The Chemo Day Packing List

You didn’t ask for this job. Somebody you love got a diagnosis, and now you’re the one who remembers the water bottle.

This list is short on purpose. Print it, put it on the fridge, and pack from it the night before. You don’t need to bring everything on it — pick four or five things and go.

The night before

Fill the water bottle and put it in the fridge
Make the ginger tea and cool it, or pack tea bags and get hot water there
Make or reheat one blended soup, into a thermos in the morning
Pull the fruit pops out of the freezer into a cooler bag at the last minute
Charge their phone, your phone, headphones
Put the cooler by the door

A note on sugar

During active cancer we pull back on sugar, fruit included, and fruit juice comes out entirely.

But on a treatment day, food that stays down beats food that scores well. If a frozen grape is the only thing that sounds tolerable at hour three, give them the grape.

Reach for the savory and low-sugar items first. Keep the sweeter ones in the bag as the fallback, not the opening move. The list below is ordered that way.

Drinks — pack at least two

Vegetable broth, warm, in a thermos — the workhorse. Savory when nothing sweet appeals
Water bottle, filled — add lemon, cucumber, or mint if plain water tastes metallic
Ginger tea in a thermos, made from fresh ginger — for nausea
Herbal teas — peppermint, chamomile, lemon balm. Bring several; one may appeal when another doesn’t
Fresh vegetable juice in an insulated bottle — made that morning, kept cold. See the note below if counts are low
Coconut water — good minerals, no added sugar, though it carries natural sugars. A reasonable middle option

Leave out: soda, sports drinks, sweetened iced tea, and fruit juice of any kind — including fresh-squeezed and 100%. Juicing fruit strips the fiber and leaves concentrated sugar.

Fresh juice when counts are low

The answer isn’t to stop the juice. It’s to tighten how it’s made.

Made within 24 hours — the same morning when you can manage it
Produce washed well under running water before it goes near the juicer
Juicer parts washed and dried between uses, not rinsed and left in the sink
Kept cold from the moment it’s made until it’s drunk — insulated bottle, ice pack
No bottled juice of unknown age, and nothing left over from yesterday

Food — pack small, pack varied

Savory and soft — start here

Blended vegetable soup (butternut, carrot ginger, potato leek, cauliflower)
Chilled cucumber and avocado soup, thin enough to sip
Avocado, whole, with a spoon and salt — one of the best things in the bag
Hummus with soft pita, cucumber rounds, or off a spoon
Mashed white beans with olive oil and salt
Nut butter on soft bread or celery, cut small
Soft steamed vegetables — zucchini, green beans, carrots
Good olive oil to drizzle over any of it — calories that aren’t sugar

Cold — often the winners

Frozen cucumber spears and chilled celery sticks — cold, wet, mild, almost no sugar
Frozen berries, eaten like candy — lowest-sugar fruit, highest in protective compounds
Homemade berry pops (blend berries with water, freeze) — instead of the sherbet cart

The fallback, for a day when nothing else works

Melon in a container — watermelon, cantaloupe
Frozen grapes
Banana, unsweetened applesauce

Higher in sugar than the rest. Keep them in the bag anyway — some days nothing else will do.

Rules of thumb

Small portions, offered every hour or two — not one meal. Cold or room temperature beats hot. Low odor, always — for them and for the person in the next chair. Savory first, sweet as the fallback.

Bring three options they might want, not one they should want.

Comfort — the small things that matter most

Plastic or bamboo utensils (metal tastes like pennies now)
Fresh lemon slice or ginger candy — something to cut the taste
Unscented lip balm
Blanket, and warm non-slip socks
Small pillow
Headphones
Something to hold — a book, a photo, a cross, a quilt from church
Small thermos of ice chips

Ask the nurse at the first visit

Can they eat and drink during the infusion? Varies by center and by drug
Do ice chips apply to these drugs? For certain chemotherapy agents, sucking ice during infusion narrows the blood vessels in the mouth and can reduce mouth sores. Ask specifically — it doesn’t apply to everything
Where are their white blood cell counts today? Ask every visit — that’s the number that tells you how careful to be in the kitchen. The old blanket rule against raw produce has been dropped by many centers in favor of careful food handling: wash everything under running water, clean boards, clean hands, no raw sprouts
How long will today take? Pack for two hours longer than they say
Is there a refrigerator or microwave for patients?
What should we call about, and what number after hours?

Pack for yourself too

Your own lunch — a real one
Your own water
A phone charger
Something to do that isn’t watching the drip

You are going to sit there for hours holding it together for somebody else. At hour four you’ll be running on vending machine coffee, and that’s how caregivers end up sick by round three. Take the walk outside while they sleep.

If they won’t eat anything

Go liquid, go small, don’t make it a battle. Warm broth a few sips at a time, fruit pops diluted, ginger tea, a spoonful of blended soup every half hour.

Tell the care team early if it goes past a day or two. That’s information they need.

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”

1 Thessalonians 5:11

There is a lot about that day you can do nothing about. You can’t shorten the infusion or take the nausea or fix the fear in the waiting room. But you can hand them a cup of warm broth at hour three — and in a day where almost nothing is in your hands, that is a real thing you get to do.

Blessings,
Paul & Ann

Download the printable version (PDF)

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