The oncology nutritionist I saw was pathetic. Recommended Mediterranean Diet (which is OK) and had zero suggestions about filling in any vitamin shortages or supplements despite both PCP and oncologist suggestions that she would be the best person to advise me. It would have been helpful to run through the basics and make sure I'm not missing things including critical trace elements that are becoming harder to get in foods even IF able to buy organic everything when the soils are so depleted.

I only recently found out that the almonds we eat, if grown in the U.S., are "pasteurized" by being heat-treated for at least 10 hours. Which of course degrades the essential fatty acids, which is my rationale for eating them.

I now order them directly from one of the few organic almond growers. He can sell them, unpasteurized, direct to the non-retailer end-user.

Since I think animals instincts can be better than ours sometimes, I fed local squirrels some Blue Diamond almonds and some of the organic unpasteurized. They ate some of the latter and buried the rest. They wouldn't touch the Blue Diamond ones as long as there were unpasteurized almonds on the ground. They didn't bury any of the Blue Diamond. I wonder if they knew those wouldn't grow or didn't even want to save them for later.

My oncologist was great from the start! The first thing he told me was to cut off sugar and excess carbohydrates. I kept it the first 3 months but since the depression hit me and the chemo lasted for 6 months (I had heavy chemo and many symptoms - did chemo every week), I begun to eat some in order not to lose too much weight! But since ice cream and sweets are my comfort food it's difficult to cut off. Now that I am more calm and finished chemo and radiation , I'll start proper diet with an excellent nutritionist that understands me and tries to find subditutes for the cravings, but also keeps protein high and carbo low. Hope that I'll manage to keep off sugar!