Food, Glorious Food!

Your don't realize what you are missing until you can't have it anymore. Food, glorious food!

After that first appointment I was told that I had to immediately go on a liquid diet as my esophagus was almost completely blocked by my tumour. This, I was told, was the the reason for my ongoing burps, hiccups and vomiting. Looking back, I am actually grateful for these symptoms, otherwise I might never have realized that I was sick and had cancer as no other signs or symptoms were present except for the rapid weight loss. I have been told that esophageal cancer doesn't give you many clues along the way. The tumour is quietly growing in your body without you even knowing it. The doctors indicated that often, once you are diagnosed, it is often too late. 

My new daily liquid diet consists of at least five Ensure calorie enhanced drinks a day. We try to supplement it with a variety of pureed soups and I have also been trying some small amounts of mashed potatoes and other pureed foods with some success. At first I thought, I can do this! Whatever it takes! My doctors indicated that they hoped that the radiation would shrink the tumour enough for me to eat some more solid food. Time will tell if this is an option.

Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla and butter pecan. These are my daily flavour choices. Sounds great! I love all of these sweet flavours. To be honest they don't actually taste all that bad but how I miss the savoury options in my diet. I never really feel hungry. The Ensures seem to fill my food needs. I don't really have cravings although I do miss all the glorious food options [solid food] that I used to eat. 

A few days into this new liquid diet, I realized (the hard way) that I needed to supplement my diet with fibre. I will spare you the details on this one but lets just say the words in the brackets say it all! When I added prune juice and Benefibre to my daily morning routine it helped a great deal!

You may not even realize it but food really consumes a great portion of our daily lives. I only understood the impact of food and how it permeates our day when limitations in my food options were made. Weekly food rituals include planning meal options, buying the food, bagging the food, unpacking the food, preparing the food, eating the food, clean up after eating the food, then planning all over again! The food cycle continues. When your food choices are made for you, this ritual is drastically altered. Bonus, you do save some time!

Thanks to Michelle and to my family for adjusting our food options and choices to help accommodate and adjust to my new diet. A few more mash potatoes, pureed vegetables and soups are on the menu now in our household.

A liquid or puree diet also has a negative impact on your social life. You don't really realize it but food is really an integral part of our social lives. My family loves to go out to restaurants and get takeout meals. Sometime for convenience sake (no cooking!) and other times for the variety of food choices and flavours. Often coming to consensus on a take out food option that we can all agree upon takes longer than the ordering and eating part! Going to a restaurant is another Erdmann family past time. A great way to connect with your family, catch up on the days events and have some quality family time. When you can only have liquids and puréed food items for your meals, this dramatically limits your ability to enjoy this important social aspect with your friends and family. Often it is difficult to find food as most restaurants have limited options in this area.

I encourage each of you to enjoy food in all its forms. Don't take it for granted. Be sure to enjoy the social aspects that food creates for your family and friends. Be sure to eat with your family or others! Go out and celebrate with each other. Have that dessert!  Enjoy the foods you love and makes you feel good (in moderation). Enjoy them! You don't know what you are missing until they are not longer an option. Eat the darn chips!

Food, Glorious food!

Richard

Over the next 20 days

Stay positive! We can fight this. We can beat this, was what we both said to each other on the ride to Kingston later that afternoon. We agreed not to tell our three children until we returned after our visit to Kingston. How would we share this news with them?

Over the next 20 days a variety of tests, meetings and appointments would be booked. I was very impressed with the speed at which the initial diagnostic plan was set up.  The purpose of these tests was to confirm if indeed the tumour was cancerous and if so what the treatment options would be. I had so many appointments to keep track of that we had to start a calendar to keep up with them. Instead of basking in the enjoyment and planning of my second month of retirement,  I was busy visiting a variety of doctors, nurses and health care professionals to get scheduled to get a MRI, CT scan, PET scan, echo-cardiogram and this list goes on and on.

Although each of the doctors, nurses and health care workers and volunteers were polite and courteous, I couldn't help but feel that a large neon label was on me to indicate that I had cancer. At the end of each test, they would come up and briefly discuss what they found and say "Good luck" to me. What did that mean? "Good luck" was that a good sign or a bad sign? Michelle and I were not sure what to think of that comment. I guess it difficult to say anything at a time like this.

We still held out hope. Michelle began to research esophageal cancer and treatments. I secretly researched the stages of cancer. I really had no prior knowledge of cancer, cancer treatments or the fact that so many people are dealing with this diagnosis.

These twenty days were filled with appointments, tests, meetings and uncertainty. What is happening to me? Why? When will we know what will happen next. More questions than answers for sure.

Richard