Disgusting Enough

During a hot afternoon about 15 years ago, my wife and I passed a soft ice cream store. In the words of one of Helen Hokinson's imperishable matrons, I said “let’s just walk in and see what happens.” What happened were two bowls of soft vanilla ice cream nestled in pools of caramel sauce. We took the sundaes outside to eat at a rustic table. I’m never much good at prolonging a pleasure, so I had finished my sundae when my wife had consumed about half of hers. When finally she did finish, she said somewhat unhappily, “not disgusting enough!” She meant, I found out, that there had been enough caramel sauce for the ice cream but only just enough. There had been no caramel sauce left over to spoon up by itself.

I thought of that incident recently after I finished eating French toast at Café Europa, on the corner of 57^th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, across the street from the office of my primary care physician. The toast, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and decorated with a sprig of mint, arrived with a small pitcher of maple syrup and two pats of butter. I slathered the toast with butter and maple syrup and when I finished eating the toast, half the butter remained as well as several spoonfuls of maple syrup. The treat was absolutely disgusting enough.

Normally when I go to Café Europa, I order something sensible, like a salad niçoise, so my order of French toast reflected an event out of the ordinary. My doctor had just delivered some bad news, which I could tell pained him to tell me. A recent MRI had shown that my prostate cancer had invaded my bones. That’s why my hip hurts. That’s why I’ve been using a cane.

What I need, I told myself, when I entered the Café Europa after receiving this news, was a stiff drink, preferably a double scotch. But it was still a bit before noon, the café served only wine, and I knew that more than a thimble full of alcohol would play havoc with my digestion. The momentary buzz would not be worth the subsequent, relentless heartburn, so I settled for the French toast with butter and maple syrup. How have the mighty fallen.

The usual first treatment for bone metastasis from prostate cancer, I learned from a search on the web, is the suppression of testosterone, a hormone that acts as a kind of fertilizer for prostate cells. Hormone treatment can stop the metastasis for as much as two years. (My wife tells me that when I received this treatment a few years ago, after my cancer was first found, I became very agreeable, so she can look forward to my being a nicer person at least for awhile.) When the hormone treatment no longer stops the proliferation of prostate cells, various drugs are then employed. Many of these have recently been approved by the FDA and, according to a recent article in the infallible New York Times, the use of several of these in succession can prolong a man’s life for another two years. So, folks, I’m not ready to stop flossing my teeth.

“Life admits not of delays,” said Samuel Johnson, “when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.” I’m still in a disposition to be pleased, hence the satisfactorily disgusting French toast with butter and maple syrup.