How Stanley Tucci lost his taste for cancer

With his recent successful culinary quest show “Searching for Italy” and cult food-focused films such as 1996’s “Big Night” and “2009 Julie & Julia,” Stanley Tucci has established himself not only as a actor but also as a serious epicurean. .

But, in his new memoir, “Taste: My Life Through Food” (Gallery Books), the 60-year-old reveals that he almost lost his love for food after being diagnosed with oral cancer there. is four years old.

“There were times when I thought I would never be able to cook or enjoy a meal with the people I love again,” writes Tucci, who grew up in a large Italian family in Katonah, NY, and spent a year living in Italy. in his early teens.

When a dentist first told Tucci that the pain in his mouth could be due to some kind of oral cancer, he wrote that he “was stunned to the point of almost fainting.”

Kate, his first wife and mother of three of his children, died in 2009 after a long battle with breast cancer. She was eventually diagnosed with salivary gland cancer and was reluctant to seek treatment after seeing how painful and ultimately futile it was for Kate. But knowing that the cure rate for his type of cancer was almost 90% – and that his current wife, Felicity, was pregnant – he experienced it.

Doctors initially wanted to remove the tumor at the base of his tongue, but that would have meant losing half of his tongue and the ability to speak normally, which was not an option. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy would mean the loss of taste, smell, and saliva production, but this would likely only be temporary.

For seven weeks, five days a week, he underwent radiation therapy treatments that required him to wear a special mask to immobilize his head. Its side effects included severe dizziness, nausea, and loss of appetite.

“After a week of treatments, everything I was able to put in my mouth tasted like old, damp cardboard,” he writes. “A few days later it all tasted like the same old wet cardboard covered in someone’s droppings.”

He also suffered from digestive problems.

“The morphine I was given to ease the pain and help me sleep caused constipation so appalling that at one point I thought it could only be relieved by using it. ‘a mini pipe bomb,’ Tucci reveals in the book.

While undergoing chemotherapy or needing intravenous fluids, he turned somewhat ironically to food television to pass the time.

“It was an act of pure masochism, because even the thought of food disgusted me. Looking back, I guess it was a way of holding onto what I loved or remembering what I once had because I was so desperate to have it again, ”wrote -he. “I was determined to get healed faster.”

The treatments left him so weak and emaciated that he “practically begged to have a feeding tube put into my stomach.” He was there for six months, but even relying on the tube for food, it was important to Tucci that he eats well. He ultimately eschewed protein shakes in favor of cooking and mashing the types of food – pasta and beans in broth – that he might have eaten in healthier times.

“I was struggling with the smell of the ingredients just so I could stand in front of the stove and create something I knew I could eat,” he wrote. “It didn’t matter how tasty it tasted, as it went straight into my stomach through the tube, but it was important to me that if someone ate it by mouth, they would find it appetizing. “

At this point, he was even relying on the feed tube for water, because if he tried to drink the water, “it burned like battery acid.”

Tucci, who lives in England, received treatment in New York. His brother-in-law and sister-in-law John Krasinski and Emily Blunt let him and his family stay at their Westchester home. Other famous friends, including Oliver Platt, Colin Firth, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, were also very supportive.

Reynolds was at Tucci’s side when, six months after his last treatment, he had a CT scan that showed “no signs of illness.” But the side effects persisted.

“For over two years my mouth was incredibly sensitive,” Tucci writes. “I couldn’t drink anything carbonated, and I certainly couldn’t eat anything spicy. I was able to drink and taste alcohol, but most stuck with white wine with copious amounts of ice.

He also struggles with limited saliva and choking, especially on foods like steak and bread, which proved difficult while filming the first season of his TV show.

Yet such challenges also made him enjoy the joys of eating and drinking.

Tucci writes: “My illness and the brutal side effects of the treatment made me realize that food was not just a big part of my life, it was was my life.”