I'm eating normal food

Well, mostly. I'm down to 600 calories a day from tube feedings and I'm gaining just a bit of weight, so I can start planning to cut that back.

Here's the biggie. For the first time in a year I was able to go to the grocery store and buy food that both Robby and I could eat and plan a week's worth of meals out of things we regularly ate before all this popped up.

This week's menu:
Chicken breasts in mushroom sauce with peas and mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy.
Ham and scalloped potatoes.
Pork chops in mushroom sauce with green and kidney beans and mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy.
A chowder similar to lightly seasoned chili with corn and bacon thrown in.

There is a theme. I bought 5 cans of mushroom soup on my grocery store run. I'm learning to eat using sauces and water to assist in swallowing. The natural reaction is to just swallow sauces and liquids. I'm learning to use them and incorporate them into foods that are difficult to swallow with limited saliva.

I'm getting better at what I call "eating in public". When I started eating again, I had to clear significant amounts of food from my airways. That makes a rather unpleasant sound that's not suitable for eating in public. I had to eat in a room separate from Robby because of the sounds I had to make. I'm getting past that and can eat food as dry as chicken breasts without offending those near me.

My recovery seems painfully slow, but when I look back even as recent as 4 to 6 weeks, the progress is amazing. I don't know if I ever really had a grasp of how much recovery I needed. Maybe that's best.

I'm also starting to taste things a bit better. Some familiar tastes are coming back and it's a pleasure to experience them again. Taste is also a factor of the liquid associated with the food. Saliva normally carries the taste of food to all the taste buds. I'm learning to use liquid with food to both assist in proper swallowing and tasting.

I will end up eating differently than most people. I'm learning that now and making good progress. I never thought I'd have to learn to eat, but that's pretty much what's required. An odd thing is that I don't get hungry. I think my stomach was shrunk long enough that that sensation just went away.

Sometimes it's hard to eat when chewing and swallowing are both challenging, there's little taste to the food, and I have absolutely no hunger. At those times, I just eat because I know I need to do it.

Contact Your State Reps - Pass This

http://www.ksn.com/news/local/story/Bill-proposes-legalizing-medical-marijuana-in/6NECExD14UqKrMZE4IIB5A.cspx

Links don't work right in this blog. You're going to have to copy and paste this one.

I know this is going to be controversial, but this needs to happen. Stoners aren't real productive members of society because they tend to forget what's really going on and spend their stoned time sitting around with not much concept of reality. They are able to ignore reality and enjoy a world where the only thing really significant is whatever happens to be entertaining them at that moment.

Now, think in terms of a cancer patient who is staring death in the face and watching their life crumble around them as the effects of the chemo and radiation destroy their lives as they knew them.

I was one of the fortunate ones who had a really positive long-term diagnosis going into the nastiness of the chemo and radiation. Even with that, there were times when the best thing that could have possibly happened for me was to forget. Even for a moment. Maybe have a laugh or two about something meaningless.

Just give me a chance to forget that I'm fighting for my life and I'm never going to be the same person after that fight is finished. Having to deal with that stuff is just brutal. I would have given anything to be relieved of that for a moment, an hour, a day - anything - just don't make me face that day in and day out for months on end.

The drugs the doctors prescribed for that are some of the most dangerous and addictive drugs in modern medicine. When I was at my worst, I was taking 2 of the 4 drugs Michael Jackson died from - and I wasn't taking the really addictive ones I was getting prescribed. That was just so I could go on from day to day and I had to have the sedatives so that I could stop caring about the damage that the "cure" was doing to me.

I'm not even talking about pain. I'm talking about an unavailable drug (marijuana) that could have let me forget what was going on, could have given me a laugh at something meaningless that isn't even funny, and could have helped me sleep during times when sleep was terrifying, but was my only escape from a truly horrible life.

That would have made my life during the tough months so much better.