Cracked Lips
As part of your oral care it is important to moisturise your lips. The development of sore lips from treatment causes further discomfort for patients. Chemotherapy can cause cracked lips through dryness, cracking, soreness, bleeding, infections that are fungal in origin, and cold sores from herpes simplex. This can be extremely painful. We’ve added Burt’s Bees Lip Balm …
How are they going?
Christmas and new year’s celebrations are over. Life gets busy for everyone again. For a cancer patient life can revert back to loneliness again. If you didn’t catch up at Christmas take a moment to call that friend that you haven’t spoken to for a while and reconnect. They’ll love catching up and you’ll finish …
Summer and oral health
Summer can throw your oral care routine out the window. It’s a time when our delicious fruits are readily available, icecream becomes high on our food favourite and icy poles help with hydrating, all making for a high-in-sugar diet. Drinking water during Summer provides a vital role for our oral health. Keep an eye on …
Eating
Nothing worse than looking at a large plate of food when you don’t feel like eating. Treatment may cause loss of appetite, feeling sick, constipation or changes in taste. Try small portion snack size meals if you need to. Often we have too bigger meals anyway. If friends and family prepare meals for you in advance, …
It’s going to be hot
Even healthy people can feel poorly in the heat and humidity so this predicted very hot Summer’s day of 41°c in Melbourne may feel even worse for cancer patients. This is a great reason to spend time indoors and remember to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate keeping fluids on-hand. Make every effort to stay cool, and understand that …
Back on track
Christmas and New Year’s celebrations are over so time to get back on track with eating. Good nutrition is important. Eating well can improve your overall health, reduce fatigue, and help you have more energy. Deciding what to eat and shopping for groceries can take time and energy and you don’t feel like thinking about …
Newspapers, journals, photo albums, magazines
Don’t keep magazines, books, journals and newspapers where you can trip over them. Shelli often had journals, photo albums, magazines and notes piles up around her. Too often we stack them on the floor because these is no room elsewhere. Unfortunately you can trip or slide on these stacks if left on the floor. We don’t …
Am I dehydrated?
Cancer patients are at high risk for dehydration from both the disease and the treatment. As temperatures soar during Summer this risk becomes higher. A quick test to check if you think you are dehydrated is to lightly pinch and pull up your skin and it stays standing up in a tent. Other symptoms include increased thirst and …
Cooling and soothing
If you are going through some radiation, your skin can take a beating. It might be sensitive, burnt, uncomfortable or just sore. We have included in our Kit a tube of Thursday Plantation Aloe Vera Gel, a natural moisturiser and emollient extracted from the Aloe vera plant. Start at the beginning of treatment, before you …