I had the food issues worked out, having managed to not lose any weight overall for the past month, despite weekly cycling depending on whether it was a chemo week or not. Not interested in food from Monday afternoon on during the chemo infusion, but not nauseated as long as I took my drugs. Don’t need the drugs after Wednesday night, but the chemo made food taste nasty, mostly just on Thursday and Friday. Appetite and taste returning to normal by Friday evening, except for persistent numbing of tastebuds. Then eat whatever I wanted for the next week, making sure to include lots of good fats like avocado and almond.
It was all slightly variable: how bad things tasted on Thursday, how fast my appetite declined or returned, and such, but that was the basic pattern. It took me a couple rounds of losing weight to figure out how much to eat the second week, but by chemo rounds 4 and 5 I had it mastered.
So of course round 6 had to be different, and nothing is ever different in a good way. This time the poison taste wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t start to regain any interest in food until the next Tuesday, over a week after starting chemo, even though I received a lower dose of the major chemo drug. Today I’m mostly but not entirely over it (the rest is quite possibly the barium after-effects). Sadly, this meant that I cooked a lovely Easter dinner that I didn’t want to eat. I ate some, food being a necessity even if unappealing, but couldn’t eat very much. Part of the lack of foodliness, as I’ve been calling it, is that not only do I not want to eat, I physically can’t eat very much at a time. I haven’t been on a scale, but I suspect I’ve lost a few of the pounds I worked to regain. (Not a worrisome number, I hasten to add, but still frustrating.)
On the other hand, it’s finally getting warm enough that I can spend some time outside. SO HAPPY to be able to start walking again. Not today, though: cold and windy. But it’s getting better.
And while I’m talking about food, don’t let anyone tell you there’s a clear link between cancer and anything: it’s inordinately complicated. Overall healthy is good; beyond that, even the experts don’t know.