At long last I feel like I am getting somewhere with my eating. It has been a very frustrating business so far. Finally I have put some weight on and the Dietician has agreed that I may reduce my pump feeds from 4 to 3 a day. I am finding that I am able to eat a little bit more each week. At the moment I am having half a bowl of Special K cereal, half a banana and a Muller Fruit Corner Yogurt for lunch. Then in the evening I have a small sized dinner. My dinner is served up on a side plate and is about a third of the size of a normal meal. I usually have boiled potatoes, vegetables and some meat. Pudding is tinned fruit with ice cream or custard.
This is nothing like what I used to eat but it seems to go down the easiest and it satisfies the Dietician. I seem to have gone back to eating similar dinners to what we used to get at primary school. With my potatoes and veg I am having things like steak and kidney pie, sausages, mince, meatballs or spam. These are all foods I wouldn’t normally enjoy as I like to know exactly what I’m eating and I don’t trust processed foods. However they seem to be the only sort of protein I can eat easily, and the Dietician says they’ll do for now.
The plan is that as my weight increases and I can eat bigger portions then the pump feeds will reduce until we are down to zero. However I know this is going to be slow progress as it’s taken 6 weeks so far to get to this stage. However I can see improvement, I could only manage a mouthful or two at the beginning and I was having to force food down. I used to dread having to eat anything. I now look forward to my meals and I am getting some taste back.
My feeding tube is 6 months old now and needs replacing. I had been hoping that I could manage without it by now but I can see that’s not going to happen. My team have had a meeting on the subject and they all agreed that I must have the tube in until my weight has gone up more and I am eating properly in terms of calories and nutritional requirements. I know they are right. I got myself upset in the early stages of my treatment when Mum was taken into hospital. I dropped half a stone one week as I couldn’t be bothered to eat anything. That is why I was given the pump and my husband was put in charge. I often don’t feel like having my feeds but I get no choice as he plugs me in and sets it all going. He also makes sure I do my food diary and weighs me for the Dietician.
So I now await a phone call from the nurse to say when she is coming round to change the tube. I am not looking forward to having it done but she says it won’t hurt. They keep telling me that correct nutrition is very important to my recovery so I will just do as I’m told and let them get on with it.
