Everyone that knows me, knows I am a total foodie! I love food!

One problem that I have though is that I am gluten and lactose free, not due to any health kick or fad diet but due to the fact both these things make me very ill if I digest it, I will not go into detail in what way, let’s just say it’s not pretty and quite painful. This being said it does not stop me from obsessing over food. I like most foods and am happy to try most foods once. Many foods I didn’t like a couple of years ago I now love.

Where we live we are lucky to have so many lovely places to go eat out and thankfully so many places are aware of allergies that I get to enjoy going out for food like everyone else. We have an in joke with one of my groups of friends that you can get Kekezza bingo when you go out with me, a full house includes the following. Having trouble choosing what to eat, me taking a photo of my food when it comes and finally my happy food dance! If you get all three, you have full house! Random but funny and it’s true I often remember a night out or place from the food we had there. Food is my trigger for memories nowadays.

So why am I telling you all this, I just want you to understand how much I love food, I work my day around what I eat or thinking what I am going to eat next, even if currently eating. So imagine all this and then having chemo.

Chemo makes you feel so queasy and sick and makes you not want food as you don’t know if you can stomach it and because you don’t fancy it! This makes me feel like I have lost half my personality! Me not wanting food is wrong! Me not knowing what I want for food or having very little ideas of what I want for food is wrong! So very wrong…

Also with chemo your immune system becomes virtually not existent, this causes many problems. Not being able to go out in public spaces in case people are ill as you could catch something and if you do it could be deadly depending on the thing you catch, at the least if you catch something like a mild cold for someone else, a chemo patient will end up in hospital with a mild cold as your body can’t fight it without an immune system so you have to hope that doctors have something to help you… Anyway I digress, the other thing about having no immune system is that some people become something called neutropenic. This basically means you have no immune system, but if you are neutropenic you are not allowed a lot of foods! The list is long. It is basically like the pregnancy diet but extreme! The ones that most annoy me when going through chemo are having no rare steak, no prawns or fresh fish, no cream cheese (aka no cheesecake), I could list more and I mean many more but these are the items I randomly fancy more than most and I cannot sort that craving! I mean I could have a well done steak but that’s just wrong, so very wrong.

So in many ways I feel like I have lost a bit of me when I have chemo, not fancying food/not wanting food and when I can have food I can’t have what I fancy or get excited by food as it’s all pretty normal stuff. So just be thankful when you next think about a diet about these things and just enjoy what you eat but in moderation. Diets are evil things in my opinion. Exercise and healthy eating (naughty things in moderation) is the way to do it.

So I feel my lesson for you in this is don’t take things for granted. Food which is a necessity should still be enjoyed and everyone should remember that.

I love food and when having chemo miss that. I cannot wait to be able to feel properly hungry again and go to my favourite restaurant and eat everything I fancy with no restrictions. The end of chemo cannot come quick enough for so many reasons and it takes a while until your appetite is back to normal.

So enjoy food!