I gained two stone in the months after my cancer diagnosis.  Not a disaster as I’d lost seven in the year and a half before.  But the hospital were happy.  Gaining weight is goodd in cancer land.  Usually.

I’ve not been weighed for a couple of months though.  And while hurtling around south west USA it became clear that my appetite was reducing.  I could handle a breakfast but would only half eat any other meal we ordered.

As the tumour grew my appetite faded.  Returning home and the trend has continued.  Although my first few days of osimertinib saw a return to higher levels of food intake that’s dropped back a little again in recent days.  A side effect of the drug being impaired appetite.

I have never struggled to eat in my life until now.  Recent weeks have seen half eaten steaks in restaurants, a remarkable effort to avoid being sick after biting into a fish and simply skipping lunch because I’m not hungry and still leaving a third of my tea.

I do tend to eat vegetables off my plate first, so hopefully I’m getting a reasonable nutritional benefit along the way.  But it’s a change for me.  I’m uncomfortable with it.  And after decades of wanting to lose a lot of weight I’m now frightened of wasting away.  Not there yet though.

Imagining the Effects of Zometa