It’s 3:45am.
I’ve been lying in bed, wide awake, for 30 minutes.
All I can think about is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I cannot tell you the last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
But I can tell you that I need one right now.
There’s just one problem:
I have no jelly.
Or peanut butter.
Also, I don’t like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
And it’s not a good idea to eat within two hours of bedtime—
let alone at 3:45am.
But I get up anyway.
I walk downstairs in the dark, open the fridge, find a piece of white bread, grab the almond butter, get a knife out of the drawer, spread it on, and eat it standing in the middle of my kitchen.
Then I go back upstairs
and fall right back asleep.
—
Fortunately, I am not pregnant.
Unfortunately, I have two cancers.
—
Two weeks and two days before this incident, my colorectal oncologist put me on a “low-residue diet” due to the pain and significant bleeding I was experiencing.
We couldn’t let any bulk pass through my system until my bowel habits became more “normal”—whatever “normal” means—and the bleeding significantly decreased. The bleeding has led to mild anemia, which is keeping me from doing healthy things like movement or getting out and seeing people—and could also keep me from getting chemo… which increases the risk of death.
So, like everything in this process, you can do one of two things:
- Take the shitty option
- Die
So. Low residue it is.
And I am pissed.
—
This is what you can eat on a low-residue diet:
White flour (white bread, pasta)
White rice
Crackers
Cream of wheat
No-fiber cereals (Rice Krispies)
Meats (to tolerance)
Dairy (to tolerance)
Eggs
Vegetables (well-cooked, soft, no skins): beets, mushrooms, asparagus tips, overly cooked green beans, zucchini, cooked carrots, potatoes (white)
Fruits (canned, cooked, no seeds): bananas, applesauce, pears, peaches
Fats: oils, butter, creamy nut butters
Avoid: raw vegetables, whole grains, nuts/seeds (except smooth butters), beans/lentils, corn, popcorn
—
This is what I normally eat:
Raw vegetables, whole grains, nuts/seeds, beans/lentils, corn, popcorn.
(OK, and meat and Greek yogurt and cottage cheese and the fats listed above and eggs.)
Here’s what I do not eat in real life: white flour anything, cream of wheat, cereal, overly cooked vegetables, fruit from cans.
The look I gave my oncologist when he told me I needed to go on this diet must have been… special… because he immediately said, “I know, I know—it goes against everything we know about nutrition. But it’s only for a few weeks.”
A few weeks?!
I literally did not know how I was going to do this.
Other than… you just do it.
Because I would like to beat cancer.
Which, I hear, requires eating.
—
So, I ate:
Eggs on white toast with a little avocado (mini cheat for fat)
Eggs, white toast with banana and a little almond butter (mini cheat for fat and protein)
Chicken on white bread
Pita crackers with labneh
Smoothies: Fairlife with chocolate protein powder (cheat for protein + iron) and banana; coconut water with banana, pear, vanilla protein powder
Burrito: flour tortilla, chicken, overly cooked peppers, white rice, Greek yogurt
Chicken noodle soup
Annie’s cheddar squares
Saltines with mashed avocado
Coffee with collagen powder and creamer
Salmon with white rice (add ghee) and overly cooked green beans
White pasta with marinara (cheat), bison, sautéed mushrooms, olives
Electrolytes
Bone broth
—
Other than the nausea days, I suppose the low residue diet wasn’t terrible.
But I felt terrible.
My body—which went from living on Sweetgreen, Cava, sushi, Greek yogurt with protein granola and berries, salads, Banza pasta, vegetables, fruit, high protein, fiber close to 25g/day—was furious.
But all I could do was my best with the cards I’d been dealt.
—
Then the Friday before the Peanut Butter and Jelly Incident and I crashed.
I had just had a very good four days. Almost all of my fatigue and nausea from chemo week were gone.
But that morning, I got up, couldn’t stay standing, laid back down, and the only way to describe how I felt was starving. So weak. Lightheaded.
Like many times before, I wasn’t sure how I’d make it downstairs—let alone make myself food. It felt dangerous to stand. Dangerous to be on stairs.
(This is one of the parts of going through cancer treatment as a single person that really sucks. No built-in food-preparer or deliverer.)
But you have to do it. Because it’s dangerous to not listen to your body. Not to feed it when it’s hungry.
Which is how we arrive at 3:45am and a “peanut butter and jelly sandwich” that isn’t.
From that Friday through the incident and into my next infusion day, if I was awake, I was eating. Still low-residue. Adding fat wherever I could.
By the time I got to day one of my next chemo round, I felt… moderately okay.
And I know I’ll get knocked down again.
But we’ve gotten through it before.
And we’ll do it again.
—
That weekend, I call my best friend Lyndsay—who has a master’s in nutrition and built me the best post-surgical healing plan I can no longer eat. It was gorgeous.
“I feel like crap and I can’t figure out why,” I tell her. “I think it’s this stupid diet. I’m so tired and so hungry. Or maybe it’s lingering chemo. Or because I hardly ate those days. Or maybe it’s the anemia. Or the fact that I had major surgery less than six weeks ago.”
I’m trying to solve it so I can fix it.
A classic Alli coping skill.
And also, very human.
And she says:
“It could be one or all of those things, but I don’t think the goal is to feel good right now, Alli.”
She’s right.
The goal right now is to survive.
Even if it means breaking every rule you’ve ever been taught.
P.S. I now sleep with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on my nightstand.
