Maintaining Physical & Emotional Strenght

While I was in the doctors office yesterday waiting for my blood count i found a brochure "Cancer and Nutrition" this pamphlet listed the most comon side effects we exprience, coping tips, and suggest products that we can take to to Help. I highly suggest checking it out.
http://www.nestlenutritionstore.com/cancer.asp

It is very important to eat correctly for a number of reasons. Eating correctly will ensure you get your daily required amount of vitamins and nutrients that your body needs. Especially going through these treatment. I am sure your doctor will suggest vitamin supplements you can take. My doctor told me to take Magnesium, Calcium, and a B-complex, this is suppose to help me with the signs of the nerve damage I have been experiencing in my feet and finger tips. Another reason every body needs a certain amount of nutritious calories to maintain a healthy weight. My trainer Phil knew what I weighed and what I needed to do to get back to that desired weight. So to prevent me from loosing anymore weight while under treatment he created a 7 day diet plan that includes all the calories my body needs to maintain a healthy body weight. Go to his site for a FREE SAMPLE DIET, go to this page and scroll down to the bottom and click on one of the seven day diet plans and save it to your computer, also to let you know ALL THE E-BOOKS on that page are FREE down load one or all of them. If you would like a customized diet plan whether it be for Maintaining, Loosing, or Gaining Weight he can do that also. I am currently on a diet plan strictly for maintenance, however once my treatments stop and I am changing my diet plan to gaining. I want to get back to the 19o I was before this all happened.

I have been very lucky with my emotional strength. I am not trying to say I am handle these treatments easy or taking it like a man. I did my crying, feeling sorry for myself, and sometimes even suicidal. I realized I needed to accept the help and support of my FAMILY and FRIENDS. PLEASE DO, swallow that pride you had all your life, let yourself cry and I mean CRY let it out, express your feeling. I have and still do, and will continue to do so and I feel BETTER ABOUT MYSELF EVERYDAY.
This last part was hard for me to complete, not everyone knew how bad I was feeling at times. (they will now) I encourage fellow chemo patients and all readers please make comments for this will help me with my daily blog entries. Thank You, Jeff

Family During Chemo

This is probably the hardest to discuss. At my age when you suppose to be there for your parents, and relatives, now you find them worrying about you. Something that you don't wish on anyone. My parents and the rest of the family live in the north east Long Island New York. They have always seen me as the fun outgoing person. That changes, with this treatment well it has for me. My parents are arriving this Saturday, it will be the first time they see me without hair and looking on the frail side. I hope i can keep it together and have the strength to hold back the tears once I see them. Then there is my Aunt, she has gone through chemo, raised two children and worked during most of it. Talk about a woman that may not look strong but to me she is a woman HERCULES. I did not realize what she went through, it is amazing. Today she is cancer free for a number of years and looks great. I love her so much for being a rock for me and my parents. My brother Don and his family also have been very supportive, they call daily and try to get me to move up there, however Fort Lauderdale is my home. Of course then we all have ex's in our lives who happen to have current partners, my ex Bob and his new partner Troy have been extremely supportive, offering so much help and support during this treatment. Troy is current partner has brought over soup, and has offered on a number of occasions to cook for me. Thank God for them I had a place to go on Thanksgiving. Then there is the cousins, and nieces that I have, all wanting to see me, and visit. However, I would not want them to see me this way and would prefer to have them see me at my best when this is all over. I have a loving family, and would not changed any of them. I LOVE ALL OF YOU.