I think my family and friends thought I went cuckoo when I was undergoing radiation treatment. I’m normally having, as Jimmy Buffett put it, a carnivorous feeling. I like good meat, beef, pork, chicken, alligator, squirrel, frog legs and other savory delectable muscle type things. I’ve tried some pretty weird stuff and if it’s mammalian, avian or reptile, I pretty much like it. However, radiation treatment does some major mojo on your body and I have a theory about it. I’ll tell you frankly about both.
Seriously if you have ever undergone radiation treatment, you would know that certain foods just taste like rotten crap. The docs are glad if you just eat anything at all. My treatment team warned me that my tastes would change for a while. That I just needed to keep eating. They basically didn’t care what I ate so long as I got protein, fiber, carbs, etc. They didn’t want me to get weak from not eating at all. They said even if I couldn’t eat balanced to just eat if I found something that was palatable. Palatable meant that you could force yourself to swallow it.
Turns out I didn’t have that carnivorous feeling at all. I wanted green veggies and lots of them. Meat though… ewww… it tasted three weeks spoiled and smelled worse. I craved dark green vegetables. Spinach, broccoli, kale, green beans, that weird stuff decorating your plate in restaurant, you name it, if it was green, I salivated. Nuts I could eat ok sort of, but not too many at a time. Milk tasted days old and about to expire, yogurt was okay, meat was icky icky icky (three times to make sure you know how icky it really was). Ensure and Protein shakes could be forced down without the desire to vomit. Basically anything in a more natural form that was primarily protein didn’t taste good.
My theory… Radiation kills new growing tissue. What is cancer? Cancer is run away growth of tissue that isn’t supposed to be growing and replicating itself. Radiation therapy kills off these new growing cells. There is good and bad that comes from radiation therapy. You can’t just have dead stuff building up in your body as that is going to cause problems too. What happens to dead cells in your body? Your body has to break them up and process them and then excrete them. Basically your body has to go through the same process as if you’d eaten a huge steak dinner. You just get to skip the stomach and digestion part of the deal. All the tissue being destroyed by the radiation treatments was dumping all kinds of protein by-products and toxins in my blood, so basically my body via my taste buds and nose were telling my mouth, “Enough of that stuff! We got plenty to deal with, We don’t want anymore coming in”. While my stomach was empty and telling my mouth, “I’m hungry”.
I really did eat a lot of vegetables. I do like vegetables. But not as much as I did while I was undergoing radiation treatment. I developed cravings for things my body needed to help rid itself of the extra destroyed proteins floating around. I craved things with antioxidants like dark green leafy vegetables especially fresh ones. I even liked (drum roll please) baby vegetable food. Those snack jars are perfect quickie snacks on the go. I have to admit, the baby creamed peas that were disgusting and made me spit up when I was a baby are still damn disgusting. Fruit was great too, fresh fruit even better. I did learn that apple sauce and juice in large quantities are laxatives. So variety in moderation was the spice of life.
Have you ever eaten a Cherimoya? You should try it if you can, kinda a peachy pineapple flavor in a creamy fruit. Funky looking thing though. I haunted the Whole Foods and Central Market grocery stores looking for things that were palatable for me. I found stuff that I really like to this day. Cancer will give you gifts if you are open to seeing and experiencing them. Cherimoya is one of the gems.
Free Form Quilts 