Trying to enjoy my garden

Garden
Brad,

Look at the bright side, I was too fatigued to work my garden properly and it is the worst year I've ever had for one!

I'm about a month-and-a-half out of treatment. Fresh tomtatoes are OK for taste, but still not completely right. The sweet peppers have faired pretty well and taste good.

Fresh veggies taste pretty normal to me. Steak and BBQ were two of my favorites, but both seem to be too dry right now due to lack of saliva.

I love pizza and spaghetti, but the processed tomato sauces don't taste very good. Pizza is too dry and spaghetti has a bad taste...... but it is getting better!

Rush

garden food
I will never miss a chance to tell the story of the first food I had a hint of real taste with after treatment...radishes. Heavenly red radishes. If I had a garden that's all I would plant and I would eat them right out of the dirt. OK maybe that's a bit much, but I did find that my taste began to SLOWLY come back after about 2 months and mostly with crunchy vegetables and fruits. As a result my diet is also a lot different now than it was before cancer. Not necessarily because I think I am being healthier, I just seem to have lost my appetite for a lot of meats and many processed foods I used to love. Weird maybe, but I just started finding food I could taste a bit(for me, fresh vegetables) and going from there to see what else I might like.
No question about it, losing your sense of taste is a really terrible thing that someone who hasn't had to experience can't understand. It can be the most discouraging part of the day. My two cents would be to just keep taking little bites of things here and there. Try stuff. Eventually some tastes will seep through. Others will take a little longer. You won't get it all back overnight, but it will happen.

Cucumbers
I am only 10 days out from treatment, but have already noticed a change for the better in my taste, albeit a pretty small change. Never had the PEG as I only had about 1 week there that I could only swallow some soups that my wife threw in the blender. I have been able to eat a few select things the past few days. Cucumbers were probably the first thing that tasted pretty decent again, though I'm going to have to try some radishes next, luv radishes. My wife and I were in the grocery store yesterday and I found myself wandering the aisles checking out all the food I can't wait to try again soon. Being in Thailand surrounded by all this spicy Thai food and my wife being a great Thai cook, the worst part for me is I can't touch it right now. Cheers

Jimbo

Jimbo55 said:

Cucumbers
I am only 10 days out from treatment, but have already noticed a change for the better in my taste, albeit a pretty small change. Never had the PEG as I only had about 1 week there that I could only swallow some soups that my wife threw in the blender. I have been able to eat a few select things the past few days. Cucumbers were probably the first thing that tasted pretty decent again, though I'm going to have to try some radishes next, luv radishes. My wife and I were in the grocery store yesterday and I found myself wandering the aisles checking out all the food I can't wait to try again soon. Being in Thailand surrounded by all this spicy Thai food and my wife being a great Thai cook, the worst part for me is I can't touch it right now. Cheers

Jimbo

Good year for fruit
Tomorrow Mark is 3 weeks post treatment. He never lost his ability to swallow and seriously supplemented with the PEG for less than a week. PEG comes out on the 19th!! He cannot wait...always seem to be counting the days to something.
Anyway...Mark is so bummed that this has been a great fruit season. We live in PA and most summers fruit is hit or miss. Mealy peaches and nectarins are common. This summer I haven't had a bad one, and Mark can feel the texture, but not the fabulous taste.
At the 3 week post point, Mark speaks of having the "essence" of taste. This makes him feel like progress is being made. Also, the color of the skin on his neck has almost returned to normal. He has found some pain meds that are acceptable to him (ibuprofin with codiene). He is uping his workouts at the gym and his ability/energy to argue (I mean voice his opinion) is coming back. (Did I miss that??)
Things that work for him eating wise include: steak grilled fairly rare and sliced very thin, sushi, mashed, or baked potatoes, soups (matzo ball, won-ton, chicken noodle). He had a ham steak in Lancaster PA the other day, and Saturday night we ate crabs (Maryland style with Old Bay). We have learned spicey food is a "feeling" not a "taste". Liquids come out his nose if his head is bent forward (most often drinking hot beverages); liquid does not come out of his nose if he tilts his head back (posture for drinking cold beverages).
Oh, the facinating things we have learned.
Kim

johnlax38 said:

Some of my most favorite
Some of my most favorite things to eat now are very bright in flavor. Fruit is wonderful at the moment, meat is blah unless doused in a sauce of some sort. Pasta's I enjoy too now.

Pre-treatment I was an adventurous eater. I love Thai, Vietnamese, and Indian. I work in one of the biggest melting pots in the world, DC, so I can get anything I wanted. Being that these dishes are so spicy I don't think I will be enjoying them for a while.

Hey, fellow gardener
When I was in treatment at Johns Hopkins, my wife and I stayed in Baltimore during the week and then came home on weekends, where my mother helped pick the produce from our garden. I couldn't eat any of it, so we froze some and took a lot back to Hopkins. The nurses in the chemo suite loved it when we brought them our fresh tomatoes -- some of them had never had a tomato fresh from the garden, and it was an eye-opening experience for them.
Now, almost two years out, I can can eat everything from our garden -- including my nuclear-strength Habanero peppers. It just takes a little time, that's all.
Best of luck, and good gardening to you.

--Jim in Delaware

rmkbrad said:

I found somthing new today.
On the way back from San Francisco, PET scan results so so. Anyway I stoped at a Safeway to get some of the soup from the deli and they happen to be out, so I looked around for somthing that I thought I could get down while driving home. I ended up getting some crab susi rolls and they were good and easy to get down. Crab meat some avacado rice and seaweed, dash of soy sauce and I was good to go. Although I did get a bit of wasabey by mistake and wholey moly I wasn't ready for that. Any way thanks for the sugestions and I will continue to try different things. One thing the doctor got on me about was not eating enough. Be a somewhat fat person I would never have guessed I would have a hard time keeping weight on.

Brad

sushi
Recently, diagnosed and recovering from tonsil biopsy of right tonsil and tonsillectomy of left tonsil I am still on a soft food diet but I wondered if I would be able to return to eating one of my favoite foods. SUSHI and edamme. Glad to hear someone else has become a fan.

~ E

delnative said:

Hey, fellow gardener
When I was in treatment at Johns Hopkins, my wife and I stayed in Baltimore during the week and then came home on weekends, where my mother helped pick the produce from our garden. I couldn't eat any of it, so we froze some and took a lot back to Hopkins. The nurses in the chemo suite loved it when we brought them our fresh tomatoes -- some of them had never had a tomato fresh from the garden, and it was an eye-opening experience for them.
Now, almost two years out, I can can eat everything from our garden -- including my nuclear-strength Habanero peppers. It just takes a little time, that's all.
Best of luck, and good gardening to you.

--Jim in Delaware

Thanks, Jim
I thought about you when I was in my garden the other day - my sweet peppers are nonexistent - the only peppers I have are a couple of banana peppers and my best peppers - the jalapeno peppers I can't eat YET. When I had to avoid my beloved bbq chicken nachos while eating out, I told my family that you, too couldn't eat catsup at first and can now eat hot peppers. I won't be going for any habanero peppers, but am very glad you let us know (months ago) that you'd regained your ability to eat spicy.

Jimbo55 said:

mmmm.... onion rings
Yeah onion rings sound good. We are going back to my garden in Siem Reap, Cambodia on Friday. Although this particular garden is about 140 acres and is called a golf course, which is where I work. Its funny, my wife won't let me do any landscaping around our house, she thinks I don't know what I'm doing. I used to plant different things at the house, and when I would come home from work the next day it would all be changed. So now I just let my wife Kusi take care of that.

The Magic of Onion Rings
I am not sure what it is either, but onion rings always work!
Good thing they are so nutritious. They make a nice addition to my jello, custard ,ensure and cheese food diet. Also root beer.
Stacey