I have 3 more fractions to go and I'm losing weight. I do not have a PEG tube. My oncology "team" supported my decision, and now just tells me to eat. Try this, try that, here's a lousy tasting liquid. I am nauseous all the time and the meds keep changing from zofran to compazine to the latest keitrel, which we first tried as a $400 patch and now a $10 pill. My gut is a mess after all these pain killers and anti-emetics, and the omnipresent mucous that makes me vomit. I'm getting scared - I've only been getting 200 calories a day for over a week, no energy, no desire or drive to eat, afraid I'll just puke it up anyway. How can I start up my poor belly again??? I was a fit, healthy, active 50-ish gal before all this. Any ideas please!

Hi Noodlehouser, I'm so sorry you are having such a hard time. It sounds like you need to consider having a nasal gastric tube if you do not want a PEG. Is your medical team fully aware of how little you are able to take? You will get back to being the fit and healthy gal you were, so you need to stay strong to get through the next 2or 3 weeks which will be the worst. Sally

Thanks, Saxicola -

Yes! My husband keeps a copious log of everything I do and what happens. Dr. gave me a weight threshold i can't cross early on, and I ate like a sumo wrestler in early stage of treatment and gained 10 pounds. Now I've lost all that and am just 8 pounds from the bottom-line bogie. Everything tastes like crap, it goes down like razor blades, I want to throw up, and I'm told to eat lots!! Will a gastric (nasal) feeder bypass my nausea?

Nutrition is what will make the difference in how you feel. Every single day you need to take in a minimum of 2500 calories and 48 oz of water. If you have been skimping it will catch up with you and dont be shocked if you dont end up hospitalized for malnutrition and dehydration. I know how difficult it is to take in enough when it hurts so bad. Take some pain meds, use magic mouthwash and push yourself to drink ensures or boost, smoothies, milkshakes, etc. I lived on chocolate peanut butter milk shakes which I made myself. They had about 2000 calories each. Drink a couple of those a day and you will feel so much better.

If you arent taking in enough water talk with your doc and get hydrated, the hospital can give you a couple bags of saline. It will make you instantly feel like a new person! Try adding some high protein whey powder to your drinks to help with your healing.

best wishes with your continued recovery!

Oh noodlehouser, you poor bugger! It doesn't help when the team give you all sorts of helpful advice such as "try harder".

Alex had the same issue and being told to try harder was not useful (and was actually counterproductive)as he was trying as hard as he could and his fear of vomiting after struggling to eat was so high he started retching before he had even swallowed anything. Smells put him off as well as everything tasting bad.

If you think it is partly the mucous giving you a hard time maybe you could swish and spit?? If you are not swallowing it, it might help with the nausea? We were advised to use a water pik (thankyou Pandora). I had never heard of it and had to google it but essentially it is a dental device that flushes water through your mouth. The idea is to set it on whatever pressure you can stand fill the reservoir with tepid water (cold hurt Alex) and lean over the sink and flush the gunk out of the back of your throat. We were also warned that what came out wasn't pretty so keep your eyes closed.

Others have described swishing with slightly fizzy soda and carrying a disposable cup to spit into.

Alex found that whatever he tried to "eat" (via PEG) caused most problems first thing in the morning and we thought maybe his stomach had sort of "stagnated" overnight so that the first thing that hit his stomach in the morning, churned everything up causing nausea and vomiting. Not sure if this was what was actually happening, but on the strength of the concept, we asked for Metoclopramide hydrochloride (Maxalon in Australia) which is an anti-nausea drug and works by getting the peristalsis going. Alex would take the pill whilst still in bed (lying flat helped his nausea), wait half an hour and then have a small cup of coffee. If that stayed down he would try small sips of his Ensure Plus "goop". Everything had to be done slowly, often watered down and in very small doses. The nausea often improved through the day and Alex's best chance of keeping his "goop" down was in the evenings.

I do not know if any of this stuff will help you, as this was one of Alex's biggest challenges too - but just some ideas...

Don't let anyone make you feel like a failure. What you are experiencing is common and not something you can overcome with willpower.

As Christine says, being well nourished and hydrated will make you feel better but actually doing it is easier said than done sometimes. It's a vicious cycle: if you can't eat you will feel worse and if you feel worse you can't eat.

One last thing - Alex's bloods came back with anemia towards the end of his treatment due to the cisplatin so they ditched the last dose and gave him blood instead. Boy did that make a difference to his mood and fatigue levels. I thought they had swapped boyfriends on me !!! Just a thought - maybe there is something going on that is making you feel REALLY miserable (as opposed to standard chemoradiation is brutal miserable)and making it difficult to deal with all the crap you are going through

Listen guy, get that nasal tube. I was JUST like you and I ended up in the hospital right after Tx because I was sooo stubborn. They "convinced" me (kicking and screaming) to get the nasal tube and it saved my life. I only had it for two weeks but wow what a differece it made.

Hi, sounds like you are exactly on track, unfortunately. I got to the same place. I was drinking high calorie shakes that my husband would add lots of ice cream, but milk products and mucous don't mix. I didn't know what I was going to do and couldn't eat or drink anything. My husband went to "The Vitamin Shop" and talked to the owner. They found a high calorie water soluble shake that I lived on for the rest of that year. The owner made sure he was never out of stock because it was the only water soluble shake they had. It kept me alive. It wasn't fun and you couldn't really taste it anyway, but it comes in a couple flavors. You should also have access to a nutritionist with your treatments and they can probably give you some really high calorie drinks. I have a relative who had throat cancer and was able to swallow all sorts of foods pur�ed. I couldn't but many others do. Plus I'm a vegetarian so getting vitamins and proteins without animal products was also a challenge. Make sure you have enough pain meds too. I found that I needed more and that actually allowed me to suffer through meals. Good luck, keep trying to find something and do not hesitate to talk to your doctors about your fear and no food.

During treatment I came to the conclusion that the combination of chemo (cisplatin) and pain pills more less shut down my stomach making the ingestion of the 2500 calories impossible to do. They tried something to speed up gastric movement but that made me twitch and that was stopped. Ultimately the end of chemo AND the end of pain pills allowed for normal digestion. Everyone is different but I ended up resenting being told to "eat more" when my stomach stayed full and/or I vomited. Weight loss is almost inevitable. I thought I was going to starve to death.

I'm sorry you're going through this! I haven't started my bot treatments yet but I cried over many a meal the year after my bone marrow transplant due to nausea, dysgeusia (everything tasted bad), xerostomia (dry mouth), and gastroparesis (slow stomach emptying). Compazine and Zofran didn't help but 0.5 mg Ativan morning and night did. All of my doctors said to focus on calories for the short term rather than nutrition, i.e., eat *anything* you can, as much as you can. Pre-transplant I wasn't much of a sweets eater but afterwards sweets were the only thing that didn't taste unbearably bad. I found that my nausea was worst when my stomach was empty so I tried to eat often, even if just a few sips/mouthfuls. Everyone is different so the trick is to find something that works best for you, even though it's a big challenge to be creative when you're feeling lousy. My husband was a huge help, always thinking of new things to try.