TASTE TEST

It is a Sunday morning in late October 2007. I reach over and knock my cell phone out of the cradle, pick it up and fumble with it until I find the button to silence the alarm. My head nestles back into the pillow and I argue with myself about whether I should pull myself out of bed or drift back into a dream. Slowly I wake up. Forcing my eyes open produces a dull throbbing in my head, and my mind begins to grasp how much I have to do—how I have to get out of bed, even though the fatigue is sitting on my chest like a gorilla. I lumber down the stairs, my legs not exactly following the orders fired off by the brain—they are stiff and don’t bend well. I wonder if someone smacked me across the back with a baseball bat while I slept.

But it’s no cause for concern. How I feel on this Sunday is how I feel on any given Sunday when I wake. I’m seventy-five hours into the work week at this point, most of that time spent standing in the hot kitchen, bearing the stress of the pursuit of perfection required to run the best restaurant in the country. As I head out the door I can’t help but grin. I realize I feel exactly as I always do. Two months ago I began treatment for stage IV cancer of the tongue. I’m still here, I’m still me, and I am winning.

I’m the chef/owner of a restaurant named Alinea in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Some call Alinea the best, some call it strange, and all call it forward-thinking. I call it my passion. I have been cooking since I was 5 years old. It began as I watched my parents at our family’s casual restaurant in a small town in Michigan—I watched them work hard and find satisfaction, and as I tagged along and helped out, I eventually fell in love with the craft. Fresh from high school, I headed to the Culinary Institute of America and began devoting myself to cooking. I promised myself that someday I would be the best there was; my goal was clear and I focused on it aggressively.

When I was in high school I told my friends that I would have my own restaurant by the time I was 30. Alinea opened May 4, 2005—I missed my mark by nine days. The period surrounding the opening was filled with energy and excitement, and there was no time to deal with the little white sore that had appeared on the side of my tongue. While sleeping four to five hours a night and pushing as hard as I could to make the restaurant a success, I blocked everything else out. Finally the pain made it difficult to eat, and sometimes to talk. All of the dentists and doctors I visited told me I was biting my tongue. I wasn’t drinking heavily, or smoking, but I was stressed—so I must have been gnawing on my tongue during my few hours of sleep at night. By 2007, several years and several more misdiagnoses later, the symptoms had become too severe to ignore.

The oral surgeon, a young man in his own right, entered the darkly lit waiting room with his head down. It was Friday, July 13th and the place was empty. They had not taken any patients that day, likely heading out of town early for a weekend of family time or golfing. The fact that they brought me in meant the results were time-sensitive, and his lack of eye contact told me I was in trouble. “It’s not good,” he said. I shrugged, gesturing a question, not able to talk due to the pain. “The biopsy is positive. It’s cancer. You need to go to the ENT right away and get this looked at. I will call and get you an emergency appointment.”

Wait. Did he say cancer? No--that can’t be. And if it is, just clean it up—do what you guys do to fix it. I’m a busy guy; I don’t have time for this.

Two days later the ENT confirmed the diagnosis as Stage IV. The cancer had taken over half of my tongue and spread into both sides of my neck. Recommended treatment was removal of three-quarters of the tongue, the lymph lodes in the neck and, depending on further scans, any other areas of the body that it may have spread.

What the hell is this? I immediately got mad at cancer—mad like when someone cuts you off while driving. It was pissing me off; I’d throw a punch at it if I could. Give me a break, I thought. I am a chef; you can’t cut out my tongue!

I went home from that appointment and lay down on my bed. For the first 10 minutes it was quiet. I realized that in addition to the anger, I was scared and confused. I had a few minutes of self-pity, then put my headphones on and blasted some music. Something shifted, snapped. I sat up, walked to the bathroom and threw some water on my face, and went to work.