What's Cooking?

It seems a strange thing to write about on a blog that is for people who physically struggle to eat, but cooking is something that can either be a Gastroparesis sufferer's worst nightmare, or their most therapeutic experience of food.

 
If you google 'Gastroparesis' and 'Cooking' you are presented with a vast array of fragile tummy-safe recipes, juicing programs and Pinterest boards filled with every variation of puréed food photographable.   What you won't find much of is people talking about the actual process and experience of cooking when you suffer from a condition that often makes just the thought of food nauseating.

 

Before I had my first feeding tube placed I could not tolerate the smell of food, never mind the look of it.  Cafes, restaurants, even the smell of a Sunday roast wafting down from my neighbour's flat above would have me running to grab my 'purple bucket'.  However, once I settled into tube-feeding (I have a tube into my jejunum/small intestine that delivers pre-digested food 24hrs/day) I can now create those food-related aromas myself in one of my favourite new past times - cooking.
 
I know what it is about cooking that I enjoy so much.  It's not the recipe solving, it's not the multi-tasking.  It's not even the result of producing a perfectly presented plate that would give the Masterchef bunch a run for their money.  It is simply being around food that makes it so pleasurable.  Touching it, smelling it and knowing it's not going to result in severe stomach pain, hours of vomiting and non-stop, gut wrenching nausea.  I can experience food, be around food and appreciate food once more - maybe not in the usual sense, but in a non-eating sense, my sense.

 

Food, or more importantly, our relationship with food, is one of the most basic fundamentals of being human.  We need food and we know that from the moment of birth.  As babies we cry until we are fed and our hunger is satisfied, when we are adults we know when to eat and what to eat.  We have a very deep, intimate relationship with food that brings us pleasure even if we are smearing it all over the walls with toddler-fuelled delight.  As babies, we experience a lot of the world around us by tasting things.  Food, and eating, is one of our most important discoveries and also our biggest non-human comforter.  We form a dependant and positive relationship with food that should be life-long.

 

When we are unable to gain pleasure from eating, that relationship is broken and the results can be very damaging.  To hate something, because it causes us pain, even though we are entirely dependant on it, causes great conflict emotionally and psychologically.  It is important to regain some form of healthy relationship where possible with food.  Cooking, for some people with Gastroparesis, is the best way they can rebuild that broken relationship and once again develop an emotionally healthy experience with food.
 
With Christmas fast approaching I have the ultimate in cooking experience to prepare for. The Christmas dinner!  However, Christmas dinner is one meal, one concoction of aromas that still churns my stomach and triggers my intense nausea.  So how can I get through one of the most difficult times of the year for a Gastroparesis sufferer and still cook?
 
As it is just my partner and myself we have opted for having our Christmas dinner a week early. That way, if cooking does make me sick, I have enough time to rest and recover before the big day itself.  Unlike people who are living with Gastroparesis while parenting children, I don't have a family placing all their Christmas cheer on my shoulders at lunchtime.

 

We have also opted for a safer meal preparation and eating experience:

 
1)No foods that I can't be around - turnip and mash potato are on my evil food list, even for cooking.

2)As I can eat a small amount on good days I will enjoy a Carrie-size portion of Carrie-safe foods while wearing my paper hat.

3)No starter or desert.  I'm just focussing on the essentials, turkey, potatoes and gravy.

4) I have a facemask should I struggle with the smells - I will look like a festive extra from Holby City.

4)My partner does the washing up - mushed up/left over food on a plate is a nausea trigger for me.

5)Plenty of time to sit and rest afterwards by ourselves so my body can digest the best it can.

6)An emergency bag of oven chips and a chicken burger in the freezer for my partner should I not manage and my Gastroparesis wins.

 

Even though we cannot often eat what we create, it is important to allow those of us who can, to cook.  We need the experience of being with food, having contact with food and dealing with food.  It is important that we are allowed to form a positive relationship with food despite not being able to enjoy eating it, in order to fulfil our basic human needs. 

 

Gastroparesis may be the end of eating for some people, but it does not mean the end of experiencing food.

 

**Update**

 

Well our (early) Christmas dinner was a success...sort of.

I managed quite well with the cooking until the turkey and pigs in blankets started to mix their aromas together.  My facemask was worn with festive pride and I had to take a combination of three different anti-nausea medications to get everything to the table.  I only got to eat half of what I had planned for myself but my partner polished off the rest with great gusto. I felt quite lousy afterwards and spent the following day in bed with my faithful purple bucket and a hot water bottle for the severe stomach pain. 

 

I’m still feeling rather tender three days later but at the end of the day I came, I cooked, I conquered!

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Carrie