Eating, Well

Harvest July 17 2016

In some ways, the last ten days have been more difficult than the 18 weeks before. I’m feeling all the feelings, for example. And mostly I feel frustrated I can’t just jump up now that it’s “over” and get back to life. There is this ticking clock, once six weeks now five weeks, of “time before surgery.” My time to regroup, I think, and set up a “survivorship” regimen. I’m Googling things like: “eating after chemotherapy,” “rebuilding after chemotherapy,” “recovering from abdominal surgery,” etc. I’m taking Vitamin B12 for neuropathy and a probiotic and a nail/skin/hair OTC medication. I’m cleaning off the counter and throwing away the protein drinks I didn’t need because I didn’t have nausea, and recycling the magazines I haven’t read and paying the bills and filling out forms for Mayo, including my medical directive…

But I’m so tired. Two days ago, 10 minutes in the garden was all I could manage. This morning I managed 20 minutes, 10:32-10:52 a.m., but seriously, I was sweating and couldn’t breathe afterward. And crying from frustration.

Then I choked down this pan of kale. Seriously.

For many, many weeks, despite no taste buds or altered taste buds, a tingling tongue and roof of mouth, I ate what I was supposed to eat. I ate eggs and chicken and potatoes and kale and greens and yogurt and some fruit and smoothies packed with phytonutrients.

But then I started just eating. Whatever I felt a slight craving for—I obsessed over Chinese noodles the entire Fourth of July weekend. But that’s not very healthy and from the local restaurant might not be entirely “safe,” so when I gave in and got them that Monday, I nuked them an extra minute and topped them with greens and snow peas from the garden. I avoided the shrimp that came with the dish and ate just the shrimp from our own freezer, cooked through and seasoned with hoisin and soy sauce and garlic scapes. That was a good meal– by which I mean I could almost taste it and I didn’t get sick.

And then things got more random. One night in July I ate this for dinner: two pieces of leftover pizza, then a small hamburger with pickles and ketchup, then a salad of lettuce with sunflower seeds and vinaigrette, then chips and French onion dip (alas, no flavor), then a popsicle for dessert. And earlier that day I had yogurt with granola and blackberries and fresh strawberries. And after the yogurt I had a big piece of leftover steak and a helping of potatoes with butter and sour cream. It was 10 a.m. I know none of those things (except the chips) is bad for me. I was throwing things at the blood counts as well as just trying to find something unoffensive to my system that would make me not hungry. I want ketchup and barbecue sauce and salami. I want pepperoni pizza and I thought I wanted Kraft macaroni cheese but it doesn’t taste good anymore unless it’s drenched in ketchup, and even then, bad afertaste. This morning I had French toast and after a bite scraped off the cherry jam because, yuck. Really I don’t want anything. I want to just sit it out and wait for taste to come back.

I’m trying to do at least what I could do in the early weeks, but the neuropathy and anemia make that difficult. I don’t see Sigourney Weaver in the mirror anymore. I clomp to the bathroom in the night (detox, move those liquids through, keep up that 3 quarts of water a day!) without eyebrows and eyelashes and think now of Frankenstein’s monster walking on my cardboard box feet.

But this is the core of my life: garden, cooking, work, writing. I try to do some of each every day. Just a little bit. I journal. I look at recipes. And if I make Ina Garten’s “Straw and Hay” with my lovely 2-cup pea harvest (because I don’t have the energy to make pesto) and think surely blue cheese will cut through for me, but it doesn’t, but the basil does (and then I read that basil is a strong cancer-fighting agent, yahoo!), well, win for eating vegetables and tomorrow is a new day…

In a way, this is a bigger challenge for me than being sick and riding the ups and downs. Here’s a story of the last week: Two days ago when I was in the garden from 9:35-9:45 a.m., I must have left the “gate” open in the garden fence, closing it when I left. Because when I went back at 6 p.m. to pick basil for the Straw and Hay, I was greeted by 4 of the 5 chickens inside the garden fence!! They really wanted out, to their credit.

I was mortified–how did they get in there??? Where was the breach??? Of course, it was only the next day, when Steve said we needed to leave them in their coop because they only laid one egg the day before, that I realized they were probably trapped in there. There are probably two-three eggs somewhere in the garden (I couldn’t find them today, but it was a pretty cursory look).

And here’s something else. It turns out you need your eyelashes. They keep dust out of your eyes. They keep your eyes from watering. I have exactly one eyelash right now. It is not doing a good job. And the loss of all the eyebrows and all the eyelashes has been harder than losing the hair on my head. I look so much more vulnerable, and though people tell me “your color is good,” I feel more self-conscious.

I know things will get better– two of my nails have cleared up this week (though last night I couldn’t hold my book open because of the neuropathy and that brought me to tears, too). Twenty minutes in the garden instead of ten. But right now? Despite all the celebrating that chemotherapy is over, well, it’s tough. Right now I’m feeling all the feelings. Right now the card that meant the most to me this past week wasn’t the one that said I’m inspiring or they’re proud of me or I’m brave or hooray that chemo is over but the one that said: “You are doing a good job.” Right now I’m working, still, on this. Right now I have a ways to go.