- Think about the health goals you want to achieve before your consultation and write down your short, medium and longer term goals. For example, a short term goal may be maintaining adequate nutrition during chemotherapy treatment, while a more medium/longer term goal may be rebuilding your strength and stamina to allow you to resume your exercise program and return to work. This pre-planning will help you to communicate to your APD what you are seeking from the consultation/s, outcomes you would like to achieve and evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions. If you are unclear as to your goals, for example, you may want to “make sure I’m eating the best diet to reduce my risk of the cancer coming back”, “reduce the impact of other health problems” or “to just feel better and less tired”, your APD can help you to clarify your specific targets and how to go about achieving these.
- Start a list of questions in the time period before your consultation and add to these as your appointment approaches. If you discuss your questions with family and friends they may have good suggestions of questions to ask. You may also want to do some research at the library or on the internet to provide question prompts. If you have lots of questions it can be helpful to prioritise these and communicate these with your APD so that you can work out how best to spend the time you have together.
- Keep a food diary in the days/weeks before your appointment and bring it to your consultation. Click here to access Food Diary. You can print this Food Diary and carry it around with you or put it on your fridge to remind you to fill it in. Try to complete it directly after you eat or drink something – our memories aren’t always perfect and can be fairly selective!
- Friends and loved ones are encouraged to come to the consultations to help absorb information. They are key people in supporting you with dietary and lifestyle changes you would like to implement – and will probably learn some healthy tips for themselves too!