November 28, 2010

I had the best dinner tonight!

Over these last two months food and beverage have been a constant concern. My recovery from the infection, my loss of bladder function and the effort to live creatively with pain (and increasingly less pain!) all depended in some way on what I eat.

During the hospital days and immediately thereafter the concern was THAT I eat. My various accommodations to swallowing difficulties, nausea from pain medication and the infection left me dangerously malnourished. By the way malnourishment is a theme that ran through my transition from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. Hmm!

It was truly comforting deep in the hospital days to have Stanley, the nutrition researcher, glow over practically every mouthful I took and to have him rejoice as the quantities of food I ingested increased day by day.

As soon as I got home my friends, especially Gloria, filled my kitchen and freezer with very excellent food – so much that six weeks later I still have some of it!

With Jen’s guidance it soon became apparent that I needed to, and actually wanted to, shift what I consider to be an ordinary day’s way of eating. I literally felt like I was starving for the first few weeks and that certainly helped my motivation to try eating differently. This was boosted by the realization that different habits would let me stop using those foul laxatives!!

The fundamental problem was that any pain medication that works for me also slows my bowels, creating the blockage that interferes with my bladder (and shut it down for a month!) thus increasing the pain and driving up the use of medication, which slows down my…..

The three necessities were to eliminate gluten, increase noncaffeinated fluids and get more fibre into me. As straight forward as this may sound there are tricky conundrums, such as that oatmeal, though high in fibre is also high in gluten, as is chicken – the one meat my friends (not Gloria!) most want to provide. I have never been a big vegetable eater and now my limitations in chewing and swallowing eliminate any chance of salads. Day by day I found better combinations AND experimented with how much of my old habits (cheese anyone) were tolerable (not much!)

I got a slow cooker, discovered congee, started to carry a thermos of herbal tea and made many, many other changes.

It has become clear that it is useless to go to the Food Bank because everything they have is no longer food to me – wheat pastas, hot dogs, milk, etc.

Like everybody else I exist in a cultural pattern and such a drastic change has been confronting along with welcome. I am basically British in heritage and inclination. The first time I went to my ancestral homeland, England, I was amazed and awed that I was offered cream on nearly everything I ate. After a few days I reconnected with memories of my Mother’s cooking – stewed hamburger, cornflakes and tuna fish, boiled cod – and I realized that in the English soul food is fundamentally brown. That is, the colour of British food varies from the white and brown of crusty bread, through the cream to beige of fish and chips, puddings and pasties, to the deep brown of sausages, burnt toast, gravy and blood pudding.

Tonight, in complete agreement with food that works for me, I had roast beef (brown), potatoes and onions baked with a rosemary dressing (lighter brown), sauerkraut (beige), pumpkin pie (orangy brown) and lemon herbal tea (yellowy brown).

I am full and in heaven!