The Vicious Cycle

Some of the deliciousness awaiting Mark, I only give them
to one at a time in hopes they will seem more appetizing.

So, when you feel so poorly, that eating and drinking is a big struggle and at times impossible... but you know that you need to eat and drink to feel better - what do you do? Also, when you are the wife of someone who has basically stopped consuming, and you know consuming is super important for healing - how do you push enough to encourage, but not so much that you are a nag?
These are the questions we are struggling with on round 3 of Chemo. Who would have ever thought that watching Mark eat 10 grapes would be cause for celebration? Since for 8.5 years before now he has finished the food off of my plate before heading to the kitchen for thirds, certainly not I.
So far we have tried water, carbonated water, water with lemon, a variety of teas, smoothies, ginger ale, and homemade energy drinks. For snacks: arrowroots, oats, applesauce, fruits, yogurt, soups, noodles, toast, crackers, and more I am sure. If anyone has any other magic suggestions - please send them my way.
This round has carried out much the same as the last as far as levels and kidney functioning goes. It has looked a bit different because Mark is sleeping a lot more and is struggling with food and beverage intake so much. This is all very reasonable and not too concerning to the doctors and nurses who have seen it so many times before. It sounds like his appetite will come back to him at some time between treatments - but it gets a bit tricky now that we are basically one week in hospital, one week out.
Mark had a CT scan and a MRI this week and both had good results. They were not able to use contrast dye for either test because of Mark's kidney levels, and the "before" tests they are comparing the results with did use dye, so it is a bit tricky. Our oncologist let us know the tumours are shrinking and she liked what she was seeing in the scans. She wants to do one more MRI when Mark is better able to take the dye (apologies to those of you who have had to wait 6 months to get your knees MRIed, 3 in a month hardly seems fair - also, thanks for paying your taxes everyone, I've never loved Canada so much).
Basically things are going as they should be and we haven't really had any unpleasant suprises. We have learned that this is what we are hoping for. Overall, it feels like things are going pretty well. We have a very thorough doctor (a self-described "obsessive compulsive"), Mark is not experiencing anything that is unreasonable under the circumstances, I am sleeping and eating well and am back to knitting, which means we have returned to some level of normalcy. Our moods are good, although there is admittedly a bit of a drop off of cheeriness towards the end of our time in hospital. We try to keep the "why don't you try this?", "why don't you back off?" dialogue light and that works (for the most part). The thing is, our good life is worth putting up with all of this bad stuff anyhow, and it is pretty easy to keep that perspective.

Since I am short of photos right now, I thought I would show what it is like where we are at.

Here's the view from the balcony and some of the rooms here. Vancouver is amazing.

This is the balcony that our room looks out on, it's large and handy to have.

Here is the family room which is also great to have access to. It has been all cleared out as part of preparations for H1N1, a bit of a sad reminder of the flu season ahead.