Although I have been taking myself down my own “road” to better
eating, with my father’s recent cancer diagnosis this road has become much
wider. You see several years ago, I had
the pleasure of hearing Squire Rushnell speak on his book series, When GodWinks, and have since read a few of his books.
What many of us call “coincidence”, I believe is a “Godwink” moment to
guide us through this journey called life.
That being said, what started as my own “road” to better eating, has now
become a “Godwink” of this new journey with cancer.
Due to the type of cancer that we are dealing with and how
it is directly affecting how the body processes and retains nourishment, my dad’s
diet is extremely important. Diet is
important for every chemotherapy patient however, the doctors have stressed to
us how key it truly is for my dad. So
for those that know me, that means I have been spending hours researching and
reading. I asked the oncology team if we
could meet with a dietitian and I was told that although they had a dietitian
on staff they actually encouraged us to contact our local Hy-Vee grocery
store. Did you know that every Hy-Vee
has a dietitian on staff for customers to consult? (our local Belton store has Megan Callahan) In fact, you can schedule a Personal
Nutrition Shopping Assistance/Store Tour for FREE that will discuss specific dietary needs. You can also use NuVal, a nutritional scoring
system that determines the nutritional value of the food you buy….again for FREE.
You can take it further and receive private nutrition counseling for a
nominal fee as well.
Additionally, I have been able to tweak my dad’s Advocare
Supplement regiment to ensure that he is receiving optimum nutrition. For example:
it was suggested that he take his multi-vitamin and drink Ensure and
Gatorade daily. So, we have had to switch
him to the V100 Multi-Vitamin and rather then Ensure and Gatorade, he is
drinking 1-2 Advocare Meal Replacement Shakes (not as a replacement but as an
additional meal each day) and at least one Rehydrate daily (as it has a better
nutritional make-up then Gatorade). Although there is not enough scientific evidence to prove that nutritional supplements impact the cure for cancer, it is suggested that they be used. Specifically, for my dad, several of his abnormal labs can be corrected by diet and vitamins so we are hoping to see a few normal results. In
fact, his nurse has been so impressed with what she has seen so far from
Advocare, she has asked for some samples for herself to try.
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