. Like you guessed, the issue is partly one of palatability: in her third guest post for TracyFood, Christine mentioned not being able to enjoy white wine. Unfortunately, the problems don’t end there: in her second guest post, Chris describes having to eliminate spicy and acidic foods from her diet, so I’m guessing that rules out kimchi. Also in that post she writes that chemotherapy is designed to attack fast-dividing cells, and radiation kills unhealthy ones. Now obviously there’s plenty of collateral damage, or the treatments wouldn’t be so sickening, but at least for my Sugar Mama, they seem to be working, too.

    But! You’ve piqued my curiosity, and since I like encouraging Chris to write about this stuff, maybe one of these days we’ll have another guest post about the role (or lack thereof) of fermentation in CancerFood.

    Thanks again for reading (and writing),
    -Tracy