Weight Loss

Hey, group. Hubby is G3 & has been treating for almost 3 months. Was UND about a month ago.
He's been loosing weight during tx. The past week+, he's had diarrhea pretty badly.

He went to see our GP today. He's lost almost 40 pounds in a little over 3 months.

My NP nurse is afraid his treating dr will take him off treatment.

What can we expect?  Why the abrupt weight loss? What's going on?  What the #@*^??

[alijee]

First of all congrat on being und. actually tx play with our metabolism and some times with thyroid. Check thryroid performance.

[Marc1955]

Peg – Can you supply a little more information? Has he been eating and losing weight or has he stopped eating because of side effects?

If it's the latter there are a few practical steps that can help: cold food vs. hot, many small meals vs. a few big meals. Although it's damn difficult, he needs to try to do everything possible to keep his weight up. I keep a bag of Paul Newman's chocolate alphabet cookies   in my office at all times and eat them in large quantities around 10:30 in the morning and 3:00 in the afternoon. If you're not feeling well, it's not worth worrying too much about nutrition. Any calories that he can tolerate are better than none at all. For example, I eat frozen waffles with maple syrup just about every day for breakfast.

The other thing that seems a little counter intuitive is to try a little exercise. When I was at my sickest from side effects, I lost 10lbs in two weeks. A certain amount of that was "muscle wasting" because I was dragging around. Exercise, even if it is very modest, can help a bit with muscle mass. It might also make him feel better.

Good luck. It's great that he's been a fast responder. 40lbs sure is a hell of a lot of weight. Hope he can stabilize for the rest of treatment.