To drink or not to drink...

Last Thursday I had an appointment with my oncologist to decide on the next step.  We agreed chemotherapy would be the best option; well actually the only other option is to do nothing – not really an option. So I start on Monday.

The drugs that will be poisoning me are Irinotecan and fluorouracil, if that means anything to you at all. Probably not, why would it? But yeah they are poison so kill off the good cells as well as the bad resulting in some nasty side effects. Most are rare but the common ones are nausea, fatigue, hair loss, and lowered immunity.  This last one may well cause me some problems.  If you read my last post then you know I was in hospital with an infected abscess on the primary tumour and had an operation to drain it.  Now I was reliably informed that the only way to get rid of this infection for good was to remove the tumour but since that couldn’t happen there is a risk it will return.  Lowered immunity obviously increases this risk and my oncologist is concerned enough that he is giving me a lower dose the first session so it’s not such a huge attack on my system and has prescribed antibiotics for the first month when the chances of low immunity are highest.

The necessary evil

So upon hearing this, good patient that I am, I went home and googled ‘how to increase immunity’ and basically the top tips are…

“Number one: eat a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables (yup already do that one); number 2: drink lots of water (hmm mostly do this one already as well) and number three: Get lots of sleep (ha! This one isn’t going to happen, not in my house!)”,

And then it hit me, a distant piece of knowledge from the recesses of my morphine addled mind.  I got straight on the phone to text my good friend Ellie, ‘I’m going to need a pint or two of Cleo’s favourite tipple’. Ellie replied, more than happy to oblige my request; Cleo is 5 months old and her favourite tipple is currently available on tap and free anyway. Well it might cost me some cake (to fuel mama).

Beautiful Cleo who's lovingly shared her milk with me

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard...

I’m sure that the more conservative of you may be shocked by the suggestion to drink human breast milk but I don’t find it strange at all, in fact it’s a lot less strange than drinking cow udder milk, and it potentially has benefits to adults as well as babies. Babies are born with little immunity so breast milk is high in immunoglobulins which fight infection.  Most mother's I know will have squirted breastmilk into a child's eye infected with conjuctivitis at some point due to it's magical antibacterial properties! Ancient Egyptians added it to honey and used it as a medicine and ointment. And whilst this may not be beneficial to the average adult, it makes sense that it could increase the immunity of someone who's immunosuppressed.

The other huge plus for cancer patients, which I discovered upon googling, 'breast milk and immunity', is that there is some research suggesting that a component from breastmilk, HAMLET (Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made LEthal to Tumor cells) induces cell death in cancer cells, whilst leaving normal cells unaffected. HAMLET is a protein-lipid complex formed when the protein alpha-lactalbumin from human breast milk changes structure by binding to oleic acid (the majority of fatty acid in breast milk) in vitro. Experimenting on mice, scientists have shown HAMLET to reduce the tumours of 40 cancers, including bowel cancer, and are now carrying out clinical trials in both bowel cancer and bladder cancer patients.  Now, I have trawled the internet looking for information telling me that alpha-lactalbumin in its cancer-busting form is found naturally occurring in breast milk and therefore readily available by drinking it, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any.  The human body is an amazing thing though, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it had the ability to provide the perfect conditions whereby the reaction to form the  HAMLET complex takes place if it was required.

Anyway, even if drinking the stuff doesn’t kill cancer cells it may well provide me with a useful top up of infection-fighting bad boys! So if it keeps me out of hospital and still able to have chemo, I’m more than happy to drink a few glasses a day… and it really doesn’t taste that bad, especially in milkshake!