Ecce homo pt. 2

This reads better if you follow the standard blog route, from the top down. Ecce homo pt. 2 and then the Yuaaz Nurse.

So sometimes I despair and if I don’t write about those times I am lying. See, today as per my request, my wife brought over a couple pieces of Kenta or Kenta-kun as she calls it (kun is often a suffix used to denote boys, like when I was teaching high school the teacher addressed the boys with -kun, like Tanaka-kun or Sonoda-kun). So you extend the Kenta and you get Kentucky then you can probably guess where I'm heading. KFC. I was so looking forward to eating it. I had no illusions as to how much I could eat though, figured I would be lucky if I could gnaw a piece half way down. And that’s what I did, plus some cold somen (thin noodles) with wasabi. Better than I thought. Yea! Victory! And I don’t have any stomach problems now.

Except I started getting depressed. This was Kenta-kun! What I had been looking forward to, and when I finished eating it I felt like I never wanted to eat Kenta again. That's an exaggeration but... Kenta-kunnnn! So what do you do? I keep saying to myself my appetite is going to come back, that if I just fight the good fight, eat a little more each day, take care of my stomach, a burst of light from on high will descend upon that stomach and return my appetite and my taste to me. But I’ve been waiting for a long time now. Months, or a month and a half before returning to the hospital. At first I thought it was wholly chemo but then I find out it was all this vile matter in my abdomen building up. It started to make sense. I came out roaring pretty much, started eating pasta and everything. And then one day I eat too much and it’s never been the same again. My stomach had stopped, felt like a lead weight had replaced my insides. Now I don’t think it was because of the overeat, I mean that’s pretty scary to contemplate, I mean, if it’s that easy to fill up your abdominal cavity… but it was around that time something happened, and fill up my abdomen did. Now that’s the narrative I like. Because it means my appetite and taste directly correlate with this monster and now that it’s gone, all I have to do is wait for my stomach to settle and the cavity left behind to shrink back up and I don’t know, be a normal abdomen again and stop bothering my poor stomach? That’s what I’m pinning my hopes on, that’s my burst of light.

But like I said, sometimes I despair. When is this miracle going to happen? A real appetite seems so far removed from my life of the past couple months it’s hard to imagine it happening. In the meantime when I start to eat I feel a lid clamp down on my appetite and I'm not hungry anymore, even if I've been hungry for hours. So I get skinnier and skinnier. I mean there are hollow spots in my shoulder blades, my face is starting to feel skull-like, well, when I rub my sunken temples. But worst of all are the twigs of my legs, my thighs so convex. It’s scary, kind of disgusting to look at. So the return of my appetite becomes more than an academic worry, and I love me academic worries. If my appetite doesn’t come back, like forever, then what am I going to do? Force food down my throat to the point of vomiting. As said before, it’s my wife’s style, the Japanese style I’ve come to accept and fail at miserably. But it might become the only way, try harder and harder to stuff more food down my throat till eating becomes a joyless, mechanical, and painful routine. But hey, it’s better than turning into a skeleton. You know you’re depressed when this path seems like the more likely direction your life is going to take. 

But like I said, sometimes you get depressed, and then you take a look at your legs and you get scared.