PROGRESS!!!

I always feel self conscious when I am eating out with people when I ask for a substitute for the fresh green salad part of the meal. Even since the cancer, I just haven't been able to digest raw vegetables. I know that lettuce will go straight through me untouched, and will cause a great deal of distress along the way.

I joke about the fact that I can eat any junk food highly processed not good for you thing without trouble, but healthy food and I don't agree. I have a license to refuse tossed salads. I have been working on changing that. I started with cooked veggies and fruits. I found after awhile I could manage limited portions from time to time.

Then I added in fresh uncooked fruit - maybe once a week. Some fruits I can tolerate, others I avoid. Once in a great while, when I know I don't have anything special planned, I try something on my taboo list just to see if I am getting better. Its been less than encouraging.

So I focused on making sure I take a good multiple vitamin, drinking herbal tea, sometimes having some fruit juice (stopped trying to do veggie juices - just too harsh for me).

Well, today I went to a faculty luncheon/discussion. The administration treats you to a free lunch at the dining hall, and you join your colleagues in thinking about some aspect of higher education - be it the value of liberal arts, the problems of grade inflation, the styles of learning, how to reach the struggling student, etc.

I find the discussion engaging and thought provoking, so I try to attend as many as my schedule allows. I have learned what I can eat in the dining hall which will not create problems for me, and I usually find things I enjoy and can handle.

Well, they have this wrap bar, and they make the wraps to order. I can ask for all meat, cheese, seasonings, rice - stuff I can digest easily. So that's where I headed. But today it was a meatless day. Veggie wraps only. Yikes!

I looked at the raw spinach, the cucumbers and tomatoes, the sprouts. I had only a moment to decide - there was a line behind me, and all the stations had lines. I had seen the main entree for the day and I knew better, so I gulped and got the veggie wrap.

Man did that taste good! I had warned myself not to eat the whole wrap, but it tasted so green and alive! At least Fridays are usually slow in the library, so if I spent the afternoon running to the bathroom, it wouldn't be too much of an impact, even though I am on reference desk all afternoon. And tomorrow is Saturday, so I could spend the day in the bathroom if need be.

I fully expected the cramping and diarrhea to start within the hour, as it always did. But the discussion ended, I returned to the desk, helped some students, and still felt fine. What was this? I remained skeptical, sure that at any moment, the torture would begin. Three o'clock, four - still doing fine.

In fact, the deluge never hit. Everything remained normal - NORMAL! How great is that! I do not press my luck too quickly. But I am dancing at the thought of doing that again. Oh, to eat a salad without repercussion. What joy! If all remains well, I will definitely try that next week. Could it be? Is my interior improving? I am almost afraid to hope.