Back in Bandon, doing pretty well with the nausea, seems to get a bit better the longer it gets away from the last radiation treatment. On my most recent blood count, my hemoglobin was down to 11, normal for females 12-16, which means I am a bit anemic.
This is partly from the chemotherapy, but the bleeding I had for several months, combined partly with being a relative vegetarian, I have been low normal for awhile.
In an effort to try to build this up a bit, I have decided to go back to meat whilst on radiation.
Radiation to the abdomen tends to cause diarrhea, so they suggest a diet low in fibre and high in protein, which kind of rules out the other main source of protein for us, which is legumes.
SOOOo, for the first time in 2 years, on Wednesday I had a hamburger, and on Thursday I had one, and on Friday....etc etc etc.....
Now I am dreaming about hamburgers. What have I started? I have been reminded why the entrance to every city and town is lined with a plethora of fast food restaurants all "specializing" in their own "flavour" of hamburgers. I guess I am sort of fortunate to live in a town that only has one fast food restaurant, and it is only "somewhat" fast..... the dairy queen.
Hemoglobin is the molecule that is in the red blood cell to carry oxygen to the bodies cells. Iron is required to make hemoglobin. The causes of anemia can be many, but the more common causes are bleeding, or a diet low in iron.
Iron can be found in many foods, but in different forms. The form found in meat is the most "ready to use" for the body. The form of iron that is found in foods that are not meat, needs a chemical reaction to occur in order for it to be absorbed. The chemical reaction requires vitamin C. So if you take iron in the pill form, you must take it with something that has vitamin C in it, such as fruit.
I might be wrong here, but I figure that if my gastrointestinal tract is so affected by chemo and radiation to cause all these other side effects, it is likely not doing its best at absorbing iron, so I decided I needed to give it a hand by taking the most easily absorbed form.
How I am going to deal with my newest addiction, I have no idea.
BTW ...re: the rats. I took away all the fancy bird houses and lo and behold, the rats went away, Ben and his wife and ....children..... seem to have left.......
Ken DOES NOT BELIEVE that they have left, but I do. I think that those rats were materialistic scumballs and were just not about to eat out of a normal bird house. I brought them into the house and now my dogs are eating out of them! (Ken just pointed out that this last sentence sounds like I brought the rats into the house, where I was meaning to say I brought the fancy birdhouses into the house, I have said some nice things about rats in the past, but I would NEVER bring them into the house :) )
Love and peace
Janet Bates
jankenb @ gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment