My Side of Things (Part 2)

One of the strangest things about the cancer journey with Brian is how much I think about food. Brian has always been the grocery shopper and chef in our relationship. Suddenly I needed to be in charge of feeding myself. That should have been simple, but it felt very complicated. 

 

For the first few weeks I was responsible for trying to feed him too. Even before treatment started there was a fair amount of hedonic eating. When you’re told you have cancer, why not enjoy what’s available? Brian and I both love food so much. 

 

It quickly changed when he went to an all-liquid diet. That changed my responsibility into carrying cases of Ensure out of Costco and filling the fridge with them. Not actually that hard.

 

Brian has always shopped large. So even though we’ve traveled a lot in the last three years, there is plenty of stuff in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. I took it on as a challenge to clean out what’s there. But that meant not starting from scratch with recipes. Rather, I had to look at the items already in the house and turn them into meals. There was no severe weirdness, but I am pretty sure that’s how challenges on cooking shows work. Right?

 

It’s also been an opportunity to think about things that are littering up our lives that don’t get used. I was cleaning out the kitchen drawers and noticed the silicone egg poaching cups. Have we used these? Definitely not recently! I pulled them out, thinking I would rehome them. Instead, I boiled some water, toasted an English muffin, and poached some eggs. And they were good! So, the cups stay. With a new commitment to using them. And probably learning to make hollandaise sauce.

 

The negatives are stress eating. Lots of chocolate. It didn’t help that we took delivery of Girl Scout cookies just before diagnosis, and Brian bought so many treats at Trader Joe’s when we drove up in March. And there is the challenge of trying to eat around the schedule of medical appointments, rather than when I am actually hungry (as with all doctors’ appointments, times are only approximate. I can’t risk getting hangry in the waiting rooms and not being able to support Brian the way he needs). Then there became the guilt of eating something tasty while Brian could not eat, or taste, or enjoy it with me. We don’t know when (or if!) his sense of taste will fully return, but he still has smell. That almost makes it worse.

 

I’m just not used to spending this amount of time thinking about food.

~Lucy