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← Return to Chemo and liver enzymes
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Blood Cancers & Disorders | Last Active: Sep 20 12:56pm | Replies (7)
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I have metastatic breast cancer and have had around eight chemotherapies (and other treatments). On the latest, Eribulin, tumor markers have gone down drastically but liver enzymes are up-not catastrophically, but ALT and AST are somewhat up. Bilirubin normal. But I am completely exhausted and don't have much appetite. How to proceed?
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Hi @melpub, welcome to Connect. Oh golly, you’ve been through the wringer with all your cancer treatments. They can do a great job with eradicating the cancer cells but unfortunately can toss in some collateral damage along the way. My liver was particularly impacted by chemo. I had a liver biopsy at one point to make sure there was no permanent injury. The good news is that once I was off the chemo, the liver did regenerate and the numbers are back to normal.
I made sure to eat foods that had supposedly have a positive impact on the liver. Here’s a quick article with some of them: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/11-foods-for-your-liver
It will take time for both you and your liver to rebound. Chemo, while a life saver, takes a toll. It’s traumatic to the body.
But our bodies were made to heal! The keys are rest, proper nutrition, plenty of protein and lots of water daily(room temp works best)…toss in walking and gentle exercise and you will slowly start building stamina and endurance.
It’s pretty normal to not feel like eating right now. Too much on plate always intimidated me and actually the look of a full plate made me nauseated. Here’s what worked for me. Try for smaller bites of food throughout the day. My husband had little snacks prepared for me in the fridge such as containers with cut up portions of food. Example…he’d have PBJs cut into about 8 pieces, chunks of string cheese, roasted chicken breast cut in pieces. Little deli cups sizes of pudding. He’d make a large omelet in the morning and cut that into smaller mini omelets. (I know, I was spoiled! LOL ). But those smaller portions allowed me to just grab a bite and close the lid before I’d get the fragrance of food. I was very nauseated from having a bone marrow transplant so NOTHING appealed to me! Having those small bites of food really got me through the worst of it.
Since you’re new to our forum, there is a very active and supportive Breast Cancer group with many discussions.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/breast-cancer/
Here’s a discussion to get you introduced: Metastatic breast cancer: Anyone else
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/metastatic-breast-cancer-to-the-bone/
What does your oncologist say about your liver numbers? Are you finished with chemo now?