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Weight loss


Daisydog

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My wife was diagnosed with PC in july but it took 3 biopsies to confirm the worst news ever, my wife was a healthy 8 stone 4lbs when she was diagnosed 4 months later and only 2 courses of folfirinox her weight has dropped to 6 stone 11lbs, at her last consultant appointment the Dr wasn't too concerned by her weight loss, she has stage 3 t4 pancreatic cancer which is inoperable and has spread locally to her stomach and some veins, any advice would be great fully received

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Hello Daisydog. So sorry to hear about your wife.


My husband lost a lot of weight too, and the nurses on the helpline here were a mine of information. They sent me all sorts of tips on making foods more calorific and of course taking creons helped as well.


Can I urge you to phone the helpline asap ? You'll find the number on the main website. I think they may be closed now for the weekend, but there is advice about diet on the website too. Have a trawl through it and you'll get some help.


I fed Peter on extra butter, cheese and ice cream. If you can make ice cream yourself you can add all sorts of extras to it, especially Fortisip drinks and high calorie powders. When your wife feels so poorly she may respond better to small snacks, and anything with pastry or pizza type things pile the weight on. Adding powdered milk to full fat milk really helps as well.


So sorry to hear about your wife, you'll get plenty of support on this forum.

Take care

Mo

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Hi


Sorry to hear about your wife...my husband also lost a lot of weight and in the later stages it got increasingly difficult to keep it up. He tried fortisips, but they aren't very nice tasting...scandishakes are great, taste more like a macdonalds milkshake and come in a variety of flavours, but the best thing you can get is procal powder...you can stir it into drinks and mix it into food and it adds plenty of calories and also some protein too without altering taste or texture...I used to heap spoonfuls into scandishakes, glasses of milk, puddings, yoghurt, mash potato...anything really apart from juice and water. There is also a full fat milk powder (NIDO) you can get, but I couldn't ever find it...most milk powders are made with skimmed milk. All the things that Mo has mentioned are great too...stir full fat cream into stuff too, only trouble with that is it does alter the taste and texture.


Do you have a dietician? If not, get a referral, they are often a great help and the one we had sent us all sorts of things to try out.


Lots of luck with it.


Vx

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My has had 2 lengthy conversations with the 1 dietician at our local hospital and 1 with a specialist hospital

Her biggest problem is she's never hungry has no desire to eat, it's a huge struggle to get her to eat anything, my wife has always loved anything sweet but now the idea of chocolate or cake or desert fills her with dread, she says she doesn't want it doesn't like the taste

Adding supplements to her food sounds great but the reality I'm facing is how do I help her when she's not wanting to eat? Are we missing something or do the Drs need to do more

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If you read my thread Daisydog you will see that around chemo it took months to get my dad on an even keel around eating. I thought he was going to die of starvation. He lost so much weight he was weak and could not stand up. That sounds all very negative but it will hopefully encourage you that things do not have to stay like that. My dad is really healthy right now (touch wood!) and we just had to keep trying different things. We used to drizzle olive oil on everything as that is high in calories. You perhaps need to try and figure out what exactly is causing the appetite loss... did it start with the chemo or was it there beforehand? Is there nausea? The taste thing was my dads biggest issue. Everything tasted metallic and awful. We have tried several things that overcome this. Also, try liquid supplements as well. I am not at home right now but I will come up with a list of what worked for dad when I get home. x

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Daisydog wrote:

> My has had 2 lengthy conversations with the 1 dietician at our local

> hospital and 1 with a specialist hospital

> Her biggest problem is she's never hungry has no desire to eat, it's a huge

> struggle to get her to eat anything, my wife has always loved anything

> sweet but now the idea of chocolate or cake or desert fills her with dread,

> she says she doesn't want it doesn't like the taste

> Adding supplements to her food sounds great but the reality I'm facing is

> how do I help her when she's not wanting to eat? Are we missing something

> or do the Drs need to do more


There are also some tiny little shot sized supplements which have a decent amount of calories, without the volume...I cant remember what they are called, but my husband didn't like the taste of them. I agree, it's a nightmare, my husband went through phases at different points of his chemo cycle where all he fancied was cereal, so that's what he ate...towards the end, he just didn't fancy anything, so I stopped forcing him. You're obviously not at that point with your wife, so hard as it is for her, she needs to get her head around it and eat for eatings sake, regardless of whether she has an appetite or not. The good thing about the procal powders is it can be added to drinks...so if she has a cup of tea or coffee, you can add it to that. It's really tough, I know and I feel your frustration having been through it...it's hard to suggest something if she really is not wanting to eat.


Vx

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Thanks for your help if I knew what stops her eating it would help enormously, we've had so many arguments about her not eating, i know it's the wrong thing to do but it's heart breaking for myself and our 13 year old daughter to watch her waste away, anything I try and suggest is met with disapproval or I'm full maybe later, I've explored everything I can but the barriers she puts up frustrate me enormously

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I think those shots are just fortisip shots or something along those lines. Regarding not liking the taste, here is a tip that got me into severe trouble in primary school when I told my fellow pupils how to manage the dreadful school dinners - hold your nose until a few seconds after you've swallowed. You can't taste anything if you hold your nose. Useful when needed!

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Is she on anti Depressants? It really was turning point for dad after 4 weeks on them as it helps them tolerate the chemo and the crap deal they have got. It can't make things worse. X

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Hi Daisydog


I really feel for you, when my husband wasn't able to eat and was losing loads of weight it was incredibly upsetting...more so for me than for him I think. Fortunately his appetite gradually picked up once he got used to the chemo. He was also on Folfirinox and went down to 8.5 st. He's now back to nearly 10 st.


I'm not speaking from experience here but I've read about people on chemo being prescribed steroids to stimulate their appetite. You could discuss this with your oncologist.


We used to buy the NIDO full fat milk powder (mentioned by Veema) from Amazon.


I'm sure it all feels very hopeless at the moment but hopefully things will pick up and your wife will find foods that she can tolerate.


W&M x

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Have you tried calling the PCUK nurses... they really have been great in pointing us in the right direction. Stuff your GP would not think of in a month of Sundays. x

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