KiwiCat's updates

There’s a stereotype that pregnancy causes all women to experience weird food cravings. That was never my experience, I had no cravings with either pregnancy, but with my first I did experience intolerances. Jut the thought of red meat while making a shopping list could leave me queasy, and I could smell salt at a significant distance. There was one time I was drawn from one end of the house to the other to find my husband innocently making himself a marmite sanwich. He was informed that it was not going to be eaten in the house, and obliging darling that he is, he took it outside.

The theory on the cravings and intolerances is that it’s your body trying to help the baby by ensuring you’re getting the right balance of nutrients.  True or not, what is true is that during that first pregnancy I had issues with my gall bladder that resulted in it’s removal shortly after, so fats and salt were to be avoided.

I reflect on that now as I’m on this chemo journey.

Cancer likes sugar. I don’t know when I first heard that, years ago, but friends and family have been regularly reminding me of it since my diagnosis.

As it happens, I don’t have that much of a sweet tooth.That might come as a surprise to anyone who has watched me select sweet options at a morning tea or cafe, but truly that isn’t so much preference as precaution.

Given the audience for this blog most of you likely know this well, but for those who don’t: garlic is a trigger for my migraines. It is also insidiously present in all manner of sauces, spice mixes and other bases for savoury items, and unless it’s present in large quantities it isn’t generally required to be listed as an ingredient because it’s not a common allergen. Instead it is often just listed as spice.

Long story short, what I make for myself I know to be safe, but if I’m out it’s often safer to simply choose sweet.

Given that right now I’m really going nowhere while I’m immunocompromised, then, I can make choices for myself easy enough and cut down on the sweet. I’m not on any particular diet, other than avoiding spicy and fatty foods, it’s more about maintaining strength between doses.

But what has been interesting since the chemo dose is the sense that my body doesn’t want sweet right now, just like it didn’t want salt in that first pregnancy. Not with anything like the same level of revulsion, but a firm sense that if I have a choice between a spoonful of ice cream or a spoonful of unsweetened yoghurt, I’ll take the yoghurt every time.

I’ve known for months about being careful with sugar, that’s an intellectual thing. Now it’s suddenly more than that. Taste buds working or not, sweet just doesn’t appeal.

I think I’ll listen to my body. It seems to know best.