Come for the Chemo, Stay for the Food

Ok, it's not that good. But the improvement in the food offerings since I was here last winter are remarkable.

There is a full-page add-on to the menu — the Health and Wellness page — loaded with whole grains, legumes, baked fish, and other healthy additions to the previous menu.

There is an after-hours menu, in recognition that patients don't always get to, or want to, order food between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. We sometimes have procedures that take us away from our rooms at inconvenient times, or we might feel nauseous in the early evening.

And there are food service ambassadors who stop by every room at least once a day to ask about the food and how you're eating.

A few days into my stay, after hearing that I had little appetite, my food service visitor told me about an off-menu item that a lot of patients enjoy: homemade ginger ale, which is a small bottle of Perrier and a cup of homemade ginger syrup, so you can mix it to the strength you want. Ginger is a traditional appetite aid. The syrup is heavy on the ginger and light on the sugar, so it makes a great drink if you love ginger (which I always do) and if sugar turns you off (which it currently does). The chef also makes homemade candied ginger, which is OK but not as good as the Reed's Crystallized Ginger that my brother Karl brought me.

It is a shame that I can't really enjoy much of the new menu, since it contains so much that I was craving when I was here before. For now, there is very little that appeals to me from either the new or the old menu. The only items I actually enjoy are Cream of Wheat and grits, with a little bit of brown sugar. I force myself to eat other things — baked fish, fruit, hard-boiled eggs, hummus with veggies — because I know I need to eat a variety of foods for my own good.

The hospital does offer a couple of nutrition drinks for people who can't bring themselves to eat. One is Ensure, a protein and calorie shake available in chocolate and vanilla. The other is a Gatorade-like drink, also loaded with protein and calories. Both are very sweet, perhaps acceptably so under normal circumstances but nauseatingly so for me right now. So I had better keep putting away the bland proteins and calories I can tolerate, because I can't imagine keeping either of those drinks down.

Most of the food service improvements started a little over a month ago, when the hospital hired a new chef. What excellent timing on my part, waiting for the food service to turn around before I returned.