In the Soup

A recurrent theme throughout my cancer treatment is soup.  Its nutritional properties take on an almost magical feel not only for healing, but the way it is often delivered.  A close friend of mine, Andrea Scholdan, is the Queen of Soups in Austria, and runs a ‘soup kitchen’ in Vienna, called www.suppito.at  Andrea is a qualified doctor, who worked in a hospital for twenty years as a urologist.  She had always had an interest in nutrition, and later on her life studied Chinese medicine.  One of the key elements of Chinese medicine is the balance of hot and cold in the body.  So for instance, chemotherapy has a very cooling effect on the body, so it’s important to eat warm foods, in order to help the body recover. Soup is also full of vitamins and is very easy to digest, so is the perfect food for the liver.  The liver is working so hard to try and rid the body of any toxins during the chemo, that the soup makes the process easier.   Andrea visited me during the first stage of the chemo, and created diet sheets for me to help me support my body, and to keep me strong.  She also did me the honour of shaving my head, as my hair started to fall out, but that’s another story…

Soup always appeared throughout my recovery.  My sister Ruth also visited several times, leaving her busy life in Rome to come and make huge pans of vegetable soups, with an Italian twist, which she put in the freezer as meals for when we were too tired to cook.  One day, I was feeling particularly low, mentally and physically, lying on the sofa, unable to eat.  Tristan, our builder and friend, came over with soup for me – a secret family recipe he said – it revived me almost straight away.  He continued to bring the soup for the next month or so, just leaving it by our kitchen door.  My friend Victoria wooshed into my house with gigantic pans of soup, made from organic vegetables from the local health food shop.  She put it into jars, told me to relax while she cleaned the house. People’s generosity and kindness blow me away.  I hope I can help people in the future if they’re too ill or tired to cook.