Eating Part 3 (I lost the middle part)

So. Something happened. Recently. Don't ask me. I don't know. I will never figure this stuff out. Something happened. All along, I have tended to be rather scientific, which drives my wife nuts (see the above, or the previous, as the case may be)... analyzing the texture, the heat, all of that sort of bull, trying to figure out, desperately (perhaps) trying to figure out, why I can eat this but not that, why crunchy this is good but crunchy that is bad, why soft this is easy but soft that is not, why I can eat crackers, for crying out loud, but not bread, why I can ingest frigging sardines but not bbq pork.

Vexing, perplexing, and, especially for others, frustrating as hell.

For the wife, in particular. My son would throw together some cheesy thing with tomatoes and green peppers and chopped burger, and I would manage to gobble it up. My wife would consume an evening making some sort of elaborate thing for me with the same ingredients, and I would toss it aside. I must say that timing was critical. It was. If I was starving, as I often was when Ry was cooking, it seemed I could eat anything. On the other hand, to take nothing from Corrine, in all of her trying she may have tried too hard. For a time.

Any way, I finally got around to eating some things that others eat. Mostly it was processed foods. I could fairly easily get through a fish samdwich from burger doodle or Ahab's Leg. Whatever. Somehow, that stuff that was both easy and tasty. On top of that, it was brewing success. To read about how processed food is bad for you (in CSN) made me laugh. All I could think was that it was keeping me alive...and others seem to agree.

My major problems were still that I could not really eat meat and that it was taking me forever to eat. That second one is more important than you might realize. Everyone else is done, or on the dessert, or drinking a coffee, or wandering off, and you are still trying to get through your green bean casserole. It's big. It's huge. Speed matters.

Okay, I had other ones: I still couldn't eat most crap.

And eating at a restaurant was pretty much out of the question. The food is not prepared right for me, the portions are too large, I take too long, you get the drill.

So, I went to a restaurant. I had been to a restaurant before, a Mexican restaurant, which is how I learned all of the above, of course, but the wife and I and son went to a little Italian place,, 10, 12 tables, maybe, and none of them filled but ours, I think. I ordered the soup, which seemed safe, and ordered oysters for the table, which also seemed safe, which I knew my wife and son would vacuum them if I didn't get to at least one before they were done.

I got to two. At least. I ate oysters. You know the texture, boys and girls. Not doable. But (given they were baked, I admit), I took down several and ordered more. Ate all of my soup ( a wonderful veg soup, by the way).

Ate some of their stuff even.

I didn't know then, a couple of months ago, that something was happening.

No dilation since first of year, I think. Nothing happening to make me more improved as it were. In fact, I'll be honest, skipped last ENT Man appt, skipped last CT scan, skipped last OncoMan appt. Not discouragement, but just a certain sort of realization, resignation.

In any event, the night at Il Ristorante, or whatever, did not blow me away. I was happy to have gone on, I was happy to have eaten in public, I was happy to have eaten!

But I was not blown away.

No, while that probably got me moving forward, what blew me away was a little 3x3 piece of prime rib in a styrofoam box in my fridge one day a couple of months ago, a remnant of my wife's previous evening at a women's business dinner.

My wife brings me home good stuff. Most of it is dessert stuff. Dessert stuff is easier to eat. Dessert and, now, fish. So that is what she brings home typically, and, honestly, that is what her friends make for dinners at our house...they all, after all, want me to love them

They succeed.

But there was the prime beef, and I had not eaten steak in more than five years. Really. That is a long time for an omnivore, I tell you. I would say, even, that I had not really eaten meat... some of those little weiners, if you want to count them, some chicken salad, and who would count that? That's about it.

So I nibbled on this cold prime rib, and it went down, so I cooked the rest of that little 3x3 in butter and onions and ate it like there would be no tomorrow.

PETA people, please turn away: I had a meat orgasm!

Seriously...ever since, things have upscaled. I am eating everything, and anticpate the first Thanksgiving since 04 when I am actually not a figurehead at the table!

I have been eating shrimp of all things, lots of shrimp, and veg soup that is huge in carrots and potatoes and such. Meatloaf (used to hate it). Seems like everything I try I can do. I can DO. Wow. (Haven't tried bread ).

Something has happend. I don't know what. As I said earlier, I can't figure this stuff out. My suspicion is that following the first two dilations my throat has 'evolved'. That is completely unscientific. But it is all I can figure.

So I have called my docs. New appointments, plans for one more dilation (what the heck?), and we'll see where we go from here. If they tell me I'm dying of lung cancer, I honestly won't be surprised, and I don't say that to be dramatic. It is what it is. But either way, I didn't want to see them to hear that sort of news, and if I do, well, I will at least be eating better going into the last round.

And, if I DON'T have some more of the nasty stuff...party's at my house... I'll send the date and time