Now Just "Weight" A Minute...

Interesting day at the Cancer Clinic as my radiation appointment was a couple hours later than usual. Call it a 9:48 tee-time! Then, I sat down with my nutritionist at 10:30.

So, all told, we're talking about a 90-minute visit.

What's interesting to me is how busy the place was. Dare I say, "business is good"!

I know that sounds crass, and I don't mean it with any malice whatsoever. I just continue to experience bewilderment at the sheer volume of people in various types of treatment.

Indeed, cancer is a scourge. And it's tentacles are just so far-reaching.

TALE OF THE TAPE...
I use two scales at the Clinic, one located near the radiation treatment area and one in my nutritionist's office. At the radiation area scale, I arrived at 185.4 pounds. When I started treatment in September, I think my weight was about 189, using the same piece of equipment.

Today, my nutritionist's scale told us 183 pounds.

Bottom line is this; I dropped about eight pounds during the week after my chemotherapy treatment on October 10. This resulted in a bit of a scolding from the radiation folks and my nutritionist on Oct. 17.  The weight loss was considered dramatic. Frankly, I was in no mood for the drama at the time. Chemotherapy affects my sense of humour!

In the past week, I lost 1 pound! That's "one"!

Moral of the story: The effects of the chemotherapy have a huge impact on my appetite. Chemotherapy sucks!

MY NEW BEST FRIEND...
I'm eating about six meals a day now, trying to keep the calories piling up. There are enough foods I can swallow, so no major challenges. It just hurts! A bowl of oatmeal...that's about a 15-minute project. A plate of spaghetti...maybe 30 minutes. And the beauty of all of this...I can't taste a damn bite of any of it!

But my new best friends are "smoothies". I make 'em at home, but once every weekday, I'm grabbing one of these:

One of the big ones takes me about an hour to drink. The up side is we're talking about 600 calories. A few weeks ago, some genius suggested it would be great if I could get 3,000 calories into my system everyday, to ensure limited weight loss during treatment.

Well, I'm going to suggest that losing about five pounds over the course of about five weeks surely must constitute "limited weight loss"? 

The battle continues.

A  FINAL THOUGHT...
If you have a look at various "Ideal Body Weight" calculation websites, there is some interesting information. I found the following quote to be pretty accurate:

 

"Women tend to imagine their ideal weight is unrealistically low, so they diet unnecessarily. Men tend to allow their ideal weight to be higher than medically recommended.

Men and Women should learn from each other."

 

Enjoy your day!