After six rounds of chemo, we’ve learned a few things that might be useful to others so I decided to compile a list of tips. Some of them are things we figured out along the way, others are things that people told us or I found via Google consultation.
First, I think it’s important to clarify that Dave had chemo (R-CHOP) treatments once every three weeks for a total of six treatments. That allowed his body a decent amount of recovery time in between treatments. He did not have radiation. I know that the side effects are often greater with more frequent treatments, and different with radiation. We think he had a pretty smooth chemo experience with fatigue and a general feeling of bloated misery being his biggest complaints in the 10 days after each treatment.
Now, on to the list.
1. Drink a lot of water. Or Gatorade. It flushes the toxins and helps you feel better. He found it hard to drink plain water during and for a day or two after treatment, so we kept Gatorade for those days. He normally drinks gallons of water per day, but he really had to make an effort to get enough fluid in those few days of each cycle.
2. Take the drugs they give you for nausea. If they don’t give them to you automatically, ask for them. It makes living life again after treatment a little easier.
3. Eat small meals frequently. He’s never been pregnant and I’ve never been through chemo, so we can’t say for sure, but it seems like the nausea is a bit like morning sickness in that snacking regularly keeps it under control. So eat, even when you don’t feel like you can. Also, he loved carbs for a couple of days after chemo, but protein is very important for rebuilding the body so try to work that in.
4. Sleep during and as much as you can right after treatment. The cycles when he had plenty of rest right before and plenty of rest right after chemo seemed to be the easiest on him.
5. Once you’ve rested and are able, get up and do something. He liked golf for the sunshine and the sweat, but I think any low key activity would be good for body and soul. This is also a good way to combat fatigue.
6. Put towels over the sheets and pillows the day of and the day after chemo. The drugs made him sweat a lot – and by a lot, I mean a puddle that requires changing the sheets. We started putting a towel down on the days when it was the worst so he could just get a clean towel if he needed it instead of having to get out of bed and wait for me to change the sheets.
7. Eat well. We didn’t cut out sugar entirely or switch completely to organic like some of the people who guided me through this, but we did boost his nutrition with vitamins and fruits and vegetables. He took a multi-vitamin, B complex, and acidophilus every day. All of those help boost blood counts, B complex also helps with hair and nail growth, and acidophilus helps with mouth sores and upset stomach. In addition to that, we kept V8 in the house and added spinach, tomatoes, carrots and other vegetables to our diet as often as possible (some weeks it wasn’t very possible because this has been the busiest summer in the history of ever). He sometimes had a hard time swallowing all the pills, so I bought him gummy vitamins and broke the rest of his medicine and vitamins in half to make them easier to swallow. (Obviously, you don’t want to break anything that is time released, so be aware of that.)
8. Gargle with a baking soda/warm water rinse to help the mouth sores. Dave didn’t actually have sores, but he did have soreness and that helped. Avoid spicy food and mouthwash that has alcohol in it. Even without sores, his mouth was, and still is, very sensitive to spicy things - even salt is too much sometimes. He never needed more than the baking soda rinse, but the doctor offered a prescription mouthwash.
9. Keep some acid reducer on hand. Dave had pretty bad acid reflux on the day after chemo, and he usually only needed a dose or two of Prevacid to relieve it.
That’s it. I feel like I should add a tenth one to even out the list, and maybe I will if I think of something else. Do you have any tips to add? If so, leave them in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment