Holly Clegg adapts recipes for children with cancer
Jenee Bourgeois had just given birth to her third child when her middle child, Anna James, then just 18 months old, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, one of the most common forms of childhood cancer.
“We had taken the baby, Sloane, to the pediatrician for her one-week checkup and brought Anna James along for a follow-up visit because she had been sick a lot that winter,” Bourgeois recalled. “They did blood work and confirmed a diagnosis of leukemia.”
By the next afternoon, Bourgeois and her husband, Jim, were on a plane to Memphis, Tenn., with both babies in tow to begin Anna James’ cancer treatments at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
In the 19 months since, the Bourgeois family has faced the many challenges and struggles that confront all cancer patients and their loved ones. They juggle schedules and the demands of raising not only Sloane and Anna James, but the girls’ older brother, Jackson, 5.
They watch in helpless frustration as Anna James suffers with a pain so chronic that she is unable to articulate what hurts.
“She is so accustomed to pain it’s all she really knows, so when I ask her, no matter how many times I try to get her to tell me, she really can’t,” Bourgeois said.
And they try to figure out how to get her to eat regular, nourishing meals at a time when her body is suffering the ravages of chemotherapy, with its appetite-sapping side effects.
“From time to time, she will get fixated on one food and that’s all she wants,” Bourgeois said. “But for the most part she has pretty much survived on Pediasure throughout the duration of the treatment.”
It isn’t easy, but Bourgeois doesn’t have time to sit around and feel sorry for herself or her family. She stays constantly on the move, managing with help from a supportive, extended family that includes her aunt Pat Carville Hoffman, who has become an advocate of St. Jude and is chairing the local arm of a national fund-raiser walk Nov. 19 to benefit the hospital.
Bourgeois also recently got help from local cookbook author and healthful eating guru Holly Clegg, who adapted several of the recipes from her best-selling cookbook “Eating Well Through Cancer: Easy Recipes & Recommendations During & After Treatment” to make them more palatable to children with cancer.
Clegg was inspired to adapt the recipes for kids after Bourgeois and Hoffman called her and asked her for help promoting the upcoming fundraiser walk for the hospital.
Coincidentally, Clegg had recently heard Bourgeois speak at a dinner at St. Jude and was only too happy to support the hospital and the Bourgeois family by doing what she does best — creating easy, nutritious and always great-tasting recipes.
“Cancer treatments are cost prohibitive and most of us just take for granted that a place like St. Jude is there for these kids,” Clegg said. “But they depend on donations to survive.”
For Clegg, adapting the recipes in “Eating Well Through Cancer” to be more kid-friendly has been as rewarding as writing the book itself. She co-authored the book 10 years ago with local oncologist Dr. Gerald Miletello after her father was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer.
“There is no question about it that “Eating Well Through Cancer” is my most popular book and the one that has touched the most people,” Clegg said. “Doctors tell me the most common question they hear from their patients has to do with what they can eat. So many people want to know what they should eat to help with the nausea, the diarrhea, the metallic taste in their mouth.”
So what can and should cancer patients eat? And do the same rules apply for children and adults?
To answer the last question first, the same rules do apply to children as adults, Clegg said. The only difference is that kids may be pickier to begin with, and less willing to force themselves to eat because they do not understand the importance of keeping up their strength and getting proper nourishment.
So parents or caregivers will have to work extra hard to find foods the kids like and will tolerate.
As to what those foods should be, Clegg recommends keeping them simple and steering clear of most dairy products and anything greasy or fried, even if the patient asks for it. She does suggest comfort-food favorites like pancakes, oatmeal, grits and grilled cheese, and sticking with something your patients like once you identify it.
“Find something that works and then go with it for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she said.
It’s also important to keep an eye on nutrition while being realistic at the same time. Clegg’s approach is not to stuff cancer patients — be they kids or adults — full of all-natural, organic products, but to feed them foods that are easy to procure and prepare and will be appealing to them. Clegg uses sugar in her recipes, for instance, and doesn’t insist on whole-grain flour.
“There are plenty of extreme, medicinal recipes out there,” she said. “These are realistic and appropriate for everyone in a family, really, at any time.”
Another important bit of advice, especially where young cancer patients are concerned, is to present the food in fun, fanciful ways that will amuse them and, hopefully, get them involved in making and eating the meals.
“I think the key is to make the dishes fun and more kid-friendly,” said Clegg, who turned her Oatmeal Pancakes into snowmen with bacon scarves and chocolate chip eyes on a bed of marshmallow snowflakes. “Let them stir, let them mix, let them dip.”
Granted, kids in the throes of chemotherapy may not have much interest in participating in cheery meal-time preparation. But even if a funny-face pizza brings a smile to their face or makes them that much more willing to take a bite of something different, it will be well worth the effort.