What’s the best thing in life? That’s an easy one, right: it’s
the love we share with our family and friends. What’s the second best thing? That’s
a little harder. But if I didn’t think so before, I have become convinced over
the past few months that the second place winner is clearly… food.
Food has become a problem for me. Because of chemotherapy,
my taste buds are whacked and everything tastes metallic and a little
nauseating. At first this occurred only right after chemo, but as my treatments
have progressed, it lasts almost until the next round. Also, when I do eat, my
digestive processes don’t work very well. I’ll spare the details, but whether
it is because of the tumor or the chemotherapy, I have several permutations of
abdominal discomfort not known to the ordinary man. Finally, I have issues with
the eventual consequences of eating; there is no need to elaborate further on
that. To sum it all up, the beginning is
unsatisfying, the middle is uncomfortable, and the end is unmentionable.
I also can’t drink. Now I know that alcohol is a sin and a
vice and probably an abomination as well, but it is also just plain fun. And
if you are drinking good wine, it is wickedly delicious and lots of fun.
But I can’t drink any of it anymore; even one drink makes my heart start pounding,
my stomach start churning, and my head start spinning (okay, the Percocet may
have something to do with that last one). If I try to sleep, I get headaches and
sweats, and I wake up at 1:13 am in abject misery. Apparently my compromised
organs can no longer process alcohol.
I know that everyone enjoys eating good food and drinking
good wine, and many people make a religion out of it. But I would still suggest
that most of us take food for granted. I’m sure in my own case well over half
of my meals were of the “just grab something and get on with it” variety. Even
then, there was still pleasure to be derived from the most pedestrian of
meals: a peanut butter sandwich on potato bread, a bowl of granola with raisins tossed in, or the most underrated delight of all, a hot dog meticulously
prepared by throwing it in the microwave. Did I always take the time to relish these
delicacies? I’m sure I did not; eating was just a necessary and sometimes
inconvenient part of my day.
Now I dream about food; I’m picturing things that
might taste good almost every night and every morning. Today when I awoke at
4:30 am, which I unfortunately do all too often, I got up and made the Huevos
Rancheros that I had been visualizing for the previous hour of wakeful
dreaming. Given that it was the last regular day before chemotherapy, it tasted pretty
damn good, too. Other things I dream about
include pasta with red sauce, sushi, French toast, bacon, lobster bisque,
sausage, and many others that don’t come to mind immediately. Not that any these
are actually going to taste good in my current condition, but my deluded and drugged brain thinks they are going to. And, God, what I would give to be able
to enjoy a top-flight bottle of red wine! Pinot Noir is a frequent
visitor in my food dreams.
(Aside: another effect of chemotherapy is that it completely
wipes out testosterone. So, that gives me lots of additional dream capacity to
devote to food and wine that might have been directed elsewhere previously.)
Despite food not tasting very good, I’m still eating as much
as I possibly can. Foods with strong taste, like spicy foods and fishy foods
and pungent foods, can bypass the metallic taste long enough that I want to eat
them, until my stomach is full enough to start ringing the alarms. So somehow I’ve
managed to keep my weight loss to about 15 pounds, most of which evaporated
during the first round of chemo. I’m committed to being a good eating soldier and
hang on to my hard-earned fat. I’m going to need it.
I’ve always loved and been amazed and awed by grocery stores.
Consider that for almost the entire history of humans, nearly all of our energies
were devoted to growing, killing, or finding enough food. Now we just walk
through automatic sliding doors to find the greatest accumulation of victuals we can possibly imagine. And, it comes from all over the world, fresh
(sometimes!) and ready for our immediate pleasure. Furthermore, there’s a new
generation of stores, the Whole Foods and Wegmans and Fresh Markets, which take
things to a new level of gastronomic delight with their cornucopia of prepared
foods. Next time you are in a modern superdupermarket, take a minute to stop
and think about the abundance all around you – it really is a miracle.
(Another aside: a few years ago we had a five day power
outage, and by day two there was nothing left on any shelf of any local
supermarket. I shudder to think about how dependent we are on our food distribution
system, and how quickly chaos would ensue in a real emergency.)
Another remarkable thing about food is what Americans
actually eat. We have been trained by our culture to think that going to a fast
food restaurant and getting a 1000 calorie megaburger with a bucket-full of deep
fried potatoes and a twelve-scoop-of-sugar soft drink is a normal and appropriate way to eat! And
we do this on a daily basis! I don’t know the actual figures, but last I heard
the average American goes to McDonald’s seven times a day. (Maybe I should look
that up.) And what people buy to eat at home is not much better: boxed foods
full of sugar and preservatives and dyes. If you put most of this stuff in
front of a 19th century farmer, she would probably have no earthly
idea what she was looking at. How did we ever do this to ourselves? And why
hasn't our hyper-informed society woken up to this?
In defense of many of my obese fellow Americans, I will say that I realized recently that
eating good food is a lot more
expensive than eating bad food. Fruits and vegetables cost many times more
than pre-packaged starches and sugary drinks on a per calorie basis. So if you
are not fortunate enough to have a good income, you may not have much choice
about how to fill your children’s stomachs. This seems to me one of the sadder
consequences of the increasing disparity of wealth in America. Although I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, and
probably beyond my comprehension and pay grade.
(Yet another aside:
when I lived in New York I would sometimes go play basketball at the
playground. All around me were shirtless young men, mostly African-Americans,
whose torsos looked like they had been sculpted from hardened steel. Many
of them would be munching from bottomless bags of potato chips and chasing them
down with a Yoo-Hoo or a Pepsi, suggesting to me that that was their regular
diet. I still don’t quite get how they could mold such statues from garbage.)
Finally, I wonder how much my own diet was a factor in my
current predicament. Over the past thirty years or so, I’ve generally maintained
a pretty healthy diet: mostly fresh foods, probably too much meat and starch,
not enough veggies and fruit, maybe too many sweets. But generally pretty good
stuff. Before I got married it was worse, especially too much
alcohol. So, I’m sure my illness is a result of many factors, upon which
medical science has no grasp, but I have always believed that
diet is probably the most significant of these. I don’t know any of this, of course, but
it gives me one more thing to think about during the many hours when flattened by chemotherapy.
So it goes with me and food. There’s lots here upon which I
could elaborate, but I only seem to write in frenzied bursts of occasional
inspiration, and I’m getting tired. I like getting feedback; you can comment
below or send me an email. Thanks, and bless you all!
