Smells are the trigger, not food

Cold food was the thing that worked for me. Anything hot and aromatic was impossible for about six weeks and cold worked when nothing else did.

Ginger did nothing for me and mint did a surprising amount, and I have watched other people here report exactly the opposite. It seems genuinely individual.

What got me through was very small amounts, very often, and not caring at all what they were. Nutrition can wait a fortnight; not eating anything cannot.

Toast. Endless toast. Six weeks of toast and I was fine, and my bloods at the end of it were unremarkable.

I raised it at my review having tracked it for three weeks and we changed one thing. It was a much shorter conversation than I had rehearsed.

What I did not expect was how much better I felt after eating, when eating was the last thing I wanted to do. That gap between wanting and helping was the hard bit.

Thank you for writing this down. It helped.

The thing I would flag is that not being able to keep fluids down is a different category from not fancying food. If you are in the first one, please ring somebody today.

The advice that helped least was to eat whatever appeals. Nothing appealed. What I needed was a list of things I could get down when nothing appealed.

Mine was much better on the days I ate breakfast within an hour of waking, and much worse on the days I skipped it. That was the clearest pattern in my notes.

I found sipping rather than drinking was the difference. A full glass at once was guaranteed to be a mistake for about a month.

Bookmarking this. Thank you.

Something practical: I kept a bag of what I could actually manage in my work locker, so a bad afternoon did not turn into a bad evening.