What a surprise this morning over breakfast to open the Washington Post and see my article on page two of the Health Section. I submitted it a week ago by email and they replied that editors "would be in touch" about publishing it but instead they just printed it.
Sp here's the article itself cut and pasted from the Post's web site. The print edition has a different title:
Savoring the sight and smell of food kissed by love


[quote]Cancer of the tongue doesn't take all joy from sharing meals with a loving wife

Tuesday, June 29, 2010; HE02

My second bout with stage IV cancer at the base of my tongue required surgery that left me unable to swallow. I no longer can eat or drink or taste. The medical term is aphagia, but to me it's excommunication from the social celebration of breaking bread. Doctors consigned me to a lifetime of cans of prescription nutrient put through a feeding tube directly into my stomach.

For my wife and me, who loved every type of food and reveled in Washington's smorgasbord of Asian, European, African, North American, South American and Australian restaurants, this was a personal disaster. I cried watching Oprah's shot of Roger Ebert's wife eating alone while he used his feeding tube upstairs: She wanted to spare his feelings, and it is difficult not to feel deprived when others eat. Travel is no longer the same, and the Transportation Security Administration indignities pale in comparison to the loss of new tastes and dishes.

We venture out to restaurants, where I bring my cans and syringe. As it turns out, wine works very well with a feeding tube. Beer not so much. Luckily I was never self-conscious, and the few stares when I whip out my feeding tube don't bother me.

I refused to lose the joy of sharing with my wife the food she has always cooked with love for us both. Now she prepares regular dinners as before and sets me a plate full of colorful food. I savor the aroma, then dump it into our Vitamix to undergo a transubstantiation of texture from solid to liquid. We sit at the dinner table and laugh like we used to after saying grace over our meal. It's what cancer survivors call the "new normal."
Charm2017 Alexandria VA[/quote]

I'd give the direct link but that would reveal my "secret identity" (although several cyber-sleuths on OCF tracked it down already). This is the final culmination of an article on not being able to swallow that I started for Brian and OCF but kept ending up too depressing and full of self pity and too long. The Post had a limit of 300 words plus requires it not be published anywhere else first, which let me focus in on the positives. So it's okay now to post it here at OCF.