After Losing Her Limbs, Our Cooking Columnist Returns to the Kitchen

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the daily on Sunday. Ywanda Kamalafi is a cook and columnist here at the Times. She's worked for many years in restaurants, she's known for translating complicated restaurant dishes into recipes for the home cook. Her cookbook, My Everyday Lagos, was nominated for a James Beard Award. But almost three years ago, Kamalafi's life took a dramatic turn when she nearly died in the midst of a sickle cell crisis. When she woke up from a week's long coma, she learned that her body would be profoundly altered by multiple amputations. Now Ywanda is back to work, creating recipes and writing again. Today, Ywanda spoke with me from her kitchen in Brooklyn about what it has been like to return to her life after this crisis and how cooking and food played an essential role in her recovery. Sunday, August 2nd. Ywanda, welcome to The Sunday Daily. Thank you for having me. Before we talk about everything that you've been through, I wonder if you can explain what sickle cell disease is and how it affects the body for our listeners who are not familiar with this disease. Yeah. So sickle cell is an inherited blood disorder. I was born with it. I've always known I've had it and so the shape of normal cells are spherical. And in that way, normal cells are able to pass through your arteries, your veins, your capillaries, but sickle cells are literally sickle shaped. And it's almost like it's like half of them missing. And in that way, when they try to pass through your artery, your veins, your capillaries, they sometimes get clogged and that could result in a very painful crisis of like the joints and it almost feels like a pain that you can't quite touch. What do you mean by that? It's like an internal pain. And I've grown up with this disease, I've always known I've had it and I would also credit my family and my mom for teaching me how to take care of myself, both using natural medicine and using Western medicine. How did all of that affect how you worked in the restaurant industry? Like, what kind of adjustments did you have to make in order to have the jobs that you did? You know, it's interesting because I never thought of sickle cell as something that would hold me back. I understood that if I was able to take care of myself, literally drink a gallon of water every day, do things like that, pace myself through the work, get enough sleep and get enough rest, I can manage my disease. And so if I worked a long shift, I kneel that I needed like three to four days to recover from that. And so it was a lot of about, it was a lot of like just understanding my body to an extent where I kneel that if I did go ahead and push myself to that limit, you're not going to see me for like 10 days because I'll be sick. That sounds really challenging. Yeah. And so it took a lot of coming to terms with the fact that I have it, even though it's easy for me to talk about now, but it wasn't always easy for me to say or highlight that, oh, like, I have this disease. And I think I was also in a position where I looked normal, like compared to everybody else, I looked like I was normal, whatever normal was. When you say normal, I'm curious what your life looked like when you were a recipe developer, I wonder if maybe you could just walk us through a typical day for you before this medical crisis happened. Yeah, I feel like an average day for me would start by writing the recipes and then sourcing the ingredients, so like going around to different grocery stores, go to the markets and like feel and touch and see the vegetables that I was getting, and then start preparing them. However, the recipes specified, it sounds like you're running around a lot. Yeah. And usually like it would be depending on what I'm working on, I would be sto side or like in the kitchen between like one to, I would say I sometimes went on till like 8 p.m., but I'm always thinking about food. So it's never really like there's like a turn on and turn off switch. It's like I dream about food, I dream about creating recipes, you know, and in my excitement, sometimes I wake up and like jot that down or take notes if I remember my dreams. Oh wow, so you dreamt about food? I can imagine that music, you have been quite passionate about it for some time. Where do you think that interest came from? I think, I mean, I would say that my mom definitely like was the catalyst for that. How so? So I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and my mom was a food scientist and she worked for Cadbury's chocolates, but she also would bring things home to sort of like test out on us as kids. Like what? Okay, so I remember this about my childhood is that we always had like a 5 pound bag of all sorts of candy and it was usually stuff that she was working on. She was particularly working on how to develop a chocolate that's like shelf stable in the Nigerian heat that doesn't completely collapse and dissolve. And like she would try out the different tests on us. I saw it my entire childhood and so moving here, I first signed up to the biochemist like my curve and did not, that did not happen. But I had actually encountered a pamphlet from the CIA while I was living with, yeah. Well, wait, you the culinary institute of America? Yeah, from the, yeah, not, not that CIA, like the culinary institute was about to take a weird turn. Yeah, I had come across a pamphlet and I was like intrigued, I was like, oh, wow, you could go to school to be a chef. And so I sort of like put that in my back pocket. And I went to college and I felt like that was for my parents. And going to culinary arts school was felt like the first decision that I made for myself. Eventually transitioned from being in restaurant kitchens to being your own kitchen, of course, writing about food, writing about not just cooking, but adapting recipes. It's one of the things that you have been known for. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life was like in November 2023, right before you got very seriously ill? Yeah, it was great. I had just finished my first book and I was in the middle of my book tour. I had done a few events. I had gone to Lagos. I had gone to all the New York events. And my husband, my two kids, and I went to Paris for Thanksgiving. And we came back. We were all sick. We all had contracted something, either in the airport or just by flying. Like the flu or a cold. Well, we didn't know what it was, but we knew that we were all sick. Eventually that weekend, I decided that I was in too much pain to try to treat it at home. You mean sickle cell pain? Yeah. So I went to the emergency room. We found out I had influenza a, which is actually very deadly for people who are immunocompromised. And so I got dropped off at the ER by my husband. He took the kids back home. I only remember through several text messages that I sent both to my husband as like an update of the status and what I kept saying was that I'm in a lot of pain. I'm still in a lot of pain. And I can tell from that that my pain wasn't being managed. But you don't remember this period. Yeah, I don't remember this part, but I know what to ask for when I go to the hospital. I'm like, I need oxygen, I need fluid, like IV fluids, and I might need a blood transfusion. I need pain medication. Those are the four things that I asked for. And this time, it felt like the things that I asked for were not given to me. And there was a whole series of errors that happened and weren't corrected. And that's why things escalated in the way that it did. So what happened after that? I woke up in a different hospital, completely different hospitals. And everybody's faces look worried. I was told that I was in a coma for six weeks, yeah, I was in a coma for six weeks. So when did you realize that this was more serious than previous episodes that had sent you to the ER? I think in the weeks after I woke up, starting to look at all the scars on my body. The nurses would try to get me to do different things in stages and then realizing like oh I can't quite lift up my arm, oh I can't quite like lift my leg like what's going on. I also could I couldn't see my legs because they were really wrapped up, but I could see my fingers and my fingers had turned black like completely God. And so parts of my body died while I was in a coma and there wasn't enough blood flow to certain parts of my body to continue circulation in a normal way. And so the decision was made to amputate those parts of my body. And just to be clear, can you explain which parts? Well it was so it was the fingers on both hands and the legs below the knee. And so I got amputated nine fingers, I still have my thumb and also both legs below the knee. Do you remember what you were thinking and feeling? Yeah, I um I would say I was definitely shocked, but I also sort of like took a deep breath and was like okay. Like I don't know that I processed it then I think that I'm processing it now. It almost felt like I was in go mode, which it's sort of like a restaurant term where I was like okay, like we're going to get through this. Let's go let's do this. Like the same mentality of being a chef. Yeah, it's like the same mentality of like being a cook. It's like go mode like let's do this. Like service has been great. Like service is going on. It's super busy. Let's do this. Like we put our heads down. It felt like it was another step towards my survival. Yeah, and I wanted to survive. We'll be right back. You were in the hospital for a very long time. You were navigating all of these incredibly difficult things. I think anybody facing the kind of new reality that you were was probably not immediately thinking of food, but in your case, you have written about how returning to food played such a big role in your recovery. Tell us a little bit about how it did that. I couldn't eat because I was intubated. And then later when I was feeling a little better, I had a trache inserted into my throat. And I had this like ravenous appetite in my head, but I could not experience it in like a way where I was like experiencing food because I could not eat. And that felt like even more harmful than anything else because like it almost feels like food is like an assurance that I'm alive. And then when I got to the point where I could eat, I was only allowed like very mildly seasoned things. And that again felt like a type of punishment where it's like I only get to eat apple sauce and I can't eat anything with flavor, which is just like the worst. Not what you were craving, not what I was craving at all, but I did start out slow. I started out with like ice chips. Like can you swallow an ice chip without like coffee. So it was mostly like bread and just jello and apple sauce for a while. What were you craving? Gosh, I was craving like the foods that heal me. I was craving like foods of my childhood. I was craving spicy food. I remember a friend came in and I like mentioned something about jello fries and I instantly woke up and I was like jello fries. So I can you just describe jello fries for people that don't know, just describe it quickly for us. Of course, jello fries is essentially a rice cooked in like a tomato onion and pepper sauce. And it comes out looking like bright orange, which is like delightful. And it's a very popular dish across West Africa. And then when I got cleared for being able to eat more things, I was well enough to start ordering my own food to the hospital and just like having someone the delivery person downstairs and bring me food. And I started ordering like the most insane things like what I started ordering like pepper soup from the Nigerian food cart that I knew that was on 42nd Street. I started ordering carbonara daily almost. And I started ordering a lemon poppy seed muffin with a crumble of lemon poppy seeds on top. It was the most decadent reintroduction to food and I was craving a decadence in the way that I had never really done before like I don't wake up and eat 10 croissants. But it felt like if someone was coming over and I knew that all you're coming over from the outside world, bring me 10 croissants. Because all my friends remember that I loved pastry and I still do a pastry and so they will bring different types of pastries for me to try in the hospital, which was like such a delight. What did they bring you? I remember, well, this isn't a pastry, but I remember I would always ask Melissa to bring us a salmon bagel, a smoked salmon bagel. Yeah, who was our food writer? Yeah, she would always bring me a smoked salmon bagel with capers and cream cheese and scallions cream cheese. It was wonderful. And because I didn't have mobility in my fingers, she would actually cut it up into like little pieces and sometimes even feed me to just get me to eat because I couldn't do it for myself. How did it feel to have somebody feeding you? I assumed that this is the first time that's happened. Yeah, I mean, as an adult, yeah. I think in those days after I woke up from the coma, I had been pulped and prodded and not received a friendly tender touch in a while. And so whenever my friends would come visit, I would hold their hands and they would sit with me and like beside me or like with me in bed. And it felt like I was craving not just foods, but I was craving just like a closeness. And it felt like an intimate love. Yeah, when you were finally able to get home, what can you describe the new reality that you were now faced with? And in those early days, what were some of the adaptations you had to make? I began to understand what happened to me, what I could do for myself has completely changed. I can literally open my eyes and sit up in bed and that's the extent of it. Like this has completely shifted our reality as a family and how I'm able to show up as a member of my family. Can you give an example or two of what you mean by that? I think in the mornings, so Mark handles everything. Marked. He gets the kids up. He gets them dressed. He makes them breakfast. He packs a school lunch. And I'm able to only observe. I can't participate. How does that feel? It feels like grief. It feels like I've lost a lot. Like we've lost a lot. That's how it feels. This feels like the reality is hitting like the aftermath of it is where the grief is not necessarily like the thought about having amputations, not necessarily like understanding like all parts of my body died. But the impact is in the everyday of our life now when you're actually experiencing the loss in real to loss in real time. We'll be right back. So you want to even home for some time now. Yes, it's been two years. And you are now I understand learning to use prosthetics. How has that been for you? I remember when I first got them, they felt like props and it was like, oh my god, these are so cool. But how do I use them? So I have upper body and lower body prosthetics. And I liken it to watching a baby learn to move their limbs. I have to sort of like retrain my nervous system to to sense that. This is a step. that I want to take. I want to move my leg forward. And there's all these muscles in like, I now have to do like stretches, like 40 minutes everyday stretches, like tummy time. And with my upper limb prosthetics, they're like fingers and I have to like place, put them in a specific way or shape to pick something up. - And you're also back to work now. - I am, yes. Okay, so how did you go about doing that? Where did you start? - So I have a caregiver that comes every morning to get me up and get me into like wheelchair. And I actually started talking to my caregivers, like where are you from? What kind of food do you make? And they'll be like, oh, I make a goat curry. I'm from Trinidad. And I was like, ooh, can we make that together? So I would order all the ingredients. And we would cook together in the kitchen. And like what I would do, it could be as like little as like whisking something that they hand me in a bowl. It felt really good to engage in that way. And to see that my ability has changed. But again, like my love and my passions for food is the same. I understood while I was in the hospital and afterwards that like cooking for me is innate. It's something that I'm both compelled to do and also something that I love to do. And I feel like nothing could take that away from me. And it made me think that, okay, I just have to figure out how to do this in my real life. So I spoke with my editor, Emily Weinstein. I told her that I figured out a way that I could come back to work. And of course she asked me what. And I was like, I'm going to need assistance to help me through the process of like submitting a recipe and she said, okay, did that. One of our producers, Tina Antillini, came to your home to spend a morning with you and your cooking assistant. Hello. How are you, Tina? As you worked your way through a recipe, just really just sort of observe what that process is now like for you. We are flying much from today. When you have a recipe that you want to test with an assistant, how does that process start? Okay, so first I come up with an idea, either by something that I've experienced before or something I've imagined. And on the day that Tina came, we were working on this interesting concept that I had for a fried mushroom sandwich. But I wanted the mushrooms to sort of get the fried chicken treatment where they are crunchy and crisp as a sandwich. And they sort of shatter when you bite into it. Delicious. I think we have a variety of mushrooms like oyster mushrooms and then there's like really skinny ones. Next, I write it all down in a recipe format and to do that, I actually just talk to my computer. I send a copy of it off to my assistant. Hi, I'm Ongi. I used to even pronouns. What background do you bring to doing this work with you on this? I have worked in restaurants since like 2018 and I do tattoos. How have you been in my tattoos? (laughing) So they make sure I get the ingredients that I need for that specific day. Romaine in the fridge. Thank you. And every day starts at my kitchen table. The sandwich, the bread's gonna be soft. That's why I'm not toasting it. It's just like this. Where we sit down together, go through the recipe. For this recipe, we're gonna caramelize onion first. Go through each of the steps because I kind of want that like oniony flavor in the oil while we're frying the mushrooms. Oh, sick. Wow, big bit. Make sure that we each understand what's going on in the recipe. Then we can fry the mushrooms and then we move to the kitchen. So my assistants do the chopping, the slicing. You actually don't need it that fine. They see you mincing and like you don't need to mince. Roughly chopped, roughly chopped. They do the blending, they do the puree. They also lift things onto the stovetop, remove things from the stovetop. They lift things from like cabinets that I can't reach. I'm gonna start frying, heating up the oil. They also like bring oil up to 10 to 10 to 10. They tear apart like mushroom pieces. This is like a big clump of mushrooms while you break that up, or? Yes. And then by doing it by hand, you get all of these irregular ridges. That tastes so yummy. They also drop things into like a bubbling bat of oil if the process is to fry something. It's like walking through each step of the recipe, step by step, according to how it's written. What is it? So while they're working, it tastes good. I am tasting as they go like the sharpness and the garlic heat flavor. I'm like taking my wheelchair over to the stovetop to check out what they're doing, how they're stirring, how they're folding. I'm listening out for whisking to listen to how a sauce is solidifying with the whisk. I'm sort of like an active observer. Say that, that's good. Okay. It's like caramelized. I mean, deeply brown in spots. I'm very much present in the kitchen. And even though I'm not actively cooking the steps as they are, I'm actively listening and also taking notes. Like sometimes I pause the cooking process. So I'm like, let me jot that down before I forget. When you say shaved instead of shredded, I'm thinking that like when you shred it and like grab a handful and like drop it, it should just sort of like collapse like in and like. I don't want to see hair. I thought. But I got it. So yeah. It tastes all tinseled, I love it. And so it's about both of us, both me and my assistant communicating a lot about the recipe, about the cooking process, and about what's going on stovetopse. And so it's a lot of back and forth in communication. I would move it to a plate or like a board and cut it right through. I mean, it looks delicious. Like I definitely want to eat that. At the very end, we both taste the dish together. We talk about it. We talk about what works, what doesn't. Look at that. And it's sort of like we go back to the drawing board to see what we made actually for follows the format that I imagined. See, that's an obnoxious sandwich. That's a whole meal. Do you guys ever disagree? I just sort of imagine for somebody like you, maybe it was not super easy to hand over the actual cooking part to somebody else. Yeah, I think working together with someone else in my kitchen, especially in the step where I'm creating a recipe, the disagreements that we've had have been mostly about like whether or not the way it's written will work. And what we're doing is trial and error. It's like different ways of like doing the same thing. It sounds like it requires a lot of patience from both of you. A lot of patience, yes, yes. A lot of patience. You want these patience, you know? 'Cause like, they're like vision, they're dream. They have an idea of how they want to do it. And then because, you know, we're not the same person. There's so much patience that they have to like make sure that it's going the way that they want it. Yeah, but you know, it also requires you listening to me. Like I don't do this without them, you know? And like it's humbling. And I think patience has, like this period of my life has like taught me so much patience with like learning to use my prosthetics. Like I just have to be patient with myself to be patient with other people. And that's also allowed you to go back to doing what you love. Like sometimes I, when I'm in the kitchen with an assistant, I would put on my prosthetics to like lip cream just to see if I can do it. And those minutes or those like times are actually quite thrilling. 'Cause it feels like me leaning into my former self and actually seeing the cream come together, like the heavy cream come together and like a soft whipped cream. And like that's like, oh my God, I did that with a prosthetic hand. Like that's amazing. - Food is sort of like this continuum between your old self and your present self, it sounds like. - Oh, yeah, I love that a continuum. - Yeah, because now I'm able to experience food that I had before that I'm having now sort of like the immigrant story where like I've had a mango in Nigeria and it doesn't taste the same as a mango here. But now, I'm able to like eat a mango and like close my eyes and like remember like oh my god like this is a mango of my childhood, you know, and that feels like a through line in my story where like food has just really helped me see the through line in my story. You want to thank you so much for all of your time. Thank you so much Rachel this was wonderful. today's episode was produced by Tina Antelini. It was edited by Wendy Dorr and had production assistance from Dahlia Haddad. It contains music by Alicia B. E. Tube, Marion Luzano, Rowan Ni Misto and Dan Powell and was engineered by Rowan Ni Misto. Special thanks to Angi, Yawanda's cooking assistant. That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. [BLANK_AUDIO]