Hi everyone,

My mom is getting treated for base of tongue cancer, stage II, with tomotherapy. Tomorrow, she will have completed half of the radiation treatment!

A question about appetite: it's strange, but she is experiencing INCREASED appetite during treatment! her mouth and throat are very sore, and chewing and swollowing has become difficult, she is on pain meds... but she is hungry all the time. she says she has never before felt such hunger -- as if there's a lion in her stomach.

i'm glad she's not losing weight and feeling weak... but i thought most people experience decreased appetite? can there be something wrong? has anyone experienced this? :-/

the radiation oncologist had nothing to say about it during the meeting today. neither good or bad -- he just wouldn't comment on it, and just told her to keep eating. i hope he's not being silent to keep her from worrying...

soo.

Just the opposite of what the overwhelming majority of us experience so BE HAPPY and let's hope it continues throughout her treatment. If she were Eric's mom I would guess she found his stash. lol

It's not a decrease in appetite but the lack of being able to eat. LOL A piece of bacon or a greasy burgewr would be a gourmet meal to some of us. I hope this continues for youe Mom.

I can't tell if I am craving FOOD or a taste of some spice or flavor of some sort! Even a little garlic, onion, salt, etc. Went my a Gyro place, wow, that meat and cucumber sauce sounds good. Pizza sounds good, garlic bread, things like that. My loss seems to be more flavors and taste than food...but I can't really tell until I can eat again and find out. :o)

Michele in IL

Michele - Flavors and taste seemed to be very important to my son, too especially when he had trouble tasting anything. I remember how he would lean his head very close over the bowl of chicken broth, smelling and breathing in through his nose. At first I thought maybe he was trying to see if I had prepared something that was bad or gone past the expiration date, but when I asked him about it, he said that for him, trying to see how something smelled was very close to being able to taste it and he was just trying to get some sensation of taste back. When the taste did come back, it was weird and not like the normal taste of certain foods with some tasting like "ashes" or the low sodium canned chicken broth tasting way too salty. The day he was able to taste and enjoy a gourmet jelly bean was a highlight and his daughter and I danced around the kitchen for that event! It does get way better!

hey everyone,

my mom is complaining about the same -- changed taste! she is always hungry, but it's just that her mouth sores are making it difficult to eat... and then when she does manage to eat, it doesn't taste great. :-/

i am just really thankful that she's still feeling hungry. we had a meeting with the RO yesterday, and even he is surprised that she hasn't started losing any weight.

she has just completed week 4 of radiation (2 more weeks left). i know it's different for everyone.... but still, this doesn't seem normal... does the amount of Gy she is receiving influence her condition? maybe her Gy dosage is lower than most people get?

getting the RO to tell us the exact amount of Gys she is getting will be another battle, but i will ask next week.

soo.

On average we get about 70 gys over a 6 to 7 week period. That would average out to 2 gys a day for 35 Tx's. Usually the 6 week Tx here is 1 a day for 4 days and a double on Friday and the 7 week Tx is one a day so we end up getting 35 rad sessions either way. I would imagine that we get more gys at first as my machine time was longer at first than at the end but that's only a guess on my part.

I have actually read stories in Siemens IMRT website that, in some instances, patients can actually gain weight during Tx.

I can't say that was my experience though.