What I Eat

Cancer Killers!

I have always been a careful eater. I love my junk food from time to time, don’t get me wrong, but for most of my life I have always tried, at least, to maintain a diet that scales more toward healthy than not. Having a wife from Japan who can easily prepare creative meals that are both delicious and good for me makes it all the easier to eat healthily, especially since she often prepares Japanese meals and Japanese meals are more often than not very healthy.

But what I have learned since my diagnosis with leukemia, is that a cancer diet is more than just eating healthy foods. According to some, a true cancer diet is not just having to eat foods that prevent and fight cancer, it is also having to eliminate foods that one would never suspect, like most fruits. I’m no expert here, and to be honest, I haven’t put much thought or study into my cancer treatment or my cancer diet (in fact, this might be a good time for you to read my Disclaimer page if you already haven’t), but I have received many cancer diet books as gifts this past year, and from reading them and researching online, my wife and my children have become near experts in what one should and shouldn’t eat to prevent and to fight cancer.

I know when some people survive a life-threatening disease or injury, they have a tendency to get religion, so to speak. And from talking with other folks who have survived cancer, it seems that often their religion becomes a strict adherence to a strict diet. That’s not me, for better or for worse. If I’m going to live, which I plan on doing for a long time, I still want to enjoy the things that I have always enjoyed in life…but perhaps not so much or so often. I will eat my fast food and a bag of Doritos from time to time, but mostly I will try to eat meals like the ones that will be profiled on the new What I Eat page. Some will be meals specific for preventing and fighting cancer, others will be just plain healthy and yummy.

A little on process: I’m not a foodie and I don’t plan on ever being one so please don’t expect nicely laid out shots and presentations of the meals. I will use my blackberry for a camera and that will be about as good as it gets for picture quality. Sorry about that. I will post pictures of a meals that I have eaten recently and will provide a brief background on the dishes. So, if my slipshod way of going about things doesn’t turn you off and if you’re still interested, please check out the new page by clicking on the What I Eat tab at the top of the blog. Let me know what you think, and if you have any of your own ideas for meals that prevent and fight cancer, please leave me your feedback and recipes in the comments section at the bottom of the page. Maybe my wife will prepare them. If she does, I’ll post a picture of the meal and provide a brief commentary (a commentary, not a critique, because anything friends share with me will be good regardless!)

Enjoy!

Hair

Warning: This is potentially a TMI post. Read at your own risk!

Kurt with hair

Before my cancer and all the chemo, I saw myself similar to how Ricky Bobby saw himself in the movie Talladega Nights: I’m just a big hairy American winning machine, you know. That was me. I was confident, happy, had a wonderful family, a great job, felt strong and in okay shape, and I had a thick mane of hair on my head and a decent coat of fur all over my body. I was no back shaver, mind you (not that there is anything wrong with those of my friends who feel the need to shave the back…you gotta do what you gotta do) but I definitely had some hair to be proud of. But all of that, especially the confidence, the being in shape, and the hair, changed after the chemo.

Now I know some of you are wondering—I know I was before I started getting the chemo, so I asked my nurse—does one lose ALL their hair from the chemo treatments? The answer I got was that it depends. It depends on the person, the type of chemo, and the amount of chemo received. I would just have to wait and see.

It turned out that during the first phase, things moved slowly hair loss-wise. It took several weeks before any hair on my head started falling out and a couple more weeks before my beard began thinning out. I never noticed the loss of any body hair. I will say, it was very unsettling when the hair on my head began falling out in earnest and I would wake up in the morning to see big piles of it all over my pillow and bed. Once that started happening, I went directly to the barber and had my head shaved.

Shaved head

It’s not as easy as you think to get your head shaved. When I went, my regular barber was crowded so, not wanting to have to sit around and explain to the regulars about my cancer, I went to another barber that I had only been to once before. It was empty so I went in. The barber was a female and after I sat down and explained that I wanted my head shaved, she almost seemed offended, but in a cheesy, middle-aged flirty kind of way. She gave me the third degree and wanted to know why I wanted my head shaved. Still in no mood to discuss my cancer, I just said something rather curt about me being sick of having such thick hair to mess with. She reluctantly began shaving it off, but as she did, she went on the whole time about how a guy should never shave off such a nice head of hair. (I have another story about my hair and my youngest son’s ill-fated attempt at trying to shave if off…but that’s for another time.)

I had a couple of weeks off between phase one and phase two treatments. During the time off, the hair on my head and face started growing back in rather quickly. But again, after a few weeks of the phase two chemo treatments, both head and facial hair began thinning out. Again, I did not notice the loss of any body hair. This time, because the hair on my head was so short, I was able to shave it off myself.

Before the transplant

During the first two phases, while I did lose a lot of hair, I never lost all of it on either my head or face. But all that changed after I received the large doses of chemo in preparation for my bone marrow transplant. About two weeks after the treatment, hair everywhere began falling out. And by everywhere, I mean everywhere. After about a month, the only hair I had left on my body was my eyebrows and my eyelashes. My body was smooth as a newborn baby. I won’t go too much into details, but I will say, things feel a lot different without hair in the places where you’ve been used to having it. I was left feeling very incomplete and somewhat insecure. I didn’t like it at all.

But now, finally, it’s all coming back and I’m beginning to feel much more like my old self. And by old, I mean much older. As you can see, even though I looked older than my age before, this whole cancer ordeal has aged me even more. And even though I’ll still be completely gray on top, I’ll be glad to have it back and I promise not to complain when it once again gets too long and too thick and too hot on my head. And I won’t, in frustration, ask my son to shave it off (again, we’ll leave that story for another day).

Coming back!