Live from the Chemo Barn! Part III

A new nurse is taking care of me today. New to me, anyway. Her name is Shannon. She is very nice, as all these nurses are.

Last round's nurse was Betsy, who is very knowledgable about breast cancer in particular because she led a breast cancer support group for 8 years. I had asked for a print out of my labs for the week and she brought a printout of every lab I've done here. Then she explained them to me.

And noted that my red blood cell count was a bit low. 12.6 instead of 13.0. "Eat red meat," she told me.

Over the next 3 weeks, I did eat red meat. Ate the heck out of it. This, as compared to rarely eating red meat. In fact, in the course of a year, probably the only red meat I usually eat is in the form of a hamburger I order from a restaraunt or eat at a party.

Why?

Because I didn't know how to cook it!

What? Oh, you're telling me you know how to cook a steak?

The way I figured it, you could grill a steak outside. But we have a charcoal grill and we only fire it up for BBQ's. Or you could stir-fry little hunks o' beef for a variety of dishes, but in this case, why not just cook chicken?

Well, 3 innovations changed my diet in the last 3 weeks:

1. We bought a 1/4 of a Texas longhorn from a teeny, tiny ranching operation just East of here. I'd made the mistake of learning about where grocery store beef comes from, and so didn't go out of my way to buy it. But when we found this place that raised all-grass-fed beef locally, we gave it a shot.

2. And good thing we only bought 1/4, because shortly after we packed it into our stand alone freezer, Laura came for Round 3 and filled the rest of the freezer with food she spent the week cooking for us. This is innovation #2: Get an in house chef to turn your beef into a dish. In this case, chile and vieja de ropa, which is a Cuban pot roast.

3. And while Laura was here, innovation #3 came along: Learn how to use one's broiler.

What? You're telling me you know how to use your broiler?

Well, a lot of times, we know only what we grow up with. And the oven Mom had while I was growing up had a broiler in the drawer. She would have to pull out all her pots and pans that were stored there, and it made a gross mess, and it just seemed scary. Cooking food in the bottom drawer??? Just imagine what could go wrong!

Laura listened to me explain all this and said, "Yeah, but the rest of us have a little button on the top of our stoves and the broiler cooks the food on the very top rack."

Oh.

Oh! How easy is that??? I love my broiler! And it cooks meat so quickly! So now I'm a broiling fool. Last night, for instance, we had brisket, green beans and sweet potatoes, all of which took me 25 minutes to cook!

So. As I was saying. I've been eating a lot of red meat.

Today, I asked Dr. Science for my red blood cell count, and it's 12.9. I smiled. 'I've been eating a lot of red meat. The nurse told me to.'

He said that was fine to eat a lot of red meat. But that my red blood cell count was not related to iron intake, which is what I'd be getting from the red meat.

"It's not?" I asked.

"No, it's related to the fact that I'm kicking the snot out of your bone marrow."

Oh.

So I guess the breast cancer support group nurse, while very helpful and nice, was wrong about this one.

Which gets me back to today's nurse: Shannon. Who has not given me any dietary advice at all.