A mammoth undertaking

By Gillian

Right from the initial diagnosis, we’ve been told by all the healthcare professionals (consultants, specialist nurses, dietician) that it’s vitally important for Chris to avoid losing more weight than he can possibly help. Essentially, we need to take normal dieting rules, and invert them – so he needs snacks between meals, desserts, no low-fat anything etc.  We were told to make sure that every mouthful counts, by fortifying each meal with cream, cheese etc. In my last supermarket shop I bought double cream, single cream, soured cream, creme fraiche, yoghurt and cream cheese, with the aim of slipping a couple of tablespoons of at least one of them into each and every meal. However, it’s never as easy as that…..

The main problem we’ve been having recently is his sickness, which killed his appetite. And he also has physical trouble eating certain foods due to the location of the tumour – basically anything which needs a knife to eat it with is too difficult. But on top of that is the fact that for the past nearly 20 years, Chris has done almost all the cooking in our house. He’s very good at it – I wouldn’t say the cooking was the reason I married him, but it was certainly a consideration! I, on the other hand, am an inexperienced, uninterested and reluctant cook. But since Chris had the stent fitted he has been too ill to do his usual duties in the kitchen – it was down to me to keep him fed. And I only had two recipes in my limited repertoire that he could eat – cottage pie and baked fish. So no wonder that I “snapped inside” (his words!) when he refused to eat what I’d prepared.

But then last weekend we had a major breakthrough. Some friends of ours gave Chris a book for his birthday – “Healthy eating during chemotherapy” by van Mil and Archer-Mackenzie. It’s been an absolute revelation. It’s full of quick, nutritious and (importantly for me) easy-to-cook recipes that have been specially designed for the smaller, capricious appetite of a chemotherapy patient. I got Chris to go through it last weekend with a pad of Post-It notes, marking those recipes he thought he might like. I’ve then been cooking from it all week, making a main course and dessert each night, and Chris has been wolfing them down.  So a huge thanks to Richard and Fabienne for having the inspiration to go looking for such a cookbook – we hadn’t even considered that such a thing might exist. Now that he’s eating better, and his vomiting is more under control, he’s got so much more energy and oomph which is a real pleasure to see. And even better, he’s feeling well enough tonight to cook dinner!