One of the horrible aspects of EC chemo is that it temporarily affects your taste buds so that many types of food taste flat, or just not quite right. I have found each cycle a little worse from this perspective - a day or two longer, more foods affected, etc. even plain water tastes odd.
My hospital gave me a long list of foods to avoid, it read very much like 1980s pregnancy advice. No blue cheese, no soft rind cheese, i extrapolated this to assume it meant no cheese made from unpasteurised milk, which rules out just about all French cheese. No shellfish. No raw fish. No rare cooked meet. Taking care with eggs, not eating deli food or from pre-cooked buffets. Not reheating food. No yogurt with live bacteria (that rules out all ‘proper’ yogurt). No fermented food. I could go on.
Sadly many of my favourite things are on that list. I love cheese of pretty well all types but especially Blue Stilton, Roquefort and smelly French cheeses. My normal breakfast would be a bowl of Greek yogurt with fruit. I love rare beef, lamb and venison (and I mean really rare) and hate it cooked any other way other than slow cooked. I love Japanese food especially salmon and tuna sashimi (raw fish). I love crab, lobster mussels, prawns I eat eggs soft poached or soft boiled. I drink Kombucha as an alternative to alcohol when I don’t want the latter.
I mused at this. I imagined chemo patients in France being told to avoid cheese. I imagined chemo patients in Japan being told to avoid sashimi and sushi. None of this seemed likely. I talked to a friend who is a dietician and we concluded most of it was really about food hygiene.
I struggled through cycle 1 avoiding most of the listed foods (cracking only on blue Stilton and some yogurt). IBS problems followed, I assumed my normal gut biome had been shot to pieces. Gradually over the cycles, I have reintroduced everything except the raw fish, plus I am careful seafood is really fresh. I am a home cook, I take care over food provenance and sourcing, and I know how to prepare and cook food hygienically. As I have gradually moved back closer to my normal diet, my stomach has been better, I have enjoyed food more, and I have not had any infections.
Food for thought. This is not intended as advice to anyone, for all I know I am putting myself at risk but have been lucky. But it’s made me a lot happier as I go through this unpleasant time.
