One of a suite of blog entries about the aftermath of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, including brain damage and eyesight damage; a survivor's account of the aftermath of cns lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of the large B-cell variety, in the author's case cancer of the brain and the spinal cord.

        So what are the consequences of having cancer? Not for certain, but maybe possibly. Maybe back again but maybe not. In practice, exactly how does this play out?
        Well, to start with, I've started to reach for the soy sauce on occasion, soy sauce being a salty condiment which has absolutely none of the health benefits of soy-based products such as tofu and natto ("natto" being, if you don't know, rotten soy beans eaten by some Japanese people, but not by all).
        Many years ago, when I was part-time military in New Zealand's peacetime army, I did an advanced medical assistant's training course. Not all that advanced, but we did get to do interesting things such as to go to the morgue and watch an autopsy. And one otherwise unfilled gap in the timetable ended up getting filled by a video on dietary salt.
        This video convincingly made the case that moderating your lifetime intake of salt will reduce the risk of having high blood pressure in old age. It convincingly linked salt to high blood pressure, giving the Japanese as an example.
        There is too much salt in the Japanese diet, the worst offender being a very popular soup called miso soup, which is absolutely laden with salt, and which some people eat on a daily basis. Although Japanese people tend to live long, part of the problem of high blood pressure in old age seems to be directly attributable to dietary salt.
        Freedom fries (or, in traditional British English, "chips", not to be confused with "potato chips") were a regular feature of the messhall diet, much to my pleasure. (I spent two years of my youth living in a student hostel where the food was even one step down from hospital food, which takes quite some doing, and, having survived that experience, I never had any complaints about army food.)
        Up until that day, it had always been my habit to load salt onto my fries, but, having made a decision, I didn't.
        Bereft of salt, my meals initially seemed