I am not medically qualified but I do work with people who have chronic long term health problems, although my area of expertise is neurological conditions rather than cancer. This reply is based on my understanding of using nutrition to manage health problems from personal experience as well as a bit of professional knowledge.
I think that dieticians are some of the most helpful people I work with, but their expertise seems to be totally disregarded in compiling hospital/institutional menus. There has been a recent report that says the food in prison is better than food in hospital :? I have been hospitalised three times in my life and found the food really difficult to deal with each time. On one occasion I had a serious ear infection and chewing anything was very painful. Another time was when I had just delivered a baby and was breastfeeding - all the guidelines I had read about the food you eat to recover physically and make good quality milk seemed to have been disregarded by those compiling the one-size-fits-all menu :? :roll:
People with health problems have different nutritional needs to healthy people. This means that even the traditional low sugar low fat "healthy plate" has to be adapted for sick people. For example, someone who is healing a pressure sore or other wound needs a much higher calorific and nutrient dense diet than someone who is physically well. People who can't get all the goodness out of their food because of their illness also need to be eating much greater quantities for food - for example some people can still lose weight eating considerably more than the "normal" amount of calories.
If you have more than one health problem, managing both diagnoses becomes a difficult balancing act :? My view is that something that could kill you trumps a long term chronic condition :?
In this situation, I don't know what I'd do or how I'd feel, but I would try to bear this in mind... T2 diabetes is an illness that you do get a bit of a "run up" to. It takes years for the complications to develop and you know that you can bring things under control with active managment of your diet and medication and that this will make you feel much better when you can do this again.
If you are having some heavy duty treatment for cancer your system is under a fairly major assault and you may feel pretty awful for quite a while. You need to make the things that you do eat a high quality. But to be honest, I think something is better than nothing, because it does at least give your body something to work with. Worrying about blood sugar numbers is possibly the least of your worries at the moment.
If your appetite is gone because of the medication you are taking, the food you are offered and how it is presented needs to be reconsidered. If you can't face big meals, try a smaller plate or regular snacks of things you can manage.
The referral to the diabetes specialist is an excellent idea as he/she can have an overview and may be able to suggest other medication or ways to manage the problem. If you are ill your body is not behaving normally :? and you may need to simply do the best you can as often as you can until you just have the one thing to think about.
I low carb - I get the impression you do this to from your other posts - low carb food should tick a lot of the nutritional boxes for both conditions as it is higher in protein and higher in fat. You might also want to consider a low glycaemic index approach for a while.
Tell us what you like to eat and what kind of eating patterns you have at the moment and we may be able to suggest some things that have the nutrition you need to help your body heal while not sending you blood sugar haywire.
And I hope that is like your diabetes, in that it, too, was caught early, before you started to develop the complications 