Cancer 144

I sometimes think I am the fattest cancer patient around. All this talk of how people with cancer lose their appetite just passes me by. I don’t think I am following the rules. Even though my cancer is food-related, or at least food-processing-relating, ie bowel cancer, I still want to eat continually. If I am going to die at 61 or 62 then I am missing out 20 odd years of eating then I am making up for it by eating several times the amount of food I need.

It doesn’t help being in Germany, where they have some of the finest food in the world. Forget Italy or the Mediterranean diet, this is proper food. I detest fish in the Mediterranean but here on the Baltic it is delicious, either fried or smoked. Germany has the best sausages, a great love of pork, excellent cakes, and a good idea of portion size, ie not some pathetic attempt at making the plate look pretty by leaving most of it bare, but filling it with fried potatoes cooked with pieces of bacon, along with several chunks of fired fish and a spoonful of salad. If you think cake portions are a good size in the UK think again, the Germans must have a knife shortage because their cakes are only cut into a few portions.

Eating too much isn’t a problem if one gets enough exercise, but unfortunately a good walk for me is about a kilometre, then I need a good rest. Everyone around here is biking around, which I would love to do but I would struggle even with an electric bike. Most of my exercise consists of pressing the pedals of my car, and even there it is problematic beause it is an automatic (don’t get me on automatics. A dreadful invention, meaning poorer control and a less smooth ride. I have no idea why they are popular because it takes more effort to drive them well than a real car with three pedals).

My other excuse for over-eating is that many of my pleasures in life have been taken away, by which I mean alcohol. If I can’t drink alcohol, which I can’t, then I will overindulge in chocolate and cake, and meat, and fried potatoes, and bacon (which is meat acceptable to a vegetarian, like ham), and so on.

I have been supported in my diet-free attitude by the nurses in hospital who have encouraged me not to diet – another of the many advantages of having cancer – because in the end I will lose my appetite and having a few extra kilograms will keep me alive longer – the inevitability of death being one of the many disadvantages of cancer.

Never mind, I have nothing to lose. I have just eaten a very good three course breakfast, consisting of sausage and scrambled egg with bread, yoghurt and fruit, a sort of sausage croissant thing and half a chocolate croissant, with tea and orange juice. We are now going to have a ‘long’ walk and later we have neck cutlets of pork with potatoes and cabbage. Perhaps while we are out we might indulge in cake or perhaps a fish cob, who knows?