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 19^th 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!