Cancer Center

I spent part of this week at the cancer center that the hospital owns. The center provides both chemo and radiation, and often patients walk straight from receiving their chemo over to get their radiation treatments. I was actually surprised by what good spirits all of the patients seemed to be in. Even while telling us about their nausea or constipation, none of the patients seemed to get to get upset. For the most part the patients were all in a pretty good mood, and most were pretty chatty. There were a few patients who wanted nothing to do with us, or anyone else, but they were definately the minority. The cancer center does not have a full time RD, so one of the RDs from the hospital goes over twice a week and tries to see every chemo patient that is in that day. If the patient isn't interested in talking to her she doesn't push it, but just gives them her name and number, and tells them if they have any problems to call her. For the radiation patients she tries to see them at their first visit, and then follows up with them if she can. The radiation treatments only last a few minutes, so it's hard to get a hold of all the patients since they are in and out so quickly. If there is a patient she wants to see, or who wants to see her, she tries to ask the nurses to call her when the patient is in.
I was really impressed by all the different solutions to different nutrition problems are for these patients. There are so many nutrition related side effects to the chemo drugs and people react to them so differently that it really is treating every patient as a complete and total individual. One resource that they sometimes give patients is a cookbook called Eating Well through Cancer. The book has different recipes for different nutrition problems that relate to treatment. For example there is a section of recipes to help constipation, or a section of recipes for the day of chemo treatment. For people who cook, this is a great resource. One thing that I thought was interesting is that the hospital has started "prescribing" banana flakes for patients who are constipated. Most of the patients come back and report that it really helped. The RD I was working with said that her mom's cure for constipation used to be eating a banana, so it was funny to see how an "old wives tale" really translated into a real solution.