Remember Pregnancy Cravings?
They’re Back.
Odd,
but true, if you’ve been through pregnancy with your wife, you’ve had
preparation for some of the rigors and nuances of treatment for breast cancer,
whether surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiation therapy or a
combination of all of these. In
Shirley’s case, following her first modified radical mastectomy, we had six
months of chemotherapy and hormone therapy, then six weeks of daily radiation
therapy, followed by another six months of chemotherapy. It was a long year for both of us. She was the one getting zapped, as she called
it at the time, but we were
experiencing treatment.
Shirley
applied a lesson from pregnancy to her approach to chemotherapy. When she was pregnant with our daughter, Alison,
a friend told her that not all women have severe morning sickness. That knowledge or suggestion led her to a
pregnancy with relatively little or mild morning sickness. Mind over matter? The power of self-talk?
Shirley
understood in her soul that each of us is unique. Each of us reacts in our own unique manner to
chemotherapy. One size does not fit
all. As a result, her experience with
her very aggressive treatment regimen was relatively mild, at least when
compared with horror stories about chemo.
She did have her moments, but understood she was getting closer each
time to the end of treatment and staying alive.
The
other parallel to pregnancy was food cravings.
I would often be asked to pick up Chocolate
Chocolate Hagen-Dazs ice cream, or some other food or beverage she was
craving. This ran the gamut from pretzel
sticks as a munchie to eating peppermint candy to get rid of the metallic taste
left by her chemo treatment. All of
this, of course, meant that I was often the family shopper, picking up the
groceries, a task long since reclaimed by Shirley.
