My husband has S4 NSCLC and just about to have his 3rd dose of immunotherapy this week. He has virtually no appetite but is trying to eat. However, oncologist says just have 4 Ensure a day plus a few other bits if that is all he can face. Trying to keep his calories at about 2000 per day. Has anyone else faced this issue with immunotherapy? Thanks
Yes indeed (I was on pembrolizumab). I don't know if it was the cancer or the treatment but I went right off my food.
For example, I used to have a couple of soft-boiled eggs for breakfast, but just couldn't face the idea of them after I started immuno. I could still put up with drinks though, so I worked around it by whipping a couple of eggs into a large mug of milk to make a drink instead. (In this cold weather one and half minutes in 800W microwave gets it hot without cooking/solidifying the egg, give it a stir half-way through.)
I ended up getting a small cheap blender from Argos and turned a lot of my regular food into drinks and smoothies instead. Float the idea past him and see what he thinks. Frequent small meals are easier to cope with when the appetite is low, too.
Keeping the diet adequate and healthy is important anyway but more so when we're up against this disease. Immunotherapy works better when there's enough protein in the body to make all those white blood cells, so diet gets even more important.
