Quease-Control!
January 2nd, 2010
I am halfway through my chemotherapy and it’s taken me this long to get a handle on the nausea control. If some of you ChemoBabes are just getting started, I hope this list puts you on the fast track to quease-control.
Here are five sources of nausea and ways I have found to help them:
Irritated stomach. Chemo drugs are not that smart. They don’t just single out cancer cells –– they go after all the quickly dividing cells in your body. Mucous membranes like your stomach lining fall into that category and get hit hard. Ask your doctor about taking omeprazole to control acid. My doctor told me to take it at a higher dose than a normal person would. In addition, I am taking probiotics, those natural bacteria that are found in yogurt and I drink a ton of kefir.
Constipation & Gas. Many of the chemo drugs block you up. My favorite nurse advised me not to wait to see if I am backed up, so I take stool softeners and laxatives at a low dose proactively after chemo. This keeps me from bloating and I feel much less nauseous. Of course, Grandma will tell you that prunes and prune juice are a natural way to keep it flowing. I have also made good friends with my hot water bottle. I prefer it to a heating pad because it feels cuddlier on my tummy and there’s no pesky wire to get tangled in. If you are among the unfortunates who gets gas from your chemo cocktail, an anti-flatulent does wonders.
Anxiety or other strong emotions. If you are going through chemo, that means you have cancer. Your life is turned upside down. Your relationships are strained. There is no routine anymore. There can be financial stress. In other words, a lot of things suck. You will feel it emotionally. Ask those around you to help you maintain a calm environment. Practice deep breathing and use guided imagery CDs or go to a meditation class. Find a therapist. If the natural stuff doesn’t cut it, there is no shame in needing anti-anxiety medication or anti-depressants from your doctor. Remember, the priority here is getting through your treatment and getting rid of the damned cancer.
Pain or other secondary medication. Isn’t it ironic? We might need medication that actually worsens the nausea. Ask your doctor or nurse to review all your medication with you so that you can come up with a plan of how to best manage your symptoms without creating others. I try to titrate (back off) of as many medications as I can between infusions by using acupuncture and other alternative techniques. To do this strategically, I needed to understand is how some medications enhance each other’s effects (what the medical people call “potentiating”) and how some work against each other. Different antiemetics (anti-nausea drugs) work on different mechanisms of the body. For example, some block the signals to the brain, some stop the stomach from churning. Find out how your drugs work so you can be smarter about using them.
Dehydration. When my favorite nurse adjusted my infusion by increasing my saline from 500 milliliters to 1 liter, it made a HUGE difference in my post-chemo nausea. I realized that I had previously experienced setbacks in my quease-control when I exercised. I obviously needed to drink way more water than I am used to drinking. So my fellow ChemoBabes, as the frat boys chant, drink, drink, drink! Only make yours a water. And ask your doctor or nurse if you can have more hydration with your treatment if you think it might help.
If you have other quease-control wisdom to share, post it here! Don’t be shy. Hopefully we only go through this once and we can help each other feel better along the way.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Treatment, Wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.