TracyFood

CancerFood, part 2: you need Christine’s wisdoms bad. 7 January 2009 7:51 am

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

So last month my stupendously colossal badass friend Christine helped me write the first of a series of posts about food and chemotherapy. We started out with the basics: what her experience of chemo has been like, taking a holistic view of its mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual effects. Today we’ve got some more food-specific discussion to share, with a few chimings-in by Christine’s favorite Englishman, Kevin. Here goes….

* * * * *

Tracy: Nausea and loss of appetite are maybe the most publicized side effects of chemotherapy after hair loss — can you describe your side effect experiences in more specific terms? (I understand you’re being poisoned, and the hope is it poisons the cancer a little more than it poisons you, or at least a little faster… but I’ve only ever been really mildly poisoned, and that might not be the best analogy in general?)

Christine: Chemotherapy and radiation work on basically the same principle — chemo kills fast dividing cells, radiation kills unhealthy cells. In my case, radiation was harder to take, because it was so continuous. Felt worse every day — man, did I do a lot of jigsaw puzzles and sudoku, just to pass the time. I also had an oral steroid that gave me a wild case of the jitters for three days. Little sleep, shaking hands, stuttering when I tried to talk…. that was the most unpleasant unexpected side effect of this new round of chemo. Needless to say I asked them to change the regimen for the second chemo session, and that worked better. (From Kevin: The radiation was worse for me, as each day I saw her burns get worse, until she had second-degree, weeping burns over about a square foot of skin. She’d whimper in her sleep, which was like having my heart wrung out.)

Chemo is trashing your digestive system, all the way from your mouth, (thus mouth sores) to the other end. For me, nausea and reflux are the most unpleasant. I slept last night partially sitting up because of reflux.

I’m getting better at managing the nausea, although sometimes it requires a fight with your insurance company to actually get the drugs you need. We manage it both with meds, like zofran and kytril, and with diet.

For nausea, the first line is to decrease or eliminate foods that contribute — spicy foods, hot foods, cold foods, sugary stuff, acidy foods, very fibrous foods, and fat. Now, if you think about this list, that sorta leaves — white food. I seem to eat a lot of rice and potatoes when the nausea is at its worst. We cook a lot of comfort food — chicken pot pies, shepherd’s pie, soups.

The other thing which is new for this round is juice. Kevin has been making me juice anywhere from 3 to 4 times a day, and we both see a real difference. Juice is really high in all the nutrients, and very easy to digest and absorb. We try to have it either half an hour before eating, or half an hour after, so it’s not competing with whatever the “real” meal is. Our basic juice is carrot-apple-kale, but we add a host of other things, including pluots, pears, parsley, spinach, red peppers, etc. So far the only failure has been when he added a lot of celery, and for some reason that pushed it over from palatable to pond scum — at least to me. I’m not really much of a fan of celery. (From Kevin: Whether this helps or not, I have no idea, but it at least gives the illusion of doing something valuable.)

We’ve also tried a stomach settling drink, which was carrot, ginger, peppermint, and parsley, which I love. The first time Kevin made it he put in too much ginger, which although it did soothe my stomach, it also made me scrunch up my face. We have a juicing book, but it does come down to personal taste and trial and error.

* * * * *

For a little more of Christine’s black-belt badassitude, check out her blog, Butterfly Soup. Her latest post has some good news about new improvements to her chemo regimen, and her original description of chemotherapy is one of the bravest things I’ve ever read.