My mum got diagnosed with myeloma last May - she has competed her cycles along with an auto stem cell transplant dec 22- on paper she has had a really good response to all treatment but she is really struggling with Nausea and lack of appetite (this has been on going since diagnosis to present) she has tried various antisickness medications but nothing appears to help ….has anyone else experienced this? Or tried anything that’s improved this?
Hi Pearl09 and I see it's your first post so welcome to this corner of the Mac Community.
After reading about your mum I am sitting here nodding my head. I have a different incurable blood cancer (Cutaneous T-Cell Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma - a Skin Lymphoma) first diagnosed way back in 1999.
After years of treatments I eventually arrived at the door of having Allo (donour) Stem Cell Transplant with my first Allo SCT in June 2014, this failed within 6 months so I went back for a second Allo SCT in October 2015 and remain in remission to this day.
The treatment used for blood cancers can play havoc with the bodies metabolism and more so once you go into SCT. I had no real challenging appetite problems during my early years of treatment and only started having nausea issues once I was 14 years in and started chemo, but we just kept changing the nausea meds as one med would work then stop. so we moved onto the next
I sailed through my first SCT with no issues but as I said it did not work.
They threw the kitchen sink at me for the second SCT and I was very ill during the process (you can see the full story through the link at the bottom of my posts)........ so I basically had no appetite for a good 4/5 months post SCT........ the smell of the oral drugs I was taking made me very nauseous..... some times very sick. I had lost 27kgs over my treatments so was being seen by a Dietitian who monitored what I was having and suggested ways forward.
But I basically lived on regular small cups of good homemade liquidised soups, with lots of double cream.... after a few months I moved onto mashed potatoes with lots of double cream, cheese or gravy...... slowly moving onto other easy to eat foods. I never had a 'normal' plate of food put in front of me for about 5 months....... then one day I asked for a bacon roll for breakfast and that was it fixed.
The Dietitian said that the stomach can shrink quickly when not eating food.... so like muscles that are not used..... these need to be built up very slowly...... there is no quick fix.
I think my nausea problem was a mental trigger when ever I had to take meds.... at one point I was on about 40 tabs a day..... so I was taking all my meds with carbonated water as this tricks the tastbugs and relaxes the throat and helps the digestion of meds.
Has she been seen by a Dietitian?
