This Election Killed Gwen Ifill

••• today's entry continues here below •••

The thing in your stomach that send a signal-message to your brain, telling you that you're hungry and that you should eat .. the chemo damages this bio-mechanism (.. among other things).

I pretty much never feel like eating. Then I get light-headed and this tells me that I need to eat. So I do, and the light-headedness goes away. (For a while.)

Trying to put the weight back on is like a full-time job. Sometimes I just say, "Screw it .. I'm taking a break from putting food in my stomach today," and I go without food for the day. (After my morning coffee, of course.) Maybe a spoonful of peanut butter.

I feel good during these days (.. maybe even great), but the doctor told me not to do this. I can easily go the whole day without eating. Very easily. Perhaps too easily.

Cousin Patti said that "The worst thing you can do for your stomach is to have a strong cup of coffee in the morning and then eat nothing the rest of the day."

I said, "Oh, that's my favorite thing to do. I actually have decent energy levels on these days."

I lost 30 pounds during treatment, frighteningly fast (180 » 150). After treatment I figured that my appetite would come roaring back, so I just ate when I felt like eating.

I lost 10 more pounds without even realizing it (.. all the way down to » 140). That scared me.

So I learned that I need to eat even when I dont feel like it. This is harder than you might imagine .. a lot harder.

I could try to explain it to you, but this would be wasting my time. Because I know that you could never imagine what it is like. Because I could never imagine it myself. (I am making myself eat a little oatmeal right now.)

My sense of taste varies, but my sense of smell is the same as it was before treatment. So things that smell good, such as coffee in the morning, I can appreciate more than something like, say, watermelon, which has barely any smell.

So I ask friends, "What do you think of this watermelon?" If they say that it's super-sweet and yummy, then I will imagine it tasting sweet and yummy, and I will want to eat more of this watermelon.

But if they say, "This one is disappointing. It's not very sweet," .. then I will imagine it tasting not so sweet and I will not want to eat any more of it .. even tho I can taste no difference between a sweet watermelon and one that is not sweet.

Doesnt that strike you as strange? It strikes me as strange and I'm the one doing it.

My point here is that I now eat primarily for nutrition and that 'taste' is primarily a function of aroma, but mostly of my imagination.

» You Look Great

My weight is stuck around 158-159, where it has been for months now. But everybody tells me that I look great. This doctor-lady today told me that I looked great. My oncologist last month told me that I looked great. The neighbor-guy just last week .. said I look great.

"Are you just saying that to be nice?" I asked.

But he genuinely seemed genuine. (I believed him.)

"How can I look so great," I wondered, "when I feel like this?"

Next month, I see my surgeon. He'll probably tell me that I look great, too.

I think that they mean I look great for being a cancer survivor. Compared to a dead person, sure, I must look pretty strapping.

Much of life is relative. I'm sure that Einstein would back me up on that.

Had my first-ever flu shot today. Barely felt it. The guy comes in and distracts you with a clipboard while the girl sneaks up behind you and wipes your tricep with an alcohol swab. "They have good technique," I thought.

I gave them 4 vials of blood today. "Save some for me," I told the girl with bright red hair.

She was lamenting the election. She will probably be deported soon.

Super-moon tonight. Howling time.

The end. ■

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