Juicers, healthy lifestyles, depression, and breast cancer treatment

For two weeks I’ve been in hiding. Some days I could hardly stand to speak. I spent far too much time in the prone position, sulking and sleeping. Naturally, loss of energy (to where everything becomes overwhelming in extremis), loss of giving a dam about anything, and the eating of comfort foods were in the mix. My existence had been reduced to naught but a wretched digestive tract – with raging hunger, heartburn, bloating in the torso such that I could hardly bend, and flatulence the likes of which you really don’t want to hear about. A fifteen-pound weight gain, puffy eyes, and the fact my jeans HURT didn’t help either. One tends to remain in pajamas when this happens.

My depression got to the point where even my oblivious-to-emotional-queues husband took note. When I finally broke down and shared the shit-thoughts going through my head, he urged me to take control. His immediate reaction was goading me into taking a walk, during which we took turns wiping tears from our cheeks as we wallowed in vulnerability and honesty about the way things were going. Then he surprised me by rather strongly suggesting I get my meds for depression adjusted. I hate admitting it’s come to that (yet again), but I made the call to get the ball rolling yesterday.

So that’s the cancer-treatment update -- except to add that yesterday the dark clouds magically went away. Whether it was the walk, the talk, or the plan to fix things that did it, I cannot discern. I prefer to think it was the simple fact that I fired up our new juicer yesterday morning and had two huge glasses of veggie-fruit juice before heading off to my echocardiogram and weekly chemo (an 8:45 to 4:30 day at the Martha). I’d been a little bit afraid of starting the juice regimen in the midst of my digestive challenges, but I decided it couldn’t get much worse, so gave it a whirl.

Now here’s where I’d like to give credit to Joshua and Jacob (my sons) for their radical healthy lifestyle changes this past year. My role? Cheerleader -- with a bit of good advice thrown in: “Do as I say, not as I do.” Mother of the year, I ain’t.

Juicers

I have no idea if people use juicers. I certainly am unaware of anyone, except my son Jake, who uses one. But seeing his health improve over recent months has been inspiring. I ordered up his model, Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer from Amazon.com.

Yesterday’s first recipe: Nine carrots, five apples, 7 huge strawberries, and a large handful of garden-fresh green beans. (I must admit, it’s fun to use a juicer. Juice pours from a spout on one side and pulp drops into a bag-lined bin on the other. Even the sound is promising.)

This mix yielded five cups of juice and four cups of pulp. The juice was amazingly sweet and tasty (as in “any kid would love it”) and I had none of my digestive tract miseries the entire day. After the long day at The Martha, I got to work baking 20 very dense, delicious muffins using the four cups of pulp, honey, applesauce, nutmeg and cinnamon. They were so good (yes, even with green bean pulp!) that I devoured two in a row as soon as they came out of the oven. I thought for a minute I’d once again wreaked havoc on my digestive system, but fortunately it was time for the brisk walk I’d also promised myself and no harm was done.

As a coincidental reinforcement of the health reforms I’d been contemplating throughout my day at The Martha, I watched a documentary called “Forks Over Knives” that Jake recommended. Without much of an introduction as to what I was ordering up on streaming Netflix, it turned out to be a totally fascinating history of the way diet has affected major health problems the world over. If you’ve ever wondered why we are fat and sick in America and why our health care costs are out of control, I challenge you to watch “Forks Over Knives.” You WILL think about it the following day, guaranteed.

RAS: Your email saying you were patiently waiting for a blog update went on my list of "really nice things that happened today."