Nutrition

Hello Abrn

Good to hear you've agreed to the RIG.  I'm sure that will help you.  

I quickly lost my appetite when treatment started and then I started having problems swallowing.  I was told to just eat whatever I could manage to get down.  In my case that was things like soup, scrambled egg, soggy cereal, yogurt, custard, ice cream.  I managed mashed potato, steamed veg and pasta at the beginning but eventually had to give up on those for a while.  I was eating such tiny portions of food that it probably wasn't adding up to more than around 500 calories a day.  That's why the liquid shakes are such a help.  They have around 400 calories a bottle and include all the necessary nutrients.  I was given a target of 2000 calories a day and told to eat whatever I could in proper food and then make up the calories with the shakes.

Best wishes xx 

Home made smoothies which include banana and also full fat greek yoghurt can be a great way to get calories, vitamins and fibre down you - you may find them too much towards the end of treatment, but good again once things start to heal and settle down.

My husband was given a gloop (can't think of any other description!) called Calogen to take through the PEG during radiotherapy. The texture and taste was appalling, so he just put it through the PEG. It is basically compressed calories, incredibly rich. This was in addition to the Fortisips, where he was given a combination of different types (some are higher in protein or fibre than others) in order to keep his bowels functioning well as well as the weight on. Taking the prescribed nutrition was in theory enough to keep him healthy and more or less stable weight-wise, so anything else he could manage orally such as a glass of milk was a bonus. He did manage to drink most of the fortisips by mouth throughout, but the medications and the Calogen had to go by PEG!

On the smoothies I was told to add full fat (hard to find) powdered milk to them to up the intake, I am sure it was my dietitian that told me this.