Eating On Vacation

The guild of eating what you want when you travel

You get diagnosed with cancer and your whole world temporarily seems to stop rotating.

You go through treatment, while laying in bed watching people you may or may not know traveling the world, going on vacations you could only dream of. Meanwhile you are too busy being poisoned with drugs to get you healthy and fighting for your life to even think about what to pack, where to go, and what to wear, least of all how you would make it through an airport.

After months of this, it’s finally your turn. So what next?

Well, let me tell you my story about my first vacation after cancer.

My son Luca is in his 3rd year at college and is doing a semester abroad in Barcelona. He has been traveling around all of Europe on the weekends, exploring the world with his friends and truly living his very best life. Learning about food, culture and photography ( he took the photo at the top of this essay) from around the world. So off we went to visit him. I did all the things before my trip. Went to the weekly doctor’s appointment to get my bloodwork done. These appointments are moving to every other week, so I scheduled one for the day I get home so as not to miss a thing. My white blood cell count was pretty low, so the doctor decided to lower my dose of Lynparza from 450mg to 300. One pill in the morning and one pill at night.

After days of running around, packing, and organizing. Are you really ever ready for a vacation unless you’ve done every last errand that has been waiting for months, because God forbid it should have to wait a week longer. We were ready to go. The travel day was long. After 20 hours, 2 flights, and a couple of trains and automobiles, we arrived in Barcelona, ready to explore. That’s when the anxiety started to kick in. Now, there’s a lot you cannot control in life. In relation to cancer, food is one thing you do have some control over. What you choose to put in your body can in fact make a difference in the landscape of your insides. So what happens when you are far away from your fridge and left to rely on restaurants and cafes? And how do you balance living and enjoying life with thoughts floating around your head like, “ice cream is bad for you, don’t do it”?

So here we are. On vacation. Eating and exploring with nowhere to be and nothing to do. Yet every night I get into bed with remorse over the ice cream I chose to eat, the snacks in cafes in the late afternoon, and the late-night dinners. When all I want to do is run to the doctor for bloodwork to make sure everything is okay and that I have not caused anything bad, like the cancer coming back. I know it’s irrational, but it is the truth. I don’t have an eating disorder, I never have. But do I have major anxiety around food and life right now? Absolutely.

So for anyone laying in bed looking through their phone, wishing they were exploring the world — being out here is great. Like anything on Instagram, it’s not as good as it looks. It’s complicated and scary. Yes, I have eaten ice cream every single day, because I am on vacation and the world continued to turn and every night I still got into bed filled with fear and dread.

I want to live fully and at the same time I am terrified.