Appetite

December 29, 2009

I bit off a piece of banana this morning and chewed it, deliberate bites. The bitterness lingered on my teeth after I had swallowed. Too green. Ick. And the memory of eating bananas (for the potassium and for the binding properties) took me to another place.

Deliberate bites. That's what you do when you have no appetite. You chew your food, longer than you should, because you don't want to swallow. Swallowing is hard to do. You can't even really tell if there's flavor in the food or not. Texture means nothing any more. You struggle with thoughts of the food getting lodged in your intestine. That would cause pain and possibly a hospitalization. So you chew. And you chew. And as you sit at your meal that takes longer than a meal has ever taken before, you begin to feel warmth against your side. You feel something move there, next to your skin, and you realize that the food that you have been eating for probably half an hour is now exiting your body, there at your stomach. And you try not to picture the liquid that quite possibly still has color or shape or even smell of the food you just put into your mouth, emptying into the bag that you are very aware of hanging off your stomach. And you know that it won't be long before you'll have to sit down on the toilet and open the end of the bag to empty the contents into the toilet, because you can feel the bag filling up. And when it's full, you head to the bathroom. You wad up toilet paper and put it in the toilet first. You learned the hard way that if you don't do that, you'll experience a little too up-close-and-personally what "backsplash" means. You unclip the plastic clip that miraculously keeps the bag closed. You fold the edges of the bag back over itself and with a quick, masterful motion point the bag into the toilet. And if the contents were liquid, then the bag is now empty. But if you ate something, like a banana or white bread, the contents probably didn't just empty easily into the toilet. No, in that case you have to push the contents out, as you would toothpaste from a tube, only your bag is many times larger than a tube of toothpaste. The bag is empty, but you're not done yet. You have to make sure the edges of the bag are clean so it won't smell. So you take toilet paper and fold it just so - the perfect shape to clean out the inside edges of the bag. And you wipe the bag off. And you hold it up because you can already feel it starting to fill again, and you clip the plastic clip over the end to keep it closed. And you know you'll be back here in an hour or so, doing the same thing again. But maybe, just maybe if you don't eat anything, you'll get a break. Because who wants to eat anyway?

Subsequent thoughts:

*I'm so thankful to have my appetite again and to be back at my "normal" weight. I didn't know until I lost my appetite how truly important the pleasure of food is.

*There was a time when I was pretty proud of how quickly I could manage this routine.

*Big deal Abby. Everyone goes to the bathroom. Your way was just a little different.

*I could do it again if I had to. I could.