What Food Can Teach You

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Abstract

ly not stop for weeks.Back then, I was working for the small, but charming Vineyard Square Hotel in Edgartown, Massachusetts, USA. After the pain had occurred I went twice to the emergency room in the local hospital. They ran some tests and told me I’d be okay in a couple of weeks and it was nothing to worry about. I was somewhat relieved.However, things didn’t go as planned. I realized there was a lot to worry about. On my way back to Bulgaria, I almost cried in the plane due to the pain in the intestines area. Two weeks after I came back home I had barely eaten and drunk anything; and apparently my hemoglobin had dropped sharply, causing anemia. Thus I had to be hospitalized.For 14 days the doctors did not know what was going in my body, as I had been bleeding from an unconventional place. The diagnosis was chronic ulceric colitis. In basic terms, your colon is inflamed, which causes it to bleed. Sometimes a lot, depending on the activity level. It’s also an autoimmune disease, which means the immune system attacks the healthy tissues of the colon.All this meant that I should change my life — this is where the food comes in. Along with the 22 pills I had to intake every day for the first two months, sticking to a strict diet and carefully picking what to eat was the other equally important thing I had to do in order to fight the disease. By strict diet I mean that everyday for a couple of months I had to choose between pasta, boiled potatoes, cheese, and occasionally overcooked chicken, along with super dry plain biscuits.Clearly, options were limited. Alongside the usual tastiness and high amounts of carbs, I was not supposed to intake any v

Options

itamins and minerals whatsoever.As I look back at these times I can see that it was pretty easy to just give up, which would ultimately have made things worse. As of today, researchers can’t find out what causes the disease, but it’s claimed that stress is a huge factor. Nevertheless, I knew that times would come when I would be able to eat my favorite meatballs again.As I mentioned in the beginning, this story is not about how eating good food reminds me of something; in my case, not eating food reminds me of everything. As time went on, I got better and by doing small steps I started integrating more and more items into my diet, such as chocolate, butter, and beef.I won’t lie — I was complaining a lot in the beginning, I was fed up by all of the potatoes I had to eat. Nevertheless, this deprivation made me stronger; and also made the food I’d taste later in the future taste like heaven. You can’t imagine the joy I felt when I had my first quarter of an apple a few months ago. Godlike taste. Not to mention watermelon, although I’m still not 100 percent sure whether it’s good for me to eat it.All of this taught me that complaints and tears have no place among chronic diseases. At the end of the day, life is suffering, as written by one of the giants on Russian Literature Leo Tolstoy, and acknowledged and stated directly & indirectly by most religions. So, I think in order to make life not a constant suffer, you either suck it all up, put your shit together, and stop complaining of how bad your situation is, how unfair the world is, or how God punishes you…or you will end up at the bottom.</article></body>

What I’ve learned about life through food

The following paragraphs you are about to read do not tell the ordinary story of how people usually associate food with pleasant experiences, places, and people. Of course, we have all had bad experiences with the stuff we’ve eaten, but generally when we are being asked to talk about a certain type of food we’ve had, we tend to think of moments when we were satisfied by it. I too have had such pleasant experiences, however, recently I’ve had a love-hate relationship with food.

If I had been asked 20 months ago to talk about food, I’m certain that I would’ve told a story how a certain dish reminded me of my grandparents’ old house and my burden-free childhood, a bit portion of which I managed to get through eating only home-grown, soaked in sunflower oil — fried potatoes — cooked by my adorable grandmother. But I was not asked back then. That’s why I write about it now.

I needed 20 months of deprivation, pain, and suffering to start valuing food; and gladly, I’ve never felt better when eating it. In the beginning of August, 2018, two weeks before my birthday, while I was doing my daily routine of folding bed sheets in the boiling hot, awfully humid basement in the hotel I worked at, I felt sharp pain in the intestines area, which would eventually not stop for weeks.

Back then, I was working for the small, but charming Vineyard Square Hotel in Edgartown, Massachusetts, USA. After the pain had occurred I went twice to the emergency room in the local hospital. They ran some tests and told me I’d be okay in a couple of weeks and it was nothing to worry about. I was somewhat relieved.

However, things didn’t go as planned. I realized there was a lot to worry about. On my way back to Bulgaria, I almost cried in the plane due to the pain in the intestines area. Two weeks after I came back home I had barely eaten and drunk anything; and apparently my hemoglobin had dropped sharply, causing anemia. Thus I had to be hospitalized.

For 14 days the doctors did not know what was going in my body, as I had been bleeding from an unconventional place. The diagnosis was chronic ulceric colitis. In basic terms, your colon is inflamed, which causes it to bleed. Sometimes a lot, depending on the activity level. It’s also an autoimmune disease, which means the immune system attacks the healthy tissues of the colon.

All this meant that I should change my life — this is where the food comes in. Along with the 22 pills I had to intake every day for the first two months, sticking to a strict diet and carefully picking what to eat was the other equally important thing I had to do in order to fight the disease. By strict diet I mean that everyday for a couple of months I had to choose between pasta, boiled potatoes, cheese, and occasionally overcooked chicken, along with super dry plain biscuits.

Clearly, options were limited. Alongside the usual tastiness and high amounts of carbs, I was not supposed to intake any vitamins and minerals whatsoever.

As I look back at these times I can see that it was pretty easy to just give up, which would ultimately have made things worse. As of today, researchers can’t find out what causes the disease, but it’s claimed that stress is a huge factor. Nevertheless, I knew that times would come when I would be able to eat my favorite meatballs again.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this story is not about how eating good food reminds me of something; in my case, not eating food reminds me of everything. As time went on, I got better and by doing small steps I started integrating more and more items into my diet, such as chocolate, butter, and beef.

I won’t lie — I was complaining a lot in the beginning, I was fed up by all of the potatoes I had to eat. Nevertheless, this deprivation made me stronger; and also made the food I’d taste later in the future taste like heaven. You can’t imagine the joy I felt when I had my first quarter of an apple a few months ago. Godlike taste. Not to mention watermelon, although I’m still not 100 percent sure whether it’s good for me to eat it.

All of this taught me that complaints and tears have no place among chronic diseases. At the end of the day, life is suffering, as written by one of the giants on Russian Literature Leo Tolstoy, and acknowledged and stated directly & indirectly by most religions. So, I think in order to make life not a constant suffer, you either suck it all up, put your shit together, and stop complaining of how bad your situation is, how unfair the world is, or how God punishes you…or you will end up at the bottom.