Zut! C'est fromage

When they said that most cancer patients' taste in food can change day by day, Dominic was chowing down on Cheerios, grapes and watermelon. He'd gobble down the occasional handful of french fries, put back a burger with the best of them and turn a cookie into crumbs.

We nodded politely but internally scoffed at the notion that The Boy Who Ate Everything would ever turn into a Parisian runway model.

Then came round two of chemo.

There were eight days' worth of drugs this time around, ending with a dose Wednesday at 3 a.m. Aside from the trapped feeling of being in isolation and hooked up to an IV, he did great. And realistically, any side effects from the medication don't tend to show up until after he's done taking it.

Side effect No. 1: Nausea. Food goes in, food comes up. Repeat until no food remains in stomach.

This leads directly to side effect No. 2: Not exactly hungry anymore. And by that we mean the French toast is a no, as is the yogurt, milk, sherpherd's pie, broccoli, beef, juice, macaroni, chicken parmesan, Cheerios, grapes and watermelon.

There is, however, one food he will still take without going anorexic on us: Cheese. String cheese, cheddar cheese, marble cheese. Also, cheezies. Still not macaroni and cheese, which seems antithetical, but who cares. So dinner is cheezies meticulously cut in half, a few swigs of flat ginger ale and some string cheese. Sounds like what powered our college newspaper.

As you can imagine, Dom hasn't exactly packed on the pounds with this new diet. When he came to the hospital Sept. 12 he was 10.01 kilograms, though to be fair he was already a bit puffy then. He got all the way up to 11.5 kg, at which point the poor guy looked like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

But on Thursday he was down to 9.16 kg. Frustrated, we were about to give in and recommend he be put on a feeding tube.

I sat down this morning to write this post, at which point in time there was a knock at the door. Mid-morning snack time. Ha! I took out the sliced grapes and offered him one, fully expecting the typical denial. After a morning of diarrhea (him, not me), he wasn't feeling so hot anyways.

But lo and behold he took the grape. Then another. Then all of the grapes. Then yogurt. We practically danced around the room.

But we've got two Costco-size bags of cheezies in the room just in case.