(Original title – The Forbidden Forest)

Do you know the thing that sucks the most about all this cancer bullshit, more than the whole “I’m actually going to die” part?

(Yes, actually, legitimately more than that.)

The thing that sucks the most is that chemo can cause your digestion to slow right down. Why does this suck the most? Because I want to eat all the food, and I can’t. Why? Because my stomach is constantly full to bursting. It doesn’t empty properly, which means reflux, and heartburn, and indigestion, and not being able to eat or drink because every time I do I am literally feeling like I am going to vomit from being so full for about six hours. Currently, while writing this, it has been nine hours since I last ate and I am still feeling full.

Sometimes anxiety does this to you, but for me this is definitely chemo. It’s been going on now for about five days, and I’m hoping it eases off soon because I would like my ability to enjoy food back again, thanks.

That said, it doesn’t really stop me from eating if I really, really want something, like tacos or burgers or fried chicken. I just pay for it with pain and shortness of breath and discomfort and burning my throat with stomach acid.

It’s only a relatively new phenomena that’s occurred over the past 6 weeks or so.

My tastebuds, like my hair, seem to be recovering now. I still can’t taste garlic, and I’m pretty sure that my first meal when I realise my tastebuds are back in action is going to be an entire loaf of the most garlicy, buttery garlic bread imaginable (so maybe don’t go offering to join me for that venture). There’s nothing else that I’m currently really missing the taste of, except for maybe New York cheesecake. I can taste a full cup of coffee these days (previously I was getting halfway through a latte and it would turn into coffee scented warm milk with sugar), so I know not too much longer and I should be in flavour country and grossing everybody out with my garlic breath and regretting nothing.

(Maybe the garlic bread will even have some parmesan grilled onto it.)

It is the strangest sensation to have a food craving and have the memory of what that food tastes like, and then eating that food and it not being anything remotely close to what it should be. It is disappointment beyond anything I have ever been disappointed in before, past boyfriends included. It smells the same, and looks the same, and it’s like in the time between spearing food on your fork and it hitting your tongue someone has done the old switcheroo and replaced your delicious meal with cardboard. There’s texture, and there’s some taste, but it’s just not right. It makes me want to cry.

One would think that it would drive me to lose my appetite, and not bother with food at all until my tastebuds come back, like my stomach going on strike. And for any logical person, that would probably be the case. Barring having open, bleeding sores covering the entire inside of my mouth, I don’t think anything will keep me from eating food. I eat because the clock says breakfast is when I wake up, and then 10am is a cup of tea, and sometime around 12pm is lunch time, and 3pm is time for another cup of tea and maybe a biscuit if I have any in the house, from 6pm is time to be eating dinner or at the very least preparing it, and 9pm is yogurt and strawberry time. My whole day revolves around food, which is why not being able to eat it on my regular schedule is extremely annoying. Life is just what happens between meals.

I’m waiting to hear what my dietitian says about what I should do on these days, where I basically get one and a half meals in and don’t want to force myself to eat because I can’t handle the pain of having food in my belly. Drinking meals doesn’t help either, because it all just sits there, and burns, and taunts me, and reminds me that my body is constantly thinking of new and creative ways to torture me and make this experience the worst thing ever.

Any recommendations for meals for the triumphant return of my tastebuds is greatly appreciated. People keep asking me what I’m going to eat first, and basically I feel like there are too many options that I’m just not thinking about, and I should make a list, but I don’t know where to start.

(Allergies include shellfish, peanuts and pistachios. Try not to suggest food that will kill me.)