Catering for nausea

One of my best friends is undergoing chemo now as well so I thought it might be useful to put a couple of ideas up.

One of the big problems of chemo is nausea. The doctors will give you various anti nausea tablets, tuned to you and your treatment. Some of these have unpleasant side effects, and so you get other tablets to treat the side effects, and so on. Its all a balance.

I found I could  reduce the effects of nausea a bit by eating little and often, and snacking every few minutes with very small things. Things that worked for me were, salted roasted peanuts, crisps, individually packaged plain biscuits, such as the coffee biscuits shown in the photo. Burnt toast is good too - the carbon seems to absorb uggh in my stomach. The other thing is sipping drinks - whatever type works for you. I found Ribena (black currant drink) was the best, or pasteurised / long life fruit drinks through a straw. (I tend to be very nuetropoenic as well, so with no immune system the indiviudaul packaging and pasteurised stuff is important)

If you get constipation as a side effect, then eating prunes and Scots Porridge Oats helped to reduce the need for tablets to sort that out. Basically lots more fibre than you would normally have
And sitting up is important. If you lie down too much you can get refluxes which is not nice and can cause nasty problems to your throat as acids from your stomach are very strong.

Good new. AZT seems to be working, at least for now

Not everybody responds well to azacitadine. I met a lady the other day who had to come off it after 4 tranches, as it did not agree with her or was not working. I am finishing my 5th tranche tomorrow.

AZT certainly has been doing me some good, as my platelets and red cells are now very good. My neutrophils are back down at .4 at the moment - they seem to go down to .4 each time and then build back up to 1 just before I get hit again.

The less than good news
This time, I got a new side effect. This was a skin infection on several parts of my body - it seems to be reacting very well to a special course of antibiotics. I also have rashes all over, which seems to react to E45 cream. Anti-inflammatory tablets have helped, but the Piritin had to be replaced by stronger stuff to give me more relief. The good news was that the new stuff does not cause heavy duty drowsiness - so I can drive again. The net other side effects have not been very pleasant - nausea etc. (Mainly the etc. !!)

The good news
Now the really good news is that I just got an email from my consultant who tells me that my BLASTS are down at 3%. This is back into a normal range - I was at 10+%. before they put me on to AZT. You might remember that that >5% is early warning, over 10% means start treatment and over 20% means you have leukemia as well

I am going up to London on 5th Dec to see the Prof- armed with printouts and results so they can compare with my previous results.

One year milestone

Rosalind
It is now one year to the day that Ros had her stem cell (bone marrow) transplant. She is looking very well and fit and we just heard that her latest chimerism test had showed a major improvement from a couple of months ago.
Most of her red and other cell types are 100% from her donor - which is great
Her CD3 type was down at 24% donor last time and has gone up to 47% - which is really good news. So she does not need another top up - and will be checked out at Kings in January again

Richard
I had a clinic this week and a bone marrow and blood test. My bloods are all excellent except my neutrophils, which are not bad having gone back up over 1 again, as per the pattern. The consultant is very please at how my body is taking it. So I start my next bought of chemo on Monday and hope to go up to Kings at some point to discuss the longer term with Ros and the Prof

So all good news - we are having a party with a few friends and family on Sunday to celebrate  Ros's one year, Barbara's 65 birthday, good harvest, good herd sale, my health, and to formally wish one of my staff good luck in his retirement.