Part.22 How to Diet when you can't Eat ? My Oxymoron?

What do I eat When I cannot eat?

 Strange Statement Yes! But true - During and after the radiation and chemotherapy treatments for Pharyngeal (throat) cancer I was faced with this very thing. I cannot eat due to my problems swallowing and I HAD to keep my nourishment and strength up. That was like most things involved with cancer the scales which were delicately balanced to tip one way or the other could mean survival or death.

This like all the previous battles we (my wife and I) had to take it head on and quickly as my weight loss was acute and my body tissue was deteriorating. 

ANYTHING. In MY case we decided we had to fuel my system with whatever I could tolerate to keep me hydrated and functioning. IN MY CASE  I did (remarkable story on these 3 illnesses to follow ) suffer from heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 2 diabetes.

1. Heart Disease all my cholesterol was being burnt up by my body , my body fats were down to near zero (my weight dropped from 112kg to 59Kg), and my metabolism was now breaking down/converting my muscle to energy. 

We took that conversion to mean any fats would be consumed first then my muscle. Yes ----No, I could not in the early stages consume any meats as I would choke on the texture (covered in part  ). 

2. My Rheumatoid Type 2 wasn't as severe as I had lost so much weight and diet -there wasn't any !

3. The biggest balance was keeping my blood sugars at a reasonable level (not the 4 to 6 recommended level) but at a level that I could push the sugar boundaries for a short period until I started to gain weight .

 PLEASE NOTE I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS AS A MEDICAL TREATMENT PLEASE CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR. 

I found I did not have a choice FLUIDS were my primary way to ingest food and I was battling a terminal illness.
 

Fluid Diet For Throat/Mouth Cancer Sufferers.

Our first thing was to get anything I could tolerate into my stomach, Full Cream milk was the first thing

1 I knew I could tolerate as I had a nasogastric tube and 2. the full cream fats of the milk would be readily metabolized. If you don't like milk add strawberry or caramel so that you can. 

Add 2 Raw eggs to the shake your taste buds are recovering and so probably won't detect its presence. 

Avocados are a great source of good cholesterol and vitamins. Do your research and think outside the square if fluid is your primary ingestion method vitamise as much as possible.

For Quite a while all I could consume was milk-based shakes. If it is Ice Cream Eat it in the early stages anything is better than nothing. As you improve and begin to gain weight you can decrease the amounts of sugar ingested.

Remember when you lose this much weight so does your Appetite and the Volume of food to fill you up also decreases.Becase of the loss of taste due to radiotherapy to the mouth region you will have zero taste but YES IT WILL RETURN.

It is essential to Try to eat solids ie. mashed potatoes , pumpkin, and spinach vitamised as you need to keep your throat muscles working ie. swallowing/pushing food down, another side effect that should not be overlooked as well is opening your mouth, you need to exercise opening it to the widest point as in my case I found the extension of my mouth diminished as well during treatment.

As covered in the previous episode chicken(thighs, not breast meat) and lamb are the only meats I can swallow with caution washed down with fluids. My Goto Food is fish salmon smoked or cooked if cooked try to undercook so as not to lose moisture and make it dry.

The common staple of eating bread is a no-go Zone for quite a while because it compacts into a ball creating trouble swallowing. When able to do so Toast it until it breaks as this will stop the compacting effect.

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