Coping with Crohn's disease, with the help of Rachael Ray

Food Network stars help teenage patient get through long days in hospital without solid food.

When I was 15, I fell in love with the voice of Rachael Ray. This velvety contralto was the soundtrack to my days at the children's hospital that I hated - with its plaid curtains and kind nurses - but called home.

For weeks I spent my days jumping on morphine, in and out of consciousness, nestled in a hive of snakes of drip tubes and wires. I intended to fight off this nameless, but even more devoted invader at the little TV that gave me an education on how to beat a meringue into submission or host a "simple but stunning" dinner party (even when the one of the guests is vegetarian).

What I remember the most is the hunger. I was starving, literally. But I had the Food Network.

Under doctor's orders, I ate next to nothing - not a drop of ginger ale, a bite of a cracker, or even a piece of ice. It was my first foray into a kind of forced asceticism, which my body, ravaged by this disease yet to be diagnosed, would frequently demand. Greed was ingrained in my bones, constant pain.

My gut was too inflamed, spastic, and manic to handle nutrition through the mouth, and the team of doctors proclaimed, with the nonchalance of those who could pop into the cafeteria for a sandwich, that my digestive tract needed to “take a break” and “cool off.” Giving up food by mouth was the way to achieve this.

My destiny was N.P.O. - nil per os, Latin for "nothing by mouth". When I had no more celebrity tabloids to inhale and had dutifully completed my homework, I became comfortable with medical jargon, injecting obscure medical abbreviations and terms into my vocabulary. I learned that dieting—or non-dieting, actually—was the first step in bringing my furious system back to a seemingly elusive homeostasis. diagnosis of Crohn's disease. It's one of those things — chronic, incurable, but manageable — that can weaken you physically and financially for long periods of time, during events called flare-ups.

Without food, I became half-girl, half-robot, with angst running through me and machines pumping nutrition into my body through intravenously in a process called T.P.N., or total parenteral nutrition. T.P.N. is a common treatment for a severe Crohn's flare. It bypasses the digestive system, giving your colon the ultimate vacation. How luxurious.

I lost the contours of a fully sane and satiated human, turning and flattening into pure desire - skin and bones, visible ribs, thighs no longer touching - and I became obsessed with preparing food and thoughts of my favorite dishes. Roast beef. Potatoes with butter. Burgers so big and dripping with juice you'd need six napkins. Most confusing to those around me, I became obsessed with the Food Network.

Instead of food, I devoured clips of Paula Deen inserting pounds of butter in a cake recipe and Sandra Lee whips up something deliciously semi-homemade. Emeril Lagasse's cries of "Bam!" seemed even more authoritative through the fog of opioids. And watching Rachael Ray whip up something "delicious" became a lustful experience during those rotting hours in a hospital bed.

I got used to the emptiness of uninterrupted days by the familiar mealtime markers and became addicted to carefully dispensed painkiller intervals, always wanting more. I felt enveloped and safe in this chemical cocoon and only realized years later that what I thought being happy really meant being high.

All this time I was flipping through the channels to see the beloved friends who were always there for me: Rachael, Emeril, Sandra, Paula.

The rays of the setting sun blazed through the hospital windows. Then came the darkness that allowed me to see the TV screen more clearly as I curled up in the warm abyss of a sleeping pill - "the good stuff" that sent me drifting into a semico zone. ...