The stronger you are, the easier it will be for you to get through treatment. To be stronger, you need to be consuming enough calories AND ensure you’re hydrated.
I focused a lot on intake, counting calories for John’s every meal and his fluid intake (do have a look at ChristineB’s posts on intake). If you’re on a mostly soft or liquid diet, you may want to consider eating poached eggs, adding ice cream to your smoothies, blending avocados into your soups, and, in general, increasing the protein content in your smoothies and soups. I used to add skim milk powder to the milk that I used for making the smoothies ( it’s not my invention, I saw it in one of the pamphlets given to me by the hospital), that alone adds a bunch of calories to the milk itself. I also made the smoothies/soups more tasty for John by adding coffee/chocolate/a variety of fruit to the smoothies. It changed from time to time because of his taste changes. The hospital will get you an appointment with a dietitian. Do go for the appointment. They can give you a lot of advice and you can check with them from time to time to see if you’re consuming enough calories. I worked hard on the intake so there usually wasn’t very much our dietitian would say and John used to think it was a waste of his time, but that really wasn’t true. I heard, again and again, dietitians pleading with patients to eat and drink and a doctor telling a patient, “if you won’t eat/drink, I can’t help you.” I think John only about 10 or 15 lbs by the end of treatment (he was a big guy) and the doctors were impressed. They didn’t know that I was the drill sergeant when it came to intake
Soon after the first week of radiation, John passed out in the doctor’s office when he went in for his weekly consultation. The doctor told me he was dehydrated. It was news to me. I had no idea he was dehydrated. The doctor said when he passed out, he was sweating a lot, that’s when the body would lose a lot of fluid. He taught me to check the color of his urine to determine if he was dehydrated. It’s as simple as that. They sent him to get hydrated and six hours later, he was as good as new.
I may be getting ahead of the game at this point, but all this knowledge was accumulated through trial and error. I would hate to see another patient making the errors we did.
