Advice for chemo nausea

Hi Luciesarah and sorry to hear this.

From my many year experience, when it came to anti-nausea meds there was not one med that was better than the others so I had (my clinical team) to try a good number of different anti-nausea meds over my 2 years.

For me it was as if the more treatments I had my body complained more so we just had to keep trying different meds all the time….. sometimes going back to the ones I first used…… as for ‘how long’ it’s more a slow burn as to how they work.

I will say that during that first treatment the body does get a shock so many people can find that the next treatments are better as the body recognises what is going on so reacts less…… as I said, no one size fits all.

Generally it takes about 48 to 72 hours for your body to break down and/or get rid of most chemo drugs. But the effects of the chemo on growth areas and your general immune system will last for weeks so some people don’t need to look to use the meds all the time but others do. 

The thing is I was only sick once or twice during my main chemo and this was down to bad food choices….. my great SCN always insisted that there was a psychological side to this…. ‘I am having chemo, chemo makes you sick…… I feel sick… I am going to be sick’ and I eventually started to understand that there were triggers.

A few of my triggers:

I often felt sick at even the thought of taking my medication. At one point I was on about 40 oral tabs/capsules a day…. so a friend who works in our local hospice suggested taking my meds with a carbonated drink and this actual tricked my taste buds and muscles into downing the meds.

Chemo can strip the lining of the digestive system so it’s important that he is aiming to drink a good 2 litres of water a day….. every day as this helps flush out the toxins from his body and in turn helps flush the digestive system.

We had 4 X 500ml bottles in the fridge, each one had a slightly different flavour in it and my wife just kept checking I was drinking….. having the bottles visible (the empties were put back in the fridge) kept us on track.

I never sat with a plate of food, hardly ever sat at the table while others were eating ‘normal’ food….. I grazed on small cups/plates of easy to digest….. high protein food. My go to for a long time was good home made soups (liquidised) with lots of  double cream….. scrambled eggs made with double cream….. mashed potatoes with double cream.

Sleeping (laying flat) can be a source of generating nausea….. I could not sleep with extra pillows as I have Spinal Osteoarthritis so my neck needs to be flat-ish and well supported…… my CNS said “put a few bricks (we used some blocks of wood) under the top end of your bed”….. this helped a lot with nausea as well as the reflux/indignation as it meant that my digestive system/stomach was on a sloop and it helped prevent the bubbling reflux working back up my body.

I do hope you find a way forward for he.

In my case, I settled on Ondansetron (Zofran). At first, we used it in combination with Lorazepam (Ativan). This was quite effective, if taken at the very first sign of nausea. After some time, the side effects were bothersome, so we eliminated the Lorazepam and used Ondansetron exclusively. I carried the tablets with me and, at the first sign of nausea, I would pop a tablet beneath my tongue and allow it to dissolve. Within 5 minutes or so, all sensation of nausea was gone. But, increased liquids should be consumed to control constipation.

 Nausea often announces itself with gas in the stomach which produces belching. I came upon a peculiar but, in my case, effective method of breaking the gas bubbles up and allowing them to escape before  pressure built up in my stomach. I would use my fist and thump solidly on my sternum.  The agitation caused by the thumping appeared to break up the bubbles. One nurse thought I was suffering from anxiety as I did this, but I assured her that either one of us wanted to deal with vomiting!

In seven years of constant cancer therapy, involving 18 different drugs, I vomited exactly four times.  Clearly, "something" was effective. Of course, ask the medical team about this or any suggestions.

Thank you so much for this Mike. We managed to get the right combo of meds in the end. Got another question actually! He's a week out of chemo round 1. he and my mum went for a longer walk today and his nausea has returned a big. Jw whether you'd had a similar experience?

Thank you very much for this! My dad tried the one beginning with O and it worked much better. Did you ever find you had to take inbetween chemo?

Good that the best combination has been found for now…… the nausea appeared at random times over my cycles, no real triggers apart from often when having to take the many medications I was on and just a reaction to food.

Thank you for such a speedy response! That's reassuring

Not many times. Some chemo drugs (platinum based, mostly) have metabolites which persist and can produce nausea over an extended period. In that case, one might need to take them at the very first sign. After about 1-1/2 years on one drug, I decided to stop the Ondansetron just to see what occurred. Nothing did, no nausea, so I stopped it and was fine. I started it again later after relapse when I was being bombarded with various drugs in preparation for transplant.