When You Can't Finish Your Food--You Can Still Be Thankful for Smell

This morning, I went ahead and ate a piece of toast with my eggs and olives and sprouts. 

At least I tried to eat it. 

It was Ezekiel bread, made from sprouted grain, and I thought I could eat toast when I am still queasy from cancer drugs and can hardly stomach the raw foods I'm supposed to eat.

As you can see, I didn't finish my breakfast.  

And it was perfectly delicious, too. I really do like Ezekiel bread. 

But my appetite has kind of gone down into the pits of the amethyst mine that we read is up near here in the boon docks of Four Peaks, which we can see from our window.

I did manage to eat the four olives, because the doctor says I should eat ten olives a day as they will help keep my cancer from building a resistance to the herceptin drug I'm getting weekly. So I divide that up between three meals--three or four olives a meal.

If I can eat four at breakfast, that leaves only three each I have to eat at lunch and supper. (Yeah, I'm shrewd that way.) 

And this morning, when I remembered that Jonathan had bought me some homeopathic nausea med, I went ahead and chewed one. 

It helped. 

 When I was first making the drastic diet changes that this clinic recommends, I was having a hard time eating raw salads, lentil sprouts, fermented cabbage, and walnut/mushroom patties the clinic served while people around me were eating ordinary, yummy food. 

Jonathan has been amazing about trying to eat some of the clinic food that I can't eat, and not eating nice stuff in front of me too much, but sometimes it just can't be helped that I get stuck with chia porridge or avocado and egg or celery and almond butter for breakfast while the children who were here eat toast or cereal, and Jonathan drinks coffee and occasionally eats toast--or the coffee cake that our neighbor here brought over. 

Someone had given her this luscious box of apple cinnamon coffee cake triangles, blueberry coffee cake, and cherry coffee cake.

She had no idea about the dietary restriction of the clinic.  She was just being sweet and sharing.

Jonathan was driving us to the clinic that morning, and I opened the box. 

Ohhh, I can't begin to describe how good those triangles of coffee cake looked and smelled!

And I realized something all over again.

I realized I could still enjoy smelling that wonderful, generous coffee cake. 

I smelled and smelled. 

I oohed and I ahhed.

I gasped and chortled about the kind neighbor and smelled and looked again.

I asked Jonathan which piece he wanted and helped him get one and refused to have a pity party for myself.

 It is so miserable to have a pity party. 

It is so much happier to be thankful for my sense of smell.

Thank You, Lord! I get to smell popcorn, and coffee cake, and cinnamon raisin toast, and coffee with cream. 

I even get to eat some popcorn, too, (because I made a decision on my own that it was okay).

I get to smell the flowers Jonathan bought me, and the flowering bushes along the way.

I get to smell so many good things.

I get to be thankful instead of pitiful.

Thank You!