CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

It wasn’t until my short stay in the hospital that I realized what a food diva I am. The hospital sits exactly one block from the house where I stay in Berkeley in one direction and one block from the Whole Foods in the other direction. Most days I bypass the hospital and head directly for Whole Foods, but when the hospital captured me, I had to give in to my hostage surroundings.

After surgery I was put on a clear liquid diet. You might have thought this would be an easy no brainer. Clear liquids. Who woulda thought that clear liquids could be a problem? I usually don’t tell people that I am a vegetarian anymore, because in reality I’m not, I eat chicken and fish, not a lot, but I won’t turn it down. So in the spirit of being a good and unfussy patient I said that I just don’t eat beef and pork.

My first clear liquid tray came late in the afternoon with black tea, gelatin, beef broth, and apple juice. What I saw was caffeine, beef marrow, boiled Bessie, and juice from a fruit that prior to the surgery would have given me intense stomach cramps. Oh boy …

When I talked to the nurses about the tray, they were very confused. Gelatin is vegetarian, isn’t it? Caffeine won’t keep you awake! Anyway, my eating status changed two more times to Vegetarian and then Asian Vegetarian. The next few hours entailed about three nurses running around the hospital looking for all kinds of things that I could possibly eat. Which really didn’t produce anything that would be considered appetizing. We came to a settlement on popsicles.

What I really wanted was a big comfy bowl of Miso soup. Which I got when I walked back into the house twenty-four hours later.