to. Its not like the flu, exactly. I feel weak all over, my arms and
legs heavy. It reminds me a tiny bit of my first few days at high
altitude in Colorado, except that I am able to sleep (altitude
sickness can create insomnia as well). I know that my cell counts are
likely dropping, and its a little scary to know that your blood is
slowly getting weaker with the worst yet to come. My head feels fuzzy,
unclear, its hard to concentrate on things. There are a host of things
that I need to deal with that are pressing, but all I want to do today
is sleep and cry, though the latter still evades me.
I went to the Acupuncturist today. I am a fan of oriental and
alternative medicines and I feel that they have done me great amounnts
of good in the past. Its a subtle but powerful medicine. I would never
use it in place of western medicine for cancer treatment, but it is a
great addition. Its been nearly 5 years since my last treatment and I
felt woozy and emotional afterwards. After getting home, I had the
strong sense of two burning pipes of energy running up the back of my
head. My nausea came and went in waves, feeling like it is on the
brink at any moment. I'm a very violent vomiter, from what I remember,
and I worry that once the floodgates open it may be hard to close them
again.
I'm missing my J and feeling like I'm scraping the bottom of the
barrel to have enough energy to play. But the gigs give back, too. Its
a net gain, and when I'm in the moment -- I'm in the moment and flying
high. The band is amazing, covering the rough spots and helping me
when they sense I'm forgetting or lacking. Great people all the time,
saints right now.
I had some high fiber cereal with almond milk this morning and a bowl
of brown rice with chopped garlic, ginger sauce and soy sauce a minute
ago. Its staying down well and calmed the nausea. I feel like I need
some more protein, though, and am at a loss for what to have other
than peanut butter.
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7 comments:
nothin wrong with peanut butter. a fine food, i say. hang in there.
Me big peanut butter fan, too. I have it on buttered toast (just to ensure the fat content doesn't sink to dangerously low levels) and on Ritz crackers.
Seriously, though, I think it's a pretty nutritious food.
V-8 is pretty good, too, but I seem to recall you are not a fan.
--He Who Must Not Yet Be Named
I remember trying my hardest to stay on a healthy diet without any kind of junk food when I was going through chemo (granted, this was further in my treatment than you are right now, but you will probably get to this point, too). I was in with my doctor, telling her how I had just cleaned up my diet the year before my diagnosis and didn't want to get off my salads and low-fat/calorie diet that I was on at the time because it was so hard for me to get on it in the first place. She looked me straight in the eye and said that she wanted me to eat every crappy piece of food I could think of - french fries, potato chips, greasy hamburgers (my nausea was well under control at this time), cake, cookies, all of it. The salads and jello weren't cutting it. My body was using up all those calories fighting off the cancer AND the chemo, so I just needed calories - didn't matter where they came from - my body would use them. Then I asked her if she thought maybe some MJ would help me with my appetite. Her mouth dropped and she said,"You won't eat potato chips, but you want to smoke marijuana?!"
So, aside from that little long story, have you ever tried quinoa? It's packed full of fiber AND protein and there are several ways you can have it. It can be bland or it takes seasoning and flavor very well. I can even try to get you some milk if you want to try it in that form.
Mary Rohe
Tofu would be a nice addition to the above brown rice meal, if you roll that way. You can marinate it in soy and ginger, too. How do you feel about (mild) fish? Frozen peeled shrimp cook quickly and can be added to lots of different combos...and Em's right. If peanut butter sounds good, eat it straight from the jar. Slivered almonds are yummy on cereal, too.
Here is a list of high protein foods:
http://heartspring.net/list_of_high_protein_foods.html
Cottage Cheese seems to stand out as something that I think is "easy to eat." Fish is good, but you might find it overwhelming. Turkey is good. Scrambled eggs? As you figure out the pattern of your chemo, you can go protein heavy when you are less prone to the nausea and let it carry you through a bit.
Seriously, nothin' wrong with peanut butter.
If shrimp sound good to you they sell big frozen bags of cleaned shrimp either cooked or raw at the co-op, I find them super convenient to leave in the freezer and take out a few when I need them. They also have a chicken feta sausage that is relatively low in fat and very nummy. I feel like bison might be good now too, it's got a fat profile closer to chicken, and can taste really clean.
Do you own a rice cooker? You can cook other grains in them too, as long as you use the right amount of liquid to grain. And a slow cooker works great for cooking beans when you are out and about, soak the beans overnight, turn on the cooker in the morning, come home to enough cooked beans to last a few days.
RHD
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