By Fourth and final round of AC chemo on Monday. The last red devil. I sat in the recliner and watched the bag empty into my veins and thought: this is the last time. After this, I switch to Taxol — weekly, for twelve weeks, supposedly gentler. I don't believe "gentler" when it comes from an oncologist, because oncologists and normal humans use words differently. When an oncologist says "mild discomfort," they mean "you will feel like you've been hit by a truck, but a smaller truck." Gentler means the truck has slightly better suspension.
The nausea was the worst yet. Three days of barely keeping water down. I lost another four pounds, which brings the total to twelve since the diagnosis. I was already small — 5'6", 135 pounds before cancer — and now I'm 123, and my jeans hang off me, and my face looks gaunt in a way that frightens me when I catch my reflection, not because of vanity but because the woman in the mirror looks sick, and I don't want to look sick. I want to look like the woman who stood in a kitchen and made pot roast. I want to look like someone who eats.
Scott and I had a conversation on Thursday night. Not a fight — a conversation. He said he feels helpless. He said he doesn't know what to do. He said, "I fight fires. I know how to fight fires. I don't know how to fight this." And I looked at him and I thought: he's telling the truth. This is the most honest he's been in months. He doesn't know how to handle this because it requires patience and presence and emotional endurance, and those are not skills they teach on the fire line. He knows how to run toward danger. He doesn't know how to sit with it.
I said, "You don't have to fight it. You just have to be here." He said, "I am here." I said, "Being here and being present are different things." He didn't respond. He went to bed. I sat on the couch and thought about the difference between being here and being present, and how the gap between those two things is where marriages go to die.
Mason lost his second tooth this week — top front, which gives him the classic kindergartner gap-toothed grin that makes every smile look like a celebration. The Tooth Fairy left two dollars. Mason told me he's saving for a microscope, which costs $29.99 at Target, and at two dollars per tooth he has calculated that he needs to lose 13 more teeth to afford it. I am raising a mathematician. A gap-toothed, book-loving, egg-roll-making mathematician, and I love him so much it hurts in a place that has nothing to do with cancer.
I made chicken broth from scratch this week — a whole chicken carcass, carrots, celery, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, simmered for six hours. It's the only thing I can reliably eat during the bad days, and making it myself means it's better than the store-bought kind. Richer. More golden. More alive. I sipped it from a mug, warm and salty, and felt it settle in my stomach like a blessing. Chicken broth. The original medicine. Hippocrates was right about very few things, but he was right about broth.
On the days when eating feels impossible and the world feels too big and too heavy, I keep coming back to broth—warm, golden, something my body recognizes as safe. Making it from scratch this week wasn’t really about the recipe; it was about having something to tend to, something that asked only for time and heat and patience, which felt like exactly what I could offer. So here’s my version: a whole chicken in the crockpot, low and slow, filling the house with a smell that Mason said “makes it feel like someone is taking care of us.” He’s not wrong.
Crockpot Whole Chicken (with Healing Broth)
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 6–8 hours | Total Time: 6 hours 15 min | Servings: 6 (plus 8–10 cups broth)
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken (3 1/2 to 4 lbs), giblets removed
- 3 medium carrots, cut into large chunks
- 3 stalks celery, cut into large chunks
- 1 large yellow onion, quartered
- 6 cloves garlic, smashed
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
- 4–5 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
- 2 sprigs fresh parsley
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 6 cups cold water
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (helps draw minerals from bones)
Instructions
- Layer the vegetables. Place the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic in the bottom of a 6-quart or larger slow cooker. These form a rack that keeps the chicken elevated and flavor the broth.
- Season the chicken. Pat the whole chicken dry with paper towels. Rub the outside and inside cavity with kosher salt. Set it breast-side up on top of the vegetables.
- Add aromatics and liquid. Tuck the bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme, and parsley around the chicken. Pour the cold water and apple cider vinegar over everything. The water should come about halfway up the chicken — do not fully submerge it.
- Slow cook. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–8 hours, or on HIGH for 3 1/2–4 hours, until the chicken is fall-off-the-bone tender and an instant-read thermometer reads 165°F at the thickest part of the thigh.
- Rest and remove the chicken. Carefully lift the chicken out of the slow cooker (it will be very tender; use two large spoons or a slotted spatula). Set it on a cutting board and let it rest 10 minutes before pulling the meat from the bones.
- Strain the broth. Pour the liquid and vegetables through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl or pot. Discard the spent vegetables and bones. Taste the broth and adjust salt. For a clearer broth, strain a second time through a cheesecloth-lined strainer.
- Skim the fat. Let the broth sit for 5 minutes and skim the fat from the surface with a spoon. For the richest, most golden result, refrigerate the broth overnight — the fat solidifies and lifts off cleanly.
- Serve and store. Sip the broth warm from a mug, or use it as a base for soup. Store shredded chicken and broth separately in the refrigerator for up to 4 days, or freeze broth in quart-size containers for up to 3 months.
Nutrition (per serving, chicken only)
Calories: 280 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 1g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 390mg
Broth (per 1 cup): Calories: 35 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 1g | Carbs: 1g | Sodium: 310mg