rumaki and bacon wrapped figs with goat cheese, the ultimate cancer diet?

Awake a bit later than usual because I'm still coming off the steroids.  Still had the runs all day and so stayed close to home and  took a long long nap, but basically OK. Today was a day of tiredness, and maybe 3/4 of the work I needed to do, but not misery. 

Lessons learned on taking meds on time - alarms set on my phone to remind me.  In the first 48 hours if I wait to feel like I need more Zofran or Ativan, it's too late.  I expect that window to extend to 72 hours in the coming weeks as the toxicity builds in my body. 

Looking into nutritional stuff tonight.  There is so much woo bullshit out there on cancer and nutrition that it's impossible to wade through.  I'm already tired.  I don't need to chase down 15 competing theories about why blueberries are perfect for chemo and that they are going to kill me quick if I eat just one. 

The advice comes from all corners of the world, and is so general, and so contradictory, and so just-not scientific that I've been having a hard time doing research that way. 

So I turned it around tonight and looked at my bloodwork (which I have a major trended record of now over the past couple of months) and at what nutrients I either need more of to support chemo according to the doctors and documentation at NIH, and what nutrients the chemo causes to deplete in the body, either by using them up or blocking absorption.  And I can see it happening, I dropped below the bottom line for several or the first time this week . 

According to all of those sources I need to eat for magneisum, iron, calcium, and potassium (because they are needed for physical and mental health, and chemo depletes them, possibly eventually to the point where I'll get them via IV), but I can't do real supplements because of the study (it's a rule, and if you can't tell, I think most supplements are bullshit anyway in the western diet, even a really crappy western diet)  and most supplements just give you expensive pee anyway without the other ingredients in food to help you absorb them. 

My biggest problem is that I can't eat leafy greens, at all, unless they are pureed into soup, juice, or smoothies.  About 40% of the time even just iceberg lettuce does it to me. 

On my best days in the last 10 years your basic salad, kale, spinach dish would go right through me.  I just hoped I was getting some of the nutrients during the hour or two that it spent in my gut. Can't do it at all now, and things like nuts (a favorite protein snack) are off limits too.  Chemo causes you to basically shed all the fast-turnover cells in your body and nothing moves faster than your gut.  Too much fiber or structure in food during is going to start tearing me apart internally, literally.  I'm not eating anything harder than a table cracker right now and making sure to chew it thoroughly. 

I'm looking into juicing - I guess I fail as a California Liberal for never having a green juice in my life (and a fruity one only as a special treat or last resort) Mostly you can blame bananas.  Juicers like to put bananas in everything and I absolutely refuse to eat them.  So I figure this week I'll go in to a couple of juice places a couple of times and see if I can find flavor combos that work for me, and if I like it I'll invest in a real juicer.  If I don't really like it, there's no way in hell I'll ever actually do it at all at home. 

So I did a bunch of reading on the NIH sites and tried to figure out where I can shore myself up, either on top of, or instead of juicing.   The other thing is that as I'm able to eat less I'm going to need to get these things in as extreme concentrations as possible, just to make sure I get it in. 

Iron's a big one - I don't eat a lot of red meat and got very very out of the habit with the band.  I've been trying to order it more in restaurants now, and have it a few times a week at home (sirloin strogonoff for dinner tomorrow, FTW!).  According to the NIH the greatest source of iron isn't beef per ounce, it's chicken liver.  Can I start requesting rumaki for an appetizer every night as part of my treatment?  Actually, I'm pretty sure I've never had chicken liver outside of rumaki or pate.  Bob has convinced me that southern fried chicken livers are a thing and I should have them.  Experiments begin tomorrow. 

Magnesium I can get through nut butters - a run through the food processor and they should be perfectly safe for me one the sharp corners are gone.  I might follow Bob's lead and stir it into oatmeal in the morning.  Beans, chocolate, and dairy are also good sources already in my diet, although, surprisingly, it's the chocolate that I eat the least regularly. 

Calcium is easy because I like dairy.  You will pry it out of my cold, dead hands.  Morning coffee is a flat white with a full 8 ounces of milk and a doubleshot.  An hour later I have half a cup of yogurt with some sort of fruit in it.  Cheese is not in any way a requirement at every meal, but it does seem to show up in small doses all over the place. 

And then there is potassium, which is the domain of the banana.  WHY WHY WHY WHY!  These fruits are the bane of my existence.  No one will be happier than me when they finally go extinct. 

I actually saw one of the nutritionists at Stanford carrying bananas in her belt like you might a gun in a holster. WHY!  Anyway, this looks easy too - dried apricots are a good source and they are already a regular snack, also dried figs and dairy.  MORE DAIRY.   

And now that figs are in season, maybe I'll stuff them with goat cheese, wrap them in bacon, and serve them with rumaki.  The ultimate cancer diet?