Chemo - Part 1 - Prep

One of my family members was recently diagnosed with Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL). HCL is a rare form of leukemia where the B lymphocytes accumulate in the bone marrow. Because of this accumulation, the production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets are hindered. What does this mean? As a result of the poor production of blood cells, your immune response suffers, as well as the oxygen flow throughout your body, so you're more likely to have shortness of breath and you're more likely to pick up infections. In summary, cancer sucks.

The diagnosis left us all feeling a bit on the helpless side; there's really not much you can do besides figure out a plan to knock the cancer out of your system and be supportive. I'm still not entirely sure what "being supportive" means. If you find out, let me know. My method of being supportive was 1) trying to be a good listener, 2) researching HCL, 3) finding HCL forums to read about others' experiences, and 4) reading cancer cookbooks to figure out what the best foods are to eat during chemo. I swear the librarian gave me a shocked and pitying look when I picked up five large "What to Eat When You Have Cancer Cookbooks." But hey, what's a girl to do, but take advantage of my local library? Anyways, I've been spending a lot of my spare time flipping through these cookbooks for the last couple weeks, trying to get some ideas for when chemo started. One thing to remember is to THOROUGHLY clean all fresh fruit and vegetables to remove any chemicals or germs left on the skin.

Of course I wanted to be with my family for this first round of chemo, so I made the ~12 hours drive from Texas back to Atlanta, arriving in Atlanta on Friday evening. My dog Riley welcomed me back with a beer, which of course I didn't drink...

As the family's last meal at a restaurant for the next couple weeks (avoiding crowded places while your immune system is down is a good idea), we went to Longhorn Steakhouse, where all of us ended up getting the same thing: Bourbon Bacon-wrapped Sirloin. (Apparently we have similar tastes, though we each got a different level of doneness: me with medium, and my parents with medium-well, and well done).

Saturday morning, we started our preparations. For my family of allergy sufferers (and closet Obsessive-Compulsives), that meant that we spent the next two days cleaning. I think my family's house has been scrubbed to within an inch of its life. We vacuumed and washed all of the rugs and rug backings, swept, mopped, and polished the hardwood floors, dusted the china cabinet, dusted all of the decorative Scandinavian figurines we have displayed around the house, shook out doilies, dusted the vases and teapots my parents have above our cabinets, cleaned the blinds, moved the TV stand to vacuum the rug underneath (which hasn't seen the light of day in a while), washed the curtains, cleaned the inside AND outside of the windows, Swiffered the floors under the beds, and basically dusted ALL surfaces. I've always been a bit OCD about my apartment being clean, but this brought the cleaning to a whole new level.

My break from cleaning on Saturday was a trip to the grocery store. I planned out a few meals to make based on the foods that my parents currently had at home and picked up the remaining ingredients I needed as well as a few other meats to cook. I've already made a batch of bone broth, with some beef bones that the kind gentleman at Whole Foods sawed up right before me. After chilling in the fridge post-slow cooker, I removed the fat, but this batch stayed broth-like instead of going gelatinous like my last bone broth.

It's basically the same as before, but I'll post the ingredients again:

3 lbs beef bone (pasture-raised if possible)

1 onion, roughly chopped

4 carrots, thoroughly scrubbed, peeled, and roughly chopped

4 stalks celery, thoroughly scrubbed, peeled, and roughly chopped

2 bay leaves

2 Tbls apple cider vinegar

Salt and pepper

Everything gets combined in a slow-cooker. Set on low for 10 hours. Wake up in the morning and strain the resulting broth with a strainer first and then cheesecloth. If you don't have cheesecloth, I highly recommend investing in some for the purposes of making broth.

Bone broth is supposed to be good to have during chemo if you suffer from anemia, constipation, dehydration, fatigue, nausea, sore mouth, and difficulty swallowing due to the treatment. It also serves as a good base for other soups.