Your personal involvement in this process is very important, but it is important to remember that you are not alone. Your doctors, caregivers, your family and your friends are all very helpful members in your fight against cancer, and you can always count on their support.
Choose one or more of your most trusted friends and tell them honestly about your condition and your concerns. If you pretend that you feel fine and that everything is fine, this will only add to your stress and prevent you from releasing your true feelings, and things will only get worse. Instead, even if you just say, “You know what, I’m feeling scared,” this can help start a very realistic and helpful conversation. Know that your friends or family will be more than happy to give you help or support.
Before talking to family and friends, think about what you want to talk to them about, how you expect them to react, how you hope they will react, and be prepared and rational about their reactions. While family and friends will be very supportive, don’t expect to talk about or address everything at once; give them time to understand what you are talking about. Finally, tell them what support and help you would like to receive from them.
Good lifestyle habits not only help to fight against tumor, but also develop a healthy lifestyle and improve the quality of life, and a good self-care plan also helps to improve the efficiency of treatment and promote early recovery.
I. Quit smoking
The relationship between smoking and lung cancer is very close, and I believe you already know this point very well.
1.Improve appetite.
2.Increased weight.
3.Reducing sputum.
4.Increase oxygen intake and maintain good physical performance.
5.Improve the sense of smell and taste.
The following points may be helpful for you to quit smoking.
1. increase other activities such as raising flowers, painting, walking, etc.
2.List N reasons for quitting smoking.
3. Make a detailed plan to quit smoking and a definite time to quit.
4. telling people around you that you are quitting.
5.Discard smoking-related accessories.
Keep a mood diary
By writing a diary, you do not need to suppress your feelings, you can express your feelings and moods directly through the diary, even if they are bitter and worried, so that both pleasant and unpleasant moods can be ventilated, which can effectively relieve your stress.
3. Maintain good eating habits
In the process of fighting cancer, it is very important to maintain good eating habits, but this often seems more difficult compared to normal conditions. In the process of fighting against tumor, your body tends to consume more, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy will also bring damage to normal cells and need to be supplemented with certain special nutrients, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy will affect your appetite, so it is very important to ensure that you can consume enough nutrients.
Food is the best source of nutrients. High-dose multivitamin products or herbal supplements are usually not recommended because some of the ingredients in these products may interact with your treatment regimen.
Eat enough calories and choose foods you like whenever possible. If you don’t eat a lot at a time, consider food mixes to increase the calorie and vitamin content.
Increase your vitamin intake while ensuring calories, but do not advocate pill supplementation. Prefer natural foods and eat more fresh vegetables and fruits
As surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy will cause great stress and consumption, protein supplementation is emphasized to ensure cell repair and immune function recovery, red meat, fish and poultry are very good sources of protein, and if appetite is poor, consider increasing protein-rich foods such as cheese, peanut butter, eggs, nuts and yogurt.
Avoid dehydration, chemotherapy, radiotherapy will cause additional loss of water, and chemotherapy will cause a change in the taste of sleep, then if the intake of sufficient water is difficult, you can consider increasing the soup food, such as fish soup
Proper handling of adverse reactions
Lung cancer treatment, especially radiotherapy and chemotherapy, will often cause many adverse reactions. Improper handling of these adverse reactions will not only affect your quality of life, but also affect whether you can persist in completing the whole treatment plan, therefore, proper handling of adverse reactions is very important.
V. Diarrhea
Diarrhea is often related to tumor growth or treatment (including chemotherapy and radiotherapy). Targeted therapy drugs can also cause mild diarrhea, and the following suggestions may be helpful to you.
1. try to reduce eating until you feel better to give your stomach and intestines time to rest.
2, you can drink some light salt water several times in small amounts to avoid dehydration.
3. you can eat soft foods such as porridge or bread after you feel better.
4. avoid stimulating foods and drinks such as coffee until the symptoms have completely disappeared.
5. avoiding dairy products for three days after the disappearance of symptoms
6. avoiding fried foods with relatively high fat content until full recovery.
Note: Although the management of diarrhea is relatively simple, it is recommended that you always consult your doctor before taking any measures.
VI. Constipation
Constipation is also more common for lung cancer patients due to prolonged bed rest and the effects of treatment, and the general principles of management are as follows.
1. Ensure adequate fluid intake (most adults need to consume 8-10 glasses of water, non-caffeinated beverages or fruit juices daily).
2.Reducing alcoholic or caffeinated beverages, which can cause dehydration.
3, appropriate physical exercise.
4, eat more fiber-rich fruit drinks.
If necessary, you can take some synthetic fibers or drugs.
Seven, hair loss
Hair loss is usually caused by chemotherapy, but not all chemotherapy drugs will cause hair loss, sometimes the hair loss is very mild and can only be detected if I pay special attention to it, usually the hair loss can be improved by stopping the drugs after the treatment is finished. Hair loss does not usually occur immediately, but often occurs a few weeks after treatment. During chemotherapy, it may be helpful to give your hair or scalp some special care: 1.
1. use a mild shampoo and a soft comb.
2. keeping your hair as dry as possible, and if you need to use a hair dryer, try to use a low temperature setting.
3, keep hair short so that it can look denser and easier to deal with if hair loss occurs.
4, use soft silk pillowcases not to dye hair during chemotherapy.
5, use a hat or headscarf to avoid direct sunlight.
Eight, blood changes
Blood picture changes are often chemotherapy drugs affect the normal function of blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, commonly lowering the level of white blood cells and platelets, the former level will reduce the patient’s resistance to external germs, increasing the chance of infection; the latter level will affect the patient’s coagulation function, increasing the risk of bleeding. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly observe the change of blood picture during chemotherapy, and once the level of white blood cells and platelets decreases, it may be necessary to use some drugs to raise white blood cells to ensure the safety of treatment.
Make good medical records
Collecting all kinds of information together not only can fully understand your condition, but also can prepare for each visit to the doctor, improve the efficiency of treatment, and also enable the doctor to understand your condition more clearly, so as to develop a more targeted treatment plan. It is recommended that you carefully record changes in your condition, adjustments to your treatment plan, your response to treatment, and any symptoms that occur during treatment, and list any questions you would like to know.