Porridge For The Soul Sick

We learned that some of our friends dislike porridge :s

This surprised us, mainly because some of them were, like us, lap sap tongs (Cantonese for rubbish bins - indiscriminate eaters with a bottomless stomach) when it comes to food. And then to hear them go "E-yer, porridge ar? Yucks!" and such made us wonder why. Initial summation proved correct:

They eat porridge only when they're sick.

Okay. So there's the slightly misconstrued idea that porridge is for sick people only (or, who knows, porridge makes you sick). Thankfully porridge never affected us that way. If we were to think of anything that we'd associate with being sick - it used to be KFC's Zinger Burger.

Sometime after our operation yonks back in Form 2, we'd to go for radiotherapy to finish up whatever bits the op couldn't do safely. So Day 1 of radiotherapy saw us stepping into Pantai Hospital for our appointment, allowing the radiologists to mark the spot in some red marker and then lying on our front while some machine made noises behind our back.

We weren't afraid of the process - as we didn't know what to expect of course, but we were pleasantly surprised that the actual process took under half an hour. On our way back home mum had to stop by Klang town to get something done, and left us to wait in the car with lunch - the KFC Zinger Burger.

Spew.

Thankfully not in the car.

But that really put us off the idea of lunch (or eating any time after radiotherapy), not to mention KFC. We'd inadvertedly become an anorexic. It also didn't help that our radiotherapy appointments were always around lunchtime. Even eating before the sessions didn't help - out it comes some half-hour after therapy. Like chemotherapy, radiotherapy also caused nausea and vomitting. No hair loss nor were we required to shave as radiotherapy was targetted on back.

Quick aside: WHY didn't anyone tell us about Kytril nor Maxalon then??? If we'd known there would probably have been less misery. Or perhaps it's thought that the nausea we experienced didn't have such a great impact on quality of life (in retrospect, not much thankfully).

It's rather tiresome to have to eat knowing you'd throw it up sometime later. But thankfully that's all in the past now.

Back to porridge. Porridge has never scared us, in fact, we do enjoy porridge - especially when it's loaded with salted egg slices, century egg slices, anchovies, chicken slices and a bit of soy sauce, smelling delightfully of MSG and pepper. Technically it's rice congee that we eat here - porridge doesn't have to be made from rice. We remembers reading one of Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series and it puzzled us to no end that Moon-Face offered the children milk and treacle to go with their porridge. We'd have asked for Bovril and the pepper shaker ourselves. 'Course, we know now.

But we too don't eat porridge unless we're sick :) Simply because, it's not filling. We'll only be hungry in a couple of hours after a bowl. However, when we're sick it becomes a viable option as the appetite isn't roaring to be satiated all the time, making way for the demands of sleep and rest.

Musn't forget our meds and concoctions now.