June 5, 2011 - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

June 5, 2011 – Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

That’s the way this weekend has gone. Saturday was the best day I’ve had in quite a while. I even went out for a brief retail visit with my wife. I ate some food the normal way although it was about 5 swallows of some soup. I took in more cans of sludge than any day since I had the feeding tube installed. Then this morning I got out of bed, felt ok, fed myself about half a can of Ensure Plus  - and barfed. GRRRRRRR!!!

That took care of much of my day as I took an anti-nausea med and slept for a few hours. This afternoon I’ve come around again taking in some pudding by mouth and adding more cans of “nutrition” throughout the day. I was, again, able to drink some Coke through my mouth as well. It’s now early evening and I just finished another half can of “food”; I’ll see how it goes.

In all, I’m getting better but the pace of improvement is frustrating – but certainly not unexpected.  As an aside, the pudding didn’t taste particularly sweet so I asked my wife to taste it. It’s very sweet she tells me. So we tried an experiment:  I took a small amount of honey just to see what it tasted like. It tasted like someone had salted the honey if you can imagine what that would taste like. So my taste buds are a mess. I can only hope that will improve in time. We’ll see.

The week ahead is totally dedicated to keeping weight on and continuing my efforts at normal swallowing. No doctor visits, just a week of trying to get better. This is the second week after the treatment was completed and after this week I’m supposed to start seeing more improvement. We will see. Is it October yet?