cancer – day 166

Tonight Mark and I did something we should have been trying to do once a week or at least every 2nd and 3rd week during chemo . . . we went to a friend’s house for dinner.

Food and nausea have been a problem throughout chemo, of course. Eating hasn’t been such a terrible problem, but the smells of food cooking would drive me out of the house. We ended up doing a lot of cold meals or things that heated very simply and very quickly, or that could be cooked outside on the grill, without a lot of smells lingering in the kitchen and throughout the house. Still there were nights where I was driven outside to the back yard by nausea, asking Mark to just make me some rice or mashed potatoes . . . anything without a smell or even much taste, because once I’d had a nausea episode, my stomach was in turmoil for the night, it seemed. But I could still usually eat. Throughout all of this, even if it was just soup, I’ve pretty much been able to eat and my weight has stayed completely stable (surprisingly so, to me), which made for happier doctors. No weight loss, no weight gain, that’s what they wanted.

Early on I’d read cancer things saying to let people make/bring you food, but I’d kind of written it off as unnecessary for us. I mean, I live with my caregiver, why do other people need to bring me food, too? That was my thinking at the time, anyway. But last night we went to Betsy’s and had a “John Wayne” Cheese Casserole that “only” takes an hour to bake (baking smells are the worst for me) and there’s no way we could have prepared here at Mark’s house, but arriving at Betsy’s house with the dinner already prepared, the smells didn’t send my nausea through the roof. She also made some yummy broccoli (my favorite veggie), and cornbread. I haven’t had cornbread in forever, that was a treat, too. So we went “out” for dinner last night and had a nice home-cooked meal that didn’t make me nauseas in the preparation because we didn’t prepare it, what a novel idea. Can’t believe we’re in the last throes of chemo treatment and finally make that little discovery, figuring out some whys that should have been obvious to us from the beginning.