Help! Question about diet!!!
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| Sat, 06-24-2006 - 3:15pm |
My father has been reading all these cancer prevention books and learning basically what foods feed cancer and has put himself on a strict diet. He is not eating any processed foods which I guess I understand but I mean hes cut out like EVERYTHING! No fat only fruits and veggies and basically organic bread. He has already lost over 10 lbs because of the cancer and looks soo skinny and has not even begun treatment yet (i.e. chemo). I am terrified that he will not be able to sustain chemo treatment with no meat on his bones and no strength!! I mean he is on this diet and is loosing even more weight because of it!!! He has been drinking freshly squeezed juices and eating cabbage SOUP! I mean I want to feed him protien like eggs and maybe peanut butter anything that will get him stronger but he wont touch ANYTHING with fat or sugar he is afraid he is feeding the CANCER!!! Is all of this stuff even proven true? His appnt with sloan is on monday I wish he would consult a doctor before doing this on his own. He says doctors only know about medicine and not these special cleansing diets etc.. ughhh!!
Anyway he is definitely going to sloan and will probably end up doing chemo...he is afraid though that chemo will kill him which is why he was looking at doing the alternative medicine route but I dont think he will do it. I wanted to ask you Judy how old were you when you under went liver surgery? Also how big were the tumors on your liver? I guess you did not do any chemo to try and shrink the tumors first on your liver right? You went right into surgery? Because my father has one really big tumor on his liver 7.9 cm by something..they want to try and shrink it before even considering surgery. I still really believe in going this aggressive surgery route and Im afraid if he does chemo first then he will be too weak to under go surgery. I know you cant tell me who your surgeon was and where you were treated but I was just curious.. I am so scared that chemo will not work on my father!! My stepmother says if it doesn’t work they n eed to have other options!! She also says some people cant take it and if he cant take it after a few tries its not worth him suffering.. I am just so scared of the road ahead..I cry all the time. I am scared he wont even be able to fly to florida where he just bought his house that he was planning to retire in..he worked so hard for it all his life…ughh its horrible!
Thanks again for your feedback.

I happen to be on the other side of the diet fence. I have followed a high-protein diet in the past with a good deal of success. The diet book was by Suzanne Somers, and she wrote this series of books with help from an endocrinologist. Your endocrine system, according to this doctor, actually needs a good deal of fat to work properly. I of course tried low-fat diets too, and not only was I always hungry on them, I also usually felt cold (my body was shutting down my metabolism thinking it was starving), and my moods were really cruddy. On the high protein diet, I wasn't hungry, and felt wonderful most of the time (the exceptions being when I had a virus or something). I think I must have been doing something right if I felt so good physically during that time.
Even doctors who are low-fat fans agree, the body needs *some* fat at all times. Your father is making a BIG mistake cutting fat out of his diet! Sure, docs don't know what they should about nutrition, but they know at least as much and usually more than those crazies out there who write fringe books that say to cut out all fat. Their educations are good for something, and most docs can give pretty good arguments as to why those fringe diets don't work and are probably dangerous.
I wish you the best of luck getting your father to listen to the voice of reason. He might not want to hear the truth, and therefore might not accept it. I can't say I have any advice for you there:(.
Express!
Beth "Petrouchka"
I was 59 when I underwent my surgery for cancer.
Judy
cl-ivhjude
Thank you both sooo much for your support and advice. Well we went to Sloan today and the doctor told my father to eat and eat a LOT! Unfortunately..he weighs 129 just a few pounds over what I WEIGH thanks to his one week fasting diet he lost another 6lbs from the last time he got weighed...im so furious at my stupid uncle!! GRRR!!
Anyway dad is going with Sloan. Judy thank you so much for offering to help out with surgeons..we live in Westchester NY..Bronxville to be exact..we are only 25 min by train to NYC so Sloan is perfect for my dad. Today was a very sobering day going to the cancer center and meeting the lung oncologyst. He still says that that their is a smallll question of whether or not the lung is the primary source of cancer and so he is going to do a PET scan and more testing and then my father begins chemo next week and he will be taking a pill caled Tarcid...something like that?? Anyway when I asked the surgeon about possible surgery to the tumor and I told him about your case...I said I know someone that was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer that spread to the liver and the liver was in bad shape and that you had aggressive surgery done to the liver etc. etc. and he said that ovarian cancer is a whole different cancer ..a whole different beast from lung cancer. So I guess whether or not surgery makes sense depends on the type of cancer you have. I wish he had any other cancer but lung at this point....it is just soooo hard...
There are about 4 lesions on his liver and one is very big...I would think almost 60% of his liver is overtaken by tumors. I am soo scared that he wont live longer than a year!! What if the cancer doesnt shrink the tumors on his liver?? The doctor said they may not be able to shrink them to such a small size that they can perform radiofrequency ablation and some of those other new techniques on him...but I guess every case is unique and we dont know how much his tumors will shrink. Right now I told him TO EAT AND EAT A LOT..he is so skinny it makes me cry...
Any words of hope advise are always appreciated...
Thanks,
Sarah
Sarah this is wonderful news, I was sure that once your dad got to Sloan that they would be able to reason with him, I am so happy he has decided to have treatment there, it is the best of the best and that's what he needs right now.
Judy
cl-ivhjude
Judy
cl-ivhjude
Judy
cl-ivhjude