recipes

My Cancer Journey: Somethings Not Right Here

Posted on by kwundrow

T – 14 and counting

Four weeks in, with still 14 days to go. The good news is I get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off next week, and I may even get out of one chemo treatment. I’m almost giddy thinking about it—though maybe that’s just the weight loss making me feel lighter. I’m officially back to the weight I was when they issued those old drinking IDs. Remember those? If not, you really missed out on a strange little era of draft cards and drinking licenses. Mine was worn thin from how often I had to pull it out. Anyway… I started treatment at 180 pounds. This morning I was 167. Quite the weight-loss program.

There are reasons cancer treatment takes the pounds off. Part of it is the tumor just wearing me down. Part of it is my throat not exactly loving the idea of swallowing food—more on that in a minute. But honestly, the biggest problem is taste. You don’t realize how much taste matters until it disappears.

When we enjoy food, it’s never just one sense. We see it first and remember what it should taste like. Then we smell it, and that makes us even more excited. Sometimes we even feel it—like a hot dog in a bun—before we finally get to that first bite. And when the taste matches or beats our expectations, it’s wonderful. When it doesn’t, everything falls apart pretty quickly.

Now picture your favorite pie. It looks amazing. It smells perfect. You’re ready for that first bite. For me, it’s pumpkin pie with a generous pile of whipped cream. That first bite is everything I hoped for—warm, creamy, delicious. Then I take a second bite… and suddenly it’s like a completely different pie. It tastes old, wrong, almost spoiled. It’s so awful I push the plate away and try not to give that bite back the way it came.

That’s what treatment has done to my taste buds. It isn’t really the tumor or pain that’s caused the big weight loss—it’s the fact that food just doesn’t taste right anymore. So now I’m living on things like cream of wheat and oatmeal. Bland foods, little expectation, fewer disappointments. I miss my favorites—pie, desserts, chocolate. And the hardest part is the food friends have lovingly brought us. Their hearts are in every dish. Many of them are proud of these meals, and I wish I could enjoy them the way they hoped I would. But most of the time I barely make it past a first bite. I worry it makes me look rude, but it’s just the reality right now.

So that’s my confession. I appreciate every gesture. Truly. I just can’t eat most of it. If there’s one upside, I probably did need to lose a few pounds—the tumor just got a little too enthusiastic about it. And when all of this is over and my taste finally returns, we’ll have a freezer full of meals waiting for me.

My Cancer Journey: Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting

Posted on by kwundrow

T – 29 and holding. I really didn’t think that with the first day off, sans the Holiday, I would be wishing I had received a treatment instead. In my mind the thirty three days is a long time, but when you start counting the weekends and holidays off, it adds up to fifty days. With my first week behind me and still feeling okay, it made sense that I would feel this way and want to just keep going. I suspect I may think differently down the road, but for now it’s just another day of waiting. And so, it’s Saturday night and I want to keep fighting.

I am for the most part still fighting with the notion that I should be feeling worse. After all I do have cancer. At this point it’s biggest marker has been a scratchy throat and some headaches. There is one new development. They had warned me that as the cancer progressed and the treatments along with it, I would begin to lose my sense of taste. It wouldn’t just end, but rather it would fade. As that happened, my sense of what a favorite food should taste like would confuse my brain when it had no taste. What’s worse is that it would not only trick my brain into not wanting it, but to never want it at all. Ironically, the more flavorful the food, the worse it would be. Eventually, all I will want are foods that were already bland to begin with. Well, as of tonight that effect has begun. I shared a pizza with Deb along with some cottage cheese and to top it off, a piece of pumpkin pie for dessert, with whip cream of course. Three of my favorite things, thank you Doris Day for the melody to accompany my reverie. The result, first bite of each tasted just as I expected, flavorful and enjoyable. Bite number two began a downhill slide to something tasting flat and eventually, to needing to push it aside, unfinished and unenjoyed. As much as that pained me, it had to be hard on Deb who has always been a great cook. Not many can ever rival your mother’s cooking, yet in many recipes, she does just that., sorry mom.

I am ordained to keep fighting. I will fight through days off and I will fight with foods that want to trick me. I will be taking this one bite at a time.