My job is to eat.
For years, that made people around me jealous because, as a food writer, that translated into writing restaurant reviews, developing recipes for steak in the fire and cherry pie, interviewing chefs, doing a clambake by the sea with family and friends. I feel jealous of myself as I write.
Things are different now, temporarily. Because lately, getting chemo for the breast cancer I was diagnosed with in January, I’m no longer living to eat. I’m eating to live.
Every cancer patient has her story about how treatment impacts her and this radical shift in my relationship to food is part of mine. Most of us love food; for me, this love impacted my choice of a husband (he wooed me by cooking me swordfish), and it became a writing career: Just last year I started a small mostly paleo baking company. I often asked my husband what we’d be having for dinner tomorrow as we got in bed.
My approach to eating changed dramatically over the years. I started out an omnivorous hedonist; then, in 1996, I had a child and started thinking about health too. In 2000, I wrote an article on organic food for the Globe; that’s when sustainability entered my lexicon. And in 2008 I wrote a book about getting my family to eat better. In doing the research for my book I realized just how much what we eat matters, both personally and globally. I cut out almost all dairy, sugar, and refined grains, cut way back on the meat and started buying it from farmers’ markets, added more beans and vegetables (lots of kale), and got us all eating much more healthfully.
When I was diagnosed, I was eating an ideal breast cancer prevention diet.
By the time chemo started, I had already lost weight thanks to the shock of the news plus two surgeries and the anxiety of waiting for results. I’m presently 14 weeks into a 20-week course of chemo and while the nausea is better and I’m lucky that I can taste, I still have no desire to eat (no appetite is like nausea’s sibling), and my whole sense of self feels off. Eating has become hard work. I eat five or six times a day. Yesterday was two eggs with three protein pancakes (butter and maple syrup), a banana with almond butter, kale salad with chicken and vinaigrette, a peach, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pork with Brussels sprouts and potatoes. A little ice cream for dessert. All of which I forced myself to eat.
What to eat is confusing too. The nurse who gave me a “pre-chemo training’’ told me I need 50 grams of protein a day, so bring on the meat, dairy, and protein powders. The dietitian who came by the infusion chair one day told me I need 60 grams and I should be eating a plant-based diet. (The way I was eating when I got cancer.) I would love to follow a high-protein, high calorie, plant-based diet but I would need someone to shop for and prepare the food, because figuring that out is too much to manage right now. I’ve been advised to avoid salad bars, be careful about takeout, and wash produce extra well. Meanwhile the doctors and nurses say not to worry, just eat whatever sounds good to get enough calories, anything that might bring comfort, including junk food. For one woman I know, that meant mint chocolate chip ice cream and lots of it.
But for the first time in my life, there’s no food I want, no comfort to be found in eating — or, in some moments, despite receiving so much support and love, in much of anything.
People tell me all of this is temporary and will end. I do (mostly) trust this is true, and I trust the team who is saving my life. I joyfully look forward to the moment when I feel I have my self back. Until then, it remains an hour by hour, day by day, mouthful by mouthful ascent.
Near the end of her life my grandmother, from whom I inherited my love of eating, also had no appetite. As she turned her head away from platefuls of anxiously offered food (after a lifelong battle with her weight, a first), my husband quietly placed on the table next to her a small plate with just a quarter of a turkey sandwich, a lone pickle spear, four chips. He met her where she was, and she ate.
If I can give myself this kind of acceptance, compassion, and love — oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry, I know you’re not hungry and you’re exhausted and overwhelmed and nothing sounds good, you need to have some anyway — if I can pull this off and make a habit of kindness toward myself that endures long after treatment is done and I have all my appetites and energy back, then while I’d never have chosen this disease, maybe one day I’ll even be able to say it was worth it.
Betsy Block is the author of “The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World.’’ She can be reached at betsyblockwriter@gmail.com.
