Jon Reiner - The Man Who Couldnt Eat

Family, friends, neighbors, doctors, nurses, and strangers are the soul of this story. Your support, care, wisdom, compassion, and love guided the journey. Im grateful we made it.

The story would not have been told without the work of four people, each responsible for opening a door: My friend and Esquire editor Mark Warren, who saw a man at the bottom and offered a way up; my dear friend and agent Mitchell Waters, who believed in the potential of this book from the start and shepherded it to completion; Patrick Price, who first championed its publication; and my editor Tricia Boczkowski, whose dedication, encouragement, skill, and vision elevated the book from beginning to end. And to Kate Dresser, who helped keep the operation running.

Thank you all.

I happily acknowledge the prescient words of John Berryman, which came to mean more than I ever imagined: The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, hes in business.

Im a glutton in a greyhounds body. To look at me, you wouldnt know I have the appetite of a gastric bypass candidate. Im a walking contradiction, not what I appear to be, in the grip of the thing I want most and cant havefood.

Some time ago, Im not sure how long its been, my guts exploded. It was that long hour before the clock sanctions lunch, when the hunger is so deep you could eat paper. I was planning to make tuna fishmy grandmothers recipe of tuna, chopped celery, onions, olives, ground pepper, and a lemonand, in a moment, became surprised to find myself here suddenly dying. Here is my living room floor, where Im alone at the dusty feet of our cracked leather love seat. My wife is at work, my two sons are at school, and I spent my last cogent minutes figuring out who could pick them up. Since then (whenever then was), the explosion has shot me to delirium, and Im seeing visions through lenses of pain and panic.

I want an answer from the apricots. The dried ones in the paper bag on the counter. I need to know if theyre to blame for the mess Im in. But theyre not talking. Theyre silent in the bag I left in the kitchen after dinner last night.

I did not give in to temptation; I didnt even eat one, yet Im in bad shape, with my body in full storm, so Ive got my eyes on them. Yes, I did breathe the apricots, hiding from Susan, Teddy, and Finn behind a swung-open cabinet door. I did inhale, fighter pilotstyle, pressing the bags hole over my nose, sucking up the deliciously trapped fragrance. However, that was all. No wrinkly apricot chew passed my lips. It cant have been the apricots aroma, can it? Unless the air is dusted with poison, breathing is not supposed to kill you; only giving in to cravings can do that, and I deny the most dangerous of them like a recovering junkie, supposedly, for my own good. Just a taste, man, thats all I need. Just a little taste. My diet demands self-imposed exile, and I complied: I didnt eat a single apricot. At dinner, I dutifully weeded the chopped orange cubes from their couscous bed and pushed them to the rim of my plate, banished like the broccoli our boys wont eat, doing my best to kill the thing I love. What else could it be thats hammered me to the floor? Answer me! Christ, Im talking to apricots.

This food fight between desire and regulation is a strange condition. In my case, the fruit is forbidden. Thats where the walking contradiction begins.

I once worked for a notorious ex-drunk, a famous film director, who said the only thing he missed about drinking was the alcohol. I used to think I knew how he feltmy history with food is complicatedbut whatever has got me now feels more perilous than falling off the wagon. This depth of torture cant be the penalty for sniffing the apricot cork. And even if I did down a bite or two of mouthwatering, heavenly flesh, is that really all it would take to finish me off? Death by dried fruit.

The pain is killing me.

I dont know how long Ive been down. What time is it? One oclock? Three? Saturday? Real time is shattered into a fever dream. My flashing thoughts run on and lose their train like baggage pushed from passenger windows. They tumble end over end down a slope off the track, and nothing makes sense. I am at their mercy, searching for meaning in a story I dont understand, to explain why I am here and figure out how to survive. The apricot images spring from the part of my brain that has yet to bury the dead.

Collapsed on the busy Persian rug, I wait for the ambulance, trailed by the chaos of a surprise attack. The apartments rooms are ransacked: vomit sprays in the bathroom, hand towels pulled to the floor, pills spilled in the sink, three layers of blankets strangled on our bed, tea bags bleeding their last into water gone cold on the stove. Its a brilliant February dayabsurdly, Friday the thirteentha reprieve of midwinter sparkle that motivated me out of the house, until this spear started goring my insides. Bright sun is smoking overhead through the living rooms two dirty windows. The steam radiator behind the love seat hisses and heats like a sauna, but Im freezing beyond reason. A fever spike soaked my fleece-lined jeans and wool turtleneck, theyre swamping me and stink like a shipwreck, and I let go of the digital thermometer when it hit 106F. It lies near the cordless phone I used for three 911 calls and to wail to my gastroenterologist, Dr. Abrams, It feels like a blockage but worse! Like something has ruptured! I know this because Ive been sick with Crohns disease for more than half of my forty-six years.

Crohns is a gastrointestinal condition that exacts a nasty kind of food revenge and currently has me hemorrhaging on my living room floor. Its the Bernie Madoff of medical conditions: outsider, unglamorous, crooked, devious, hounding, determined, destructive, unaccountable, its motives hidden, stealing from the body with the larceny of a petty thief. It eats its own, the way Madoff swallowed other rich Jews. The disease causes essential good bacteria to be mistakenly attacked by the body along with the bad, a blunder that destroys the guts ability to properly absorb vitamins, minerals, and fat. Without those basics, good health is impossible. Diet may help, hurt, or even trigger the disease in people, but its an inexact food science. The contradicting scientific views arent limited to what I cant eatthey include what I can. Food, too, is not what it appears to be.

Crohns is a relatively new disease, first described in 1932 by the eponymous Dr. Burrill Crohn. Anyone can be afflicted, but theres a higher rate of disease among people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, like me. This misfortune is also evidence of a larger cosmic jokeleave it to the Jews to make pot roast lethal. Eat! Dont eat! Life and death in a single bite. Its a bizarre strain of steerage-class masochism that couldnt have been concocted by anyone with a flair for the exotic. Crohns doesnt have the status or glamour of other serious diseases, like certain cancers, whose survivors inspire glossy magazine covers, celebrity appeals, and public rallies, or even Lyme disease, with its evocation of country houses and weekend retreats. At the core, Crohns disease is a failure of bowel function, hardly the stuff of which Julia Roberts movies are made.

This disease and all autoimmune diseases are treaty-breakers. You hold up your end of the agreementeat right, swallow a fishbowl of pills and potions, shun what you crave, adhere to the regimen, change your lifeand they attack you anyway. Or, in language my grandma Jennie knew,