Food and chemo - A love/hate relationship

For about 5 - 7 days after a chemo injection, I end up with pretty decent nausea. It's not so bad the day of chemo because the first drug they put in you is some steroid anti-nausea stuff which helps you get through the rest of the day. The next 3 - 4 days are spent just trying to get a regular amount of food down. If I even *start* to get hungry and don't eat immediately, I become very sick and uncomfortable. Trouble is, when I'm hungry, thinking about food makes me nauseous. If I even get the littlest taste of something, meaning that if I can conjure the taste in my mouth before I eat it, I immediately don't want it- it makes me sick to think about it. So I can't really ever think about what I want to eat. When I get hungry, I have to decide on a food and then immediately put it out of my mind or I wont want it. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the time I'll get through a few bites of something and then I don't want any more of it. That's not to say that I'm full or don't need more food, it's just that it starts to taste gross. 

Oh wait, it gets better. And by better, I mean worse. 

As you all know by now, chemo destroys rapidly growing cells. Those aren't just cancer cells, those are also hair follicles and cells in your mouth. Ever eaten a piece of toast or a chip and felt it scratch your mouth in some way? Or suck on some sweet sugar coated candy and have your mouth feel a little raw afterwards? Fortunately, your mouth heals very quickly from that. Mine doesn't heal at all. Well, not until almost the end of my treatment cycle, so just before I get another treatment. So basically I can eat soft foods like bread or liquids with minimal discomfort but anything else I end up paying for. They say you're supposed to rinse many times throughout the day with a salt-water rinse which does help a little bit but it definitely doesn't heal the owies, it's more preventative than anything else.

This coming Friday is my last type of this kind of chemo (unless I skip it since the lastest side effect of chemo is total hearing loss- more to come on that...) and my oncologist says that the next type of chemo has different side effects but nausea isn't one of them. Stay tuned!

xoxo Ry