Nutritional Concerns During Cancer Treatments

My thoughts and Mathew’s experience with nutritional considerations while going through chemotherapy.

Before Mathew’s diagnosis, he had been a vegetarian. When he arrived at Moffitt, within the first few days, they suggested he make the decision to go back to eating meat because his body needed the nutrition and while some of his vegetarian friends said it is possible on a vegetarian diet, Mathew took the Doctors suggestion. Because the sarcoma was affecting his organs, his blood levels were either high or low in addition to his liver functions being high.

On his own, Mathew made that decision. I know he spoke at length to his spiritual advisor and weighed everything the doctors had told him. He said it was difficult and distasteful in the beginning, but Mathew was a pragmatist and he trusted his medical team.

One member of his team was a nutritionist. She would come around and gave us printed material on general nutrition, nutrition after chemo, and later food safety for patients with a compromised immune system due to the effects of the chemo. She also took into consideration, Mathew’s dairy allergy and suggested several non-dairy shakes and let us know that these could be ordered from the cafeteria.

As I mentioned in the posts regarding the first 5-day chemo, the chemo was hung very late and Mathew had a difficult time sleeping, eventually, we would be up from 11 pm until 4 am. I couldn’t imagine sleeping while Mathew went through that alone. In the mornings Mathew slept in, sometimes until noon but the medical team would come by around 7 am. This is why a caregiver is so important. When the first Doctor came in each day, I would wake up and see what they had to say, find out what was ordered for the day and any concerns. 

Once I am awake, I generally stay awake. Those mornings I would get a cup of coffee from the patient kitchen and sit quietly, read or work on my computer while Mathew continued to sleep.

One morning as I was passing other rooms on the floor I noticed the patients sleeping with their breakfasts sitting untouched on their bed trays. Some patients were alone and a few had someone sitting with them. It reminded me of the times I had seen cancer patients with swollen ankles (which I knew was from protein deficiency) and I decided that day that Mathew wasn’t going to fail because he slept through his meals. 

I started saving parts of his breakfast I thought he would eat, instead of letting the entire tray be taken away. At noon he would wake up and eat those items I had saved, the fresh fruit appealed to him and then when lunch came he would eat that.

At first, he resisted, he didn’t feel good and as he said, he had chemo palette and it made everything taste “like ass”. But I convinced him to view food like medicine, and he did.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I have many memories of Mathew’s journey through Sarcoma. Many of those are surrounding food. All the nutritional concerns, candy for chemo palette, different places we would stop for lunch on our way back from doctors appointments, all the prep necessary once his white count dropped and after Mathew’s first discharge from Moffitt, him craving a hamburger and how much I enjoyed cooking that for him. Another thread in this journey.