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Life after cancer, Part 2: Restaurants: the bet is on me!

Saturday, August 28, 2010 in Life after Cancer, food by admin | Add a comment...

When death did not knock, I decided to take friends who helped me through the last few cancer years out to dinner.  I found out quickly that reserving tables in London was like playing roulette in Las Vegas,  I never knew if the dialed number was a winner, or if I would leave the restaurant, head drooping, pockets turned inside out, after an expensive dismal experience.

On my first trip out to the real world I took my oncologist to my neighborhood  Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Autre Pied.

Dr Margaret Spittle is the true hero of my cancer remission, having managed to preserve my life through fifteen years of cancer bouts.  It seemed appropriate to have a first rate dinner.   We decided on the seven course tasting menu. The first courses were delightful, but after forty five minutes the tables on either side of us filled up, and the service slowed to a snail’s pace.  We had four more courses to go.

A late middle age couple and their guest sat on my left side.  The table was piled high with catalogues from the art auctions which were being held in London during that week.  The men talked throughout and ordered one course while the woman ate three courses in silence, ignored.

On the other side sat a couple of tourists, and like gamblers hedging their bets they ordered everything to be shared between them. When the first course arrived, a slice of tomato with a few other ingredients in a short stack, they hit the roof.  Our waiter was completely out of his depth. How do you explain the minimal cooking philosophy to heathens, in your second language, with hungry customers waiting for their fifth course.

By the third hour, our waiter completely folded, service stopped, and we had run out of conversation.   Dessert – an elaborate ending was promised – became a peach with whipped cream, thrown at us.  I limped out, with the ever unflappable Dr Spittle raving about the food.

My second bet was on Scotts, where I was told they needed the table back in two hours. After spending three hours at Pied I thought two sounded about right.

The first hour at Scotts was impeccable.  We arrived at 6.30 when the restaurant was quiet.  The cocktails were lovely and the waiter offered a pillow to my pregnant friend. (No toilet paper in the ladies room balanced that out.) The waiter was helpful and we ordered the shellfish platter for one, which more that adequately served three.  It took a long time coming and when the waiter whisked the platter away and brought it back with new ice, no one seemed to be in a hurry. We had our mains and that, too, was delicious.

The betting was going my way until the waiter came, cleared our table and abruptly offered coffee. I thought it strange but assumed the dessert menu would follow in some strange custom of the establishment.

Suddenly a man in a flamboyant suit appeared and in a preposterously camp manner asked for the host, and when I confessed drilled me on whether I enjoyed the meal and if the service had been good.  I said it was very good, which at this point I meant.

Then he dropped the bomb.  The table was needed immediately:  the people it was reserved for had arrived.  I asked if this is why we hadn’t been offered dessert and he was not apologetic at all.  The bill came to over 200 pounds for three of us and a cover charge to boot.  At least at home your table doesn’t get repossessed until the bank manager sees your bills.

Now gambling at the tables had become an addiction and for my third try I volunteered to organize dinner at the Royal Opera House.  My friend had gotten some fabulous free tickets so I thought dinner should be up to me.   The hurdle of booking and  pre ordering a menu on line proved insurmountable, but the old telephone worked amazingly well.  But it is always difficult to book for another person, no matter how well you think you know them.

The first course went well:  smoked salmon and a glass of rose – perfect.

The main course sounded good on paper: cold filet of beef and I had ordered sides of salad and potatoes, harmless enough.  As much as I enjoyed Manon (the opera) I was feeling sick (nothing unusual there) and when I came back from the ladies, my friend had rejected the beef out of hand and instructed the waiter to wrap it for his cats.  OK it wasn’t the sliced cold roast beef I had expected and a whole filet eaten cold is not perfect, but it wasn’t that bad.

After the second act, sung beautifully, the dessert arrived and since my guest had announced that he didn’t like strawberries I dug into the strawberry sundae and left him the amazing chocolate concoction. He returned from the men’s to have a look at my sundae and declared it his.   So I lost the bet and my dessert as well!

It is great to be alive and to be able to complain about first class restaurants.  I’m privileged  to be able to gamble at their tables.  Let’s face it the alternative (death) seems to be no fun at all.

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Desperate cures; the last hurrah

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement, food by admin | Add a comment...

There is a golden moment when you leave Chemotherapy knowing that it is your last treatment.  Friends suggest celebration and champagne, but I went to bed. The battle with the cancer villain felt like it was on ‘pause’ rather than finished.  It would be a month before tests would show if I still had cancer or not and even then I’ll always be on hold.

What has followed is a month of trying desperately to get back to normal.  Looking back it does seem absurd, but desperate people do desperate things.

I guess I had imagined that when chemo stopped I would feel elated and therefore, the cancer fairy would smile down on me and take me where I wanted to go.

Hoping to get my voice back to normal after almost a year of whispering I made an appointment -  two weeks after chemo ended – to see a specialist across the Atlantic.  It was a good idea … which I didn’t begin to have the strength to put into practice.  Never mind running before you can walk, first I needed to walk rather than hobble.

Then I thought, why not try acupuncture?  Hopefully, the magic needles would give me my energy back. But I kept thinking that lying for hours with needles stuck in me was not unlike chemotherapy: what was the matter with me? Did I miss it? The morning of the appointment, one week after the final chemo, I was too sick to go, so that took care of itself.

Maybe it’s best to begin with basics, I thought.  So I booked myself in to see my hairdresser.  Of course I only had a few hairs left, but vanity spoke and I was convinced I would feel better if the hairs were brunette rather then grey.  Also I was sure that if my hair was cut it would grow back better.   This, too, was a semi failure.  After three hours and three tries the color finally worked on my damaged hair.  I still had to wear a wig or scarf when I went out, but somehow I felt better. Is it vanity or an intense desire to look ‘normal’ again?  I did leave the salon feeling much better; I imagine that if women were bald they might still go to the hairdresser, just to get their skulls shined, and would leave feeling beautiful.

I just found the energy (as one does) to get make up done.  After six months mostly spent in bed, I thought I was looking ghostly.  I walked out having bought more make up than I would ever have the energy to put on.  I did get an amazing lipstick that doesn’t come off once it sets;  I managed to get a big smear on my neck and couldn’t get it off. Oil was supposed to work and I ran to the kitchen to get olive oil.  No luck. Oh well. My neck was red for a few days. No one mentioned it.  It is not noticed among the other changes.

Losing weight always helps, or so I thought, because it is the one thing you can control.  I tried no carbs, but after a week felt stranger than ever.  On to the low fat diets, and that didn’t even last a week … so much for control.

Then I got desperate and did something dangerous.  On the internet  I found the idea that anti depressants might cure the symptom of hand and foot tingling and burning.  So I found a psychiatrist who was willing to prescribe it for me.  I ended up with nausea and exhaustion. I went to bed for three days, lost my appetite and felt sicker then I had after the chemo,  so that is the end of that experiment.  The positive aspect was that I lost a few pounds and my appetite still hasn’t come back.

I’m not out of ideas yet and if you follow my blog at http://cancercurmudgen.com/ you will see what happened when I went to the health resort.  I can still try a host of alternative therapies, but my health insurance won’t cover them, which is a sobering thought.  For now, I return happily to my bed thinking that rest is the best cure – and it’s free.

Searching for Nirvana

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement, food by admin | Add a comment...

In my quest to renew myself after two years of cancer treatment I signed up for four days at a fancy heath spa outside of London. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. When I last visited it had been going through a Japanese period, but this had all changed in favor of commerce. Now hen parties were accommodated, and business groups attended week-long wellness courses and fitness training .

An elderly nanny checked me in and a retainer took me to my superior room.  It was lovely, overlooking the garden, and I decided that bed would be my first choice for activities. I tried the TV and it had twenty channels; ten were in Arabic. The ten in English looked promising, but within five minutes I broke the TV and could get no channels. Then I tried the bath that had amazing water pressure, unknown in the UK, but I couldn’t empty it.  When I finally left the room and returned, the key no longer worked. Superior rooms need superior minds.

I had arrived too late (by five minutes) for lunch and I was directed to the busy new snack bar.  I found that whoever dreamt up the menu thought coping with stress, not trying to diet, was foremost in the residents’ minds. I tried to find something healthy and ended up with a carrot and hummus wrap, followed by an oatmeal cookie.  I decided not to worry about health if it was going to be tasteless.

Chemotherapy had left me in need of a facial.  So I signed up with the nanny receptionist and I waited and waited for the therapist while lots of twenty somethings in white uniforms who looked like spaced out aliens walked past me. Naughty me, I was in the wrong place. Finally, my very own twenty something showed up.  I made the mistake of telling her I was just finished with Chemotherapy.   I thought she might run out of the room, but I could see her mentally reviewing her instruction book.  She said that if I had cancer I could not have massages BUT IF IT WAS TERMINAL, I could do anything I wanted. I hadn’t considered this as a ‘final exit’ possibility.

That evening I decided to brave the group table and I was treated to a long discourse on how to cure my laryngitis. (A paralyzed vocal cord caused by cancer.)   At the end of dinner, I must have got tired and cranky and after telling the waitress that the cod was cold and had bones in it, I confessed to my companions that I had cancer and that I didn’t think lemon tea and ginger, whiskey or lemsip would help my voice.

When I found out the next day that my dinner companion, who I assumed was a wealthy client, was a blind diabetic who was illiterate, I felt badly.  She had been brought up south of Naples in one room with an abusive father, a goat and a sheep.  She was kept at home to work on the farm and never sent to school. At eighteen she was sent to London as a maid and worked for Clement Attlee’s family before he became prime minister. Now she comes to the spa twice a year and is treated like royalty.  I believe the owners have a charity, which provides for this. It made me feel more positive.

I decided to keep quiet about cancer and try the Thalassotherapy pool.  I had a swim in my warm dream pool and my ‘spaced out therapist’ turned on the strong jets and started chatting with another therapist.  I tried to climb up to the jets and started to slip on the steps.  I didn’t fancy drowning, so I kept safely near the edges. By the time I got used to the pool, the therapist paused in her chat long enough to say it was over.  It was an expensive 20 minute swim; I think the therapists take their revenge for what must be low paid rather boring work.

Next I met the chiropodist where I was able to relax and almost fall asleep. I woke suddenly when the point of her scissors stabbed my big toe.

I thought my Pilates workshop had gone well, but I was gently told that I wasn’t ready to exercise yet and I needed to do some walks first. Since I had trouble walking to class this seemed wise.

Having nothing to do on the last day I went to a clairvoyant.  That was as surreal as it comes.  My father’s spirit came into the room and after he told me how terrific I was gave me a trophy.  When I was back home I was reminded that my father had died on this day eleven years ago.  I have no belief in the spiritual world but that was about as strange as it gets.

I spent the last few hours in the drawing room reading an Agatha Christie mystery and I left just in time before Miss Marple found a corpse and had to call the nannies in for questioning.

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Health Care Passes; My own health care plan might fail.

Monday, March 29, 2010 in Decisions, delusions and befuddlement, cancer prognosis, food by admin | Add a comment...

It’s good to be alive when all odds were against it.  On the same day health care passed I passed my MRI scan.  My cancer has shrunk in size to a few nodes of less than one centimeter.  Two years ago I was diagnosed with three areas of metastatic breast cancer. After three operations, radiation, chemo and avastan, the cancers are reduced in size, one not showing on the scan and two less than one centimeter in size. Obama’s speeches on health care and the aggressive treatment I received worked.

Life takes as much getting used to as impending death. I have to get my mind off funerals and wills and on to living.  Time to get myself together.  Not an easy task at the best of times.  When I look at diet and fitness regimes I feel like ground hog day.  Been there and done it numerous times. I reread the South Beach diet, signed up for several low fat online diets and had another look at Atkins, even ordered the next book.  I’ve now been three days without carbohydrates.

I feel as divided about my own health care as the USA is about theirs.  One part of me wants to go on a diet and lose twenty pounds, another part of me wants to pig out and never mind the consequences.

Fitness is something else I’ve been there and done.  Does being alive mean I have to go back to the gym?  Could I still do a rowing machine, lift some respectable weights or do Pilates and keep my wig on at the same time?  It doesn’t feel promising.

So like Obama I have to make compromises. The bill that will get past my divided self will not be all that is needed.  It will not satisfy the part of me that wants to feel revitalized  again after two years of very aggressive cancer treatment and it won’t satisfy the other part of me that wants to lay back and let the chips fall where they may.

Like Obama must have done, I look at what there is to be worked with.  Overweight, exhausted, grumpy, pins and needles in hands and feet and worse of all no voice: recovery doesn’t look good.  If I could start small and get the first bill past my negativity, I could tackle a few modifications and improvements six months or so down the line.  I still have one more month of chemo treatments so I have time to make a plan that I can vote for.

As of three days ago I started on the no carbs diet, induction phase of the Atkins diet and phase 1 of South Beach. I started when I looked in the fridge and found it full of treats. Crowding the fridge were  chocolate cake, blueberry cheesecake, and  a few pieces of carrot cake.  It was as if the Republican tea party had held a meeting in the refrigerator. You couldn’t even find the vegetables. When you did, they looked pathetic, half frozen in the bottom drawer.

There were also a few ready meals that had enough calories to be a dessert.  My fridge was full of cauliflower cheese, spinach in a cream sauce and my current favorite,  creamy mashed potatoes.

Since I’ve had guests around, I’ve  felt justified  in keeping on hand a few boxes of organic chocolate bars. They have no calories because they are organic. Like health care information a few lies accumulate along the way.

Repeat after me: ‘organic chocolate has no calories and you can safely eat five to ten small squares a day’. It should be called orgasmic chocolate. In fact, it’s your duty as a citizen of fat land to eat one of each flavor a day and there’re a lot of flavors.   I actually didn’t have any chocolate left because I’d eaten it all.  I think I only once gave a guest a square.

Exercise is beyond me at this point.  I think it’s sitting next to the public health care option in my internal debate.  The only exercise I get is going out to buy food.  Unfortunately, there are two supermarkets, a food hall and five pastry shops within a radius of three city blocks, so a five to ten minute walk could bring home millions of calories.  I don’t even mind carrying heavy bags as long as they contain food.

I was thrilled that health care passed even with the compromises.  But my own health care bill looms ahead.  Will it be passed? I don’t know.  On one side are friends who say you look better than expected.  Whatever that means. And others who say it’s time to pull yourself back together, to start putting on your wig carefully, as it looks like you put a bag on your head (and feels like that too),  lose some weight, get some new clothes and start exercising.

So life after cancer holds its challenges. For now I’m glad health care passed and I’m glad to be alive. Both were against the odds.

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