It Might Get Messy


But sometimes, you learn to count your blessings. Having had my feeding tube yanked out and a pleasant and productive week in Germany, I made it home for the weekend. Then left on Monday for the Philippines.


It’s been a long time since I was in Asia. Long enough to forget what real poverty and bad hotels are all about. Now I remember. 


But realizing that your life could be (a lot) worse doesn’t pump in the calories needed to maintain weight, much less survive. Whether my life looks good or bad in comparison to others I still gotta eat.


And that, of course, is an ongoing problem. In Germany I warmed up on asparagus soup and ice cream for a couple of days before I managed to start choking down pasta, sausages, sauerkraut, smoked fish, stuffed crepes, liver dumplings, and spatzle. After a week of such abuse, my throat was sore but I had lost only a few pounds. Despite long days and some hard hiking in Berlin.


What the hell, I wondered while my throat recovered over the weekend, am I going to eat in the Philippines? The flight over wasn’t encouraging—neither the Korean stir-fry with pickles and hot sauce nor the pasta with cheese and tomato sauce went down very well. Fortunately at the Inchon Airport, there were Haagen Daas ice cream bars and Sprite. In Manila that night, and Mindanao next day, it looked like panic time from the food perspective.


Not to worry. I found sotanghon noodles. They’re the skinny, transparent glass noodles often served in Chinese restaurants. They seem to be ubiquitous here, with dark sauce and seafood and/or pork and vegetables. And damned if they don’t slide right down my throat, past the shards of my esophagus, aided by slurps of bottled water. My throat feels good enough to allow me to sample the other stuff on the table, and I get the bulk of my calories from glass noodles. Last night, just to change it up, I had the poached eggs parmesan at the quirky local place next door to our bad hotel. That went down ok as well.

Above photo of life-saving sotanghon noodles. These babies slide down an esophagus-less throat like greased eels. As if I knew what greased eels would feel like on my throat. Wait, I DO know! I’ve eaten eel larvae and juveniles in olive oil and garlic in Spanish restaurants from Newark to…uh…Spain. So there!


So now that I can feed myself, I’m back to the usual problems. Need to exercise my mouth, tongue, neck and shoulders. Need to wear my lymphedema remediation mask for as many hours a day as possible. Need to get myself back in shape. Blahblahblahblahblah. Because I’m in a city of half a million people, most of whom have REAL problems. 


If you want to make cancer recovery seem like watching TV on a weekend night, I recommend travel to impoverished parts of Asia. You’ll be a lot more positive about your life, whatever your issues are!


Thanks for being here, everybody. The first travelogue from the Philippines will go up this weekend on top of the German stuff over at http://docviper.livejournal.com/. Professional weblog still happening weekly at http://aehsfoundation.org . Love to all!