Need help. Husband had first chemo (Docetaxel) treatment on 12/5/17. He is also on Loupron , Casodex and Prednisone. Made it thru the Neulasta bone aches and the other side effects but he says food doesn't taste right. He is hungry. How long does this last and will his taste come back before his next treatment on Dec.26.
No appetite after chemo: Need help... - Advanced Prostate...
No appetite after chemo
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benninger
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My appetite came back after a few days. I actually felt pretty good the first three days after. The next five were lousy but then back to normal after that. Same side effects for each round. I just needed to rest up during the lousy middle days with not much activity or eating. Lots of sleep.
Hi ewhite999
I am a current Advanced PCa Stage 4 with 2 bone and 2 spine metastasis. I am not yet been treated by conventional therapy.
I am just curious why medical oncologist wants someone to do a PSA just immediately after a successful chemotherapy. I understand from AlanMeyer that PSA monitoring includes normal and abnormal prostate antigens. Not taking into your different bad side effects and experience surely they must know they have destroyed everything. It just like exploding s nuclear bomb. It's the recovery period that is important. Hence you are starting to face with actual real PSA reading in coming months. Hi ewhite999 I hope your journey would be more pleasant ahead. Best wishes.
Good question. Not sure why they measure PSA immediately after chemo. Probably just to get a baseline. For example, mine has climbed exponentially since chemo. Over the past year my monthly numbers look like this... .001, .005, .10, .25. .75, 1, 2, 4. Not crazy about the trend. Clean CT and bone scans thankfully.
If you brush your tongue very often, it should help with the taste of food.
No doubt it is different for every person but my own experience was awful. Side effects ( including food tasting dreadful) lasted for the 24 treatments I received. Had to pack it in and not complete the 30 treatments as the side effects were so severe..
Try to find something that still taste good,Brushing toungue sounds like a good idea, Isucked on ice cubes during drip of docetaxol to try to prevent taste problem, I still had taste change but not as bad as others, I also iced fingernails to prevent nueropathy and fingernail loss, that did work. Is he also getting dexamethasone day before day of and day after. You cna read my post on when I did 12 cycles of docetaxol to mitagate side effects this year on my page. I wish you the best.
Dan
Thank You, will try the ice next treatment. yes he is on the dexamethasone and clartin for the side effects of the Neulasta.
I haven't had chemotherapy but, from everything I've read, I strongly endorse Dan's recommendation of the ice treatment.
As I understand it, when you chill tissues, for example in the mouth, hands and feet, it greatly reduces blood flow in the chilled tissue. With less blood flowing through, less of the chemothrapy drugs are carried into the chilled tissues. That's good because there probably isn't any prostate cancer in the tongue or fingers and toes, so there's no need to attack those areas with chemo drugs. Might as well avoid the side effects there.
Best of luck.
Alan
Find the kid down the street who smells like pot, buy a little and have your hubby take a few tokes. In a matter of hours he will be engulfing everything he sees and dancing to Rolling Stones tunes. Hey, it worked for me.
Of course what do I know?
benninger in reply to
will they ck for pot when they do his blood work
Kelly41 in reply to
My Dr also recommend pot. Even refered me the local police department who he said saved some for cancer patients.
Im on round 7. Doing ok. Got easier after the first few rounds. Initially i was getting 3 nuelesta shots per week. But as the chemo reduced my cancer load im down to one shot the last few cycles. I hope someone has told you to take clariton allergy pill with the nuelesta shot. It eliminates the clawing pain.
Thank you for the link. Hopefully pot will be available soon in Pa. We are 70 and have never used and afraid to ask around.
I haven't smoked pot in many years but my recollection of it is that it's quite pleasant. It makes you feel calm, cheers you up, and gives you what we used to call "the munchies", a desire to eat.
As for asking around, there are probably a lot of cops that wouldn't sell it to you, but I bet that not many of them would ever arrest a 70 year old cancer patient for buying it.
Alan
Hi Alan
You have reveal your age to me and now I know you are on pot. You are lucky because it's legalised in America. I am not in drugs or pot but I do gamble heavily do this is my bad point. Nice to see you are all still awake, I just woken up and it is 6:06 am in Sydney now.
I am now 71 years old. I smoked plenty of pot in college and grad school but not since. As for gambling, I lost $7.00 in a poker game when I was 13 years old. It took me six weeks to pay off the debt. I have never gambled since then. It seemed like $7.00 was a fortune when I lost it but maybe, in retrospect, it was a cheap education in what not to do.
Alan
Hi Alan
Glad to hear from you. Guess what I am a Star Casino Platinum Card patron now for 3 years. Previous to that their high roller Room was Endeavour but now call Sovereign Room. At one stage I lost heavily so I gave up gambling for 10 years. Recently I join back and able to maintain my status now for 3 years. They pamper you with free hotel room etc and drinks are all free. I still have $1000 Casino dollars credit which I can spend on food etc. I also have 8 complementary room for free. Each hotel stay easily cost $300/night onwards.
Starting tomorrow I have 2 weeks Christmas break so I might end up gambling more. So this is another of my past time apart from golf.
That's funny Alan! 48 years ago, on my honeymoon I lost $7.00 on a roulette wheel betting on black ($1.00, $2.00, $4.00) and was so upset that I never gambled again even though I visited Vegas several times over the years. Same pretty much goes for the one toke of a joint that I tried many years ago. Your sense of humor helps take our minds off of this PCa crap!
Hi ronronHu
We all have to have a laugh sometimes not not be up tight.
So I am a gambling man but I still have my house intact and I hope I can protect my dear life.
Roland,
Maybe I should start gambling since I have become a boring old man engrossed in playing with cacti. My entire balcony is inundated with them...even had to move my table and chairs inside to make room for more!
Hi ronronHu
I will let you on my secret. If I did not want to lose money I take up more golf. But gambling could be addiction to some and these weak person can have their life destroyed😩 I will do as a past time and lose only what you can afford. No stress.
I will also like to add the casino awards me $200 on every birthday of mine but What is that when the minimum bet is $300 s hand upwards.
Roland,
It's kinda refreshing to get to know our comrades on a more personal level in addition to only the PCa sh*t!
Fascinating. We both paid the same low price for a lesson that stood with us for many years.
I admit that I got a high from winning, but when I lost that $7.00 I felt so bad that I never wanted to feel that way again. The highs for me were not as high as the low was low.
Alan
I think that a good way to overcome an addiction is to get yourself addicted to something cheap and harmless. RonrunHU's interest in cactus sounds like a pretty good one. Photography, especially now that it's all digital and you don't have to pay for film and processing, can be a good one. Reading books and keeping notes on them is fun and they're free at the public libraries. Some folks are into cooking, or exercising, or learning a foreign language, or playing the guitar. I suspect that more than a few of us are into reading and writing postings on this forum.
You can even combine them. In addition to growing cactus you can make photographs of them and, after a while, come to see more and more details that you had missed before.
There are tons of addicting activities that cost very little money. I say, save your money and go for the freebies.
Alan
Hi Alan
A very welcome solutions for anyone out there. Good advice but I mentioned I do gamble quite heavy on baccarat but I am clear about addiction and I am definitely not in that particular grouping. I do enjoy the trills and as s past time,
Like I said I had my house intact.
I like this anecdote I am mortgage free pain free fatigue free and managed to enjoy quality living.
in reply to Roland632017
The WSOP in my moniker is for World Series of Poker. I've only cashed once in an event there but I scored pretty large when I final tabled a very big local tournament. That score helped pay for my HIFU treatment. I play tournaments a few times a month. I know what my 'exposure' is going in -- the buy-in cost. I am doing fine this year so far with a wad of benjamins in my lockbox. My goal has been to play well enough that I don't have to nick my bank account to play. BTW, I also have my MM card but I don't indulge that often. The novelty has worn off a bit.
When I was on this treatment, which they stopped after two infusions, I just consumed custard and bananas. Even water tasted foul. I had the ready made custard in packets and would suck it out of the pack cold. I hope you have more luck with this treatment than I did as it is effective, my PSA dropped like a stone.
No, food doesn't taste right after Chemo. My husband continues to eat, even though it is not much fun because, as you say, things either don't have a taste at all or taste horrible. But the important thing is to keep the weight. So maybe encourage your husband to keep eating. Or add things to your/his diet that you wouldn't normally have - this is something we are doing to make it more interesting.
I have tried many foods. I guess I was hoping for a magic food that wasn't affected by the chemo. Good luck and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
I might suggest boost, or ensure, just to make sure he gets his sustenance. Greek Salads always tasted good to me when on chemo. As did ice cream.
I found that my food tasted a little metallic. I used a lot of spices to give food some flavor. That helped a little. I did not like the taste of water either. But someone told me to drink SmartWater. For some reason it was very easy to drink.
Good news is that your sense of taste will come back!
The ice comments earlier in this thread are absolutely right, too. Just wear surgical gloves and put your finger tips in ice during the infusion. I later read a suggestion to cool your toes and balls of your feet with ice gel packs. Wish I’d done that because it can help with neuropathy.
Good luck with your husband’s journey! We are all pulling for you both!
James
I am on Chemo also. Food hasn’t tasted right for the year I have been on it. He just has to realize that. Lots of spice will give it some taste.
Lots of people talk about pot. I love in Colorado, the first state to have legal recreational pot. It is easy to buy it here. My doctor at MD Anderson said it had a drug interaction with Zitiga, so I cannot use it.
My husband,a stats guy, kept a daily log after chemo. There was a definite pattern of side effects that occurred each time. Knowing what side effects he could expect and when they would subside was helpful. All the best to you both.
i have no idea if what i am about to say is valid or not. but, my father received a different chemo and complained of the same thing. a doctor friend recommended putting black pepper on everything he ate to neutralize the chemical taste. then, my husband received docetaxel and experienced the same problem. it worked well for him. also, eat lots of ice cream. docetaxel destroys the epithelial tissue and ice cream may soothe it for him
try pot.
Thanks everyone for the advice, we really appreciated it and we will definitely follow the ice and the food suggestions. It is good to know we are not alone.
I am in the same position. Started on lupron, xtandi &Casodex a year & 1/2 ago. Lost all taste for most food, especially beef & potatoes. Ate lots of mac & cheese & cream of wheat. Lost about 35 lbs. The last 6 months my appetite has slowly returned. I still can't eat most meats but I find greasy foods taste good. Most just taste bland. My dear wife has been a saint trying everything to find something I can stomach.
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