DAY 20 - Back to the Drawing Board, Pong

PONG, the old, original video game, is, in my thinking, a metaphor for my life -- at least my life as it is right now. Do you remember PONG? I do. I was a young teen when PONG was introduced to video gaming. It was for 2 players only and, when hooked up to your TV, gave each player a simple paddle.

The paddle moved up and down and the goal was to hit (deflect) a white “ball” (in reality, a white cube) into your opponent’s court in such a way that he or she would be unable to hit it back. Think ping pong table without the excitement of actually running around a physical table. Back and forth, back and forth, and if your shot passed the other player’s paddle and went off-screen, you got a point. Really, this was actually a lot of fun, provided the game worked and your TV had a decent screen.

Of course, things have changed. Now I have a difficulty thinking of PONG as a true video game. Nevertheless, it came to mind recently. I’ve noticed (as has my wife) that I’m having some problems with this whole gastric cancer treatment thing. Not the acceptance part; I think I’ve gotten past the shock of the doctor saying, “You have cancer.” No, my problem is adjusting to a whole new diet.

It started 3 or 4 weeks ago. I’m 64. I’m not particularly tall. I’ve never been especially heavy. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I’ve stayed active and on my feet most of my life. For all those reasons, I could usually eat just about anything. (Except vanilla bean ice cream. Somehow, I’m allergic. it’s not good.) But not anymore. Here’s why.

Cancer cells reproduce more rapidly than normal body cells (sneaky little things), and they do so even more when a person takes in sugar. So, the first and easiest thing to eliminate from my diet was sugar. ‘Cept, maybe not so easy. Turns out our food manufacturing empires put sugar, in all its glorious forms, into JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING! When that fact sank in -- and believe me, it took a while -- I could almost hear the cans, boxes, and bags falling off our shelves and out of our fridge.

And then there’s salt. We all know about this one, right? Salt is both a flavoring and a preservative. In food production we add salt -- a LOT of salt -- to preserve the shelf life of a product. That’s a good thing and great for shipping and meeting the long-term needs of a nation’s food supply. But it’s not so great when we consider how much salt one person can consume in a lifetime. What preserves the product also pickles the innards.

Salt had to go, along with all the other preservatives and artificial flavorings (you really DON’T want to know where some of those come from) associated with large-scale food production. A low sodium diet became (almost) a no-sodium diet, and the rest of the pantry just fell to the floor -- along with my heart. And the fridge? You could open the door and speak into it and your voice came back as an echo. Although I did see a lone apple in the bottom of the fruits and vegetables drawer. Thank You, Lord.

Truthfully, is my new diet really that bad? No, it’s not. Fortunately for me, my wife is a great cook and she has done some AMAZING things in working up new recipes. But moving to truly organic foods is time consuming and expensive. When I stop and think about all that I can no longer eat, I sometimes get seriously depressed.

Which brings me back to PONG. The game of back and forth. That’s the metaphor: my life, my attitude, particularly over the last ten or twelve days, has “ponged” back and forth between good one day and awful (or, as my wife correctly says, “spiraling”) the next.

It’s my own fault. Just as taking in food involves choices, so does thinking. I tend to obsess, dwelling on some aspects of life as if they’re major matters when they’re actually relatively minor. 

Thinking and attitude play a tremendous role in cancer recovery and healing the body. I guess I have more to clean up than just a diet.