Well, I haven't accounted for myself for a while here and that's because there were a couple of days when I got so busy with working that the extra effort to sit dewn and slowly try to eat/drink some kind of "real food" became too much. It was a much as I could do to get 6 cans of "jevity" down. I have always done cans for my tube feeding--and I have to do them one at a time, More than one makes me sick. I was doing 5 for the longest time ebcause I was so easily made sick for other reasons even though originaly (when I weighed 40 pounds more before I started radiation at the beginning of April) I was told I'd need 7 cans to amintain my weight. It seemed like 5 cans results in a weight loss of 1-2 pds per week. Which, since I was overweight, didn't seem too horrible and wasn't too hard a goal to reach--didn't add too much to the nausea.

But when I realized I had lost 40 pounds a couple of weeksa ago, I decided I have had enough weight loss. I'm clearly very weak--I've lost muscle tone not just fat--and I need to maintian the weight I'm at now--maybe eventually gain back a few pounds (actually, since I was diagnosed I have lost 60 pounds because I lost 20 pounds from the two surgeries adn teh resulting surgical infection I got from the lumpectomy before April, and radiation, ever started. Who would have ever thought that I'd be grateful for having been 50 pounds overweight in the beginning of January?)

So there were a few days of just struggling to find the 6 breaks during the day to get down 6 cans of Jevity. Plus I have salagen and tamoxifen I take by grinding up the pills and putting them through the tube, and I'm taking "beecaps" supplements right now, that need some extensive grinding before they go through my tube. As well, I have a Bvitamin/vitamin C drink mix and I'm taking two glasses of that a day right now (which are megadoeses of B and C but there's reasons why both may be good.) Then there's the extra strenght Tylenol I take for pain. So just taking breaks and figuring out what stuff in additon to jevity goes down the tube, and carefully grinding it up and putting it through is actually hugely time consuming. I can't believe how much time out of my day it takes. To find the time to, on top of that, set up some kind of oral consumption experience (I won't say eating yet because it isn't), which I am trying to set up so it will be a good experiecne, not something that discourages me more but somehting that tempts mne to keep trying, some days it seemed like too much.

BUT yesterday and today I have been back to that. Yesterday I just had some vegetable broth--no calories but with the 6 cans of Jevity I dohn't think I need calories so much--the veg. broth tastes like "real food" to me--it doesn't just taste like salt (this is actually a soemhwat low sodium broth), and when it's slightly warm it really feels good going down. I can't swallow big mouthfuls at once though but I ended up having a cup of it.

Today I tried sopme French Onion soup, with tiny almost ground up bits of onion and then a littel can of diced peaches. Someone else had mentioned those and I thought they were something nonliquid I might be able to handle because theya re soft enough.

Well, the cup of onion soup (which was really just a little thicker than the broth the day before) went down OK and the peaches started OK--they are liquid enough I didn't have the problem of them just sticking to my teeth or the roof of my mouth but (and this upsets me) I couldn't seem to swallow them right! I would think I had done it and then cough and the littel bit of peach would come flying back up. Is this just because I'm out of practice getting food to go down the right pipe or something?

I'm actually a litte hesitant to even try more because my husband wasn't around and I started worrying maybe I could choke on a little gob of peach. Did others of you have this problem when you got back to eating? I know right after my partial glossectomy it took me a while to figure out how to use what was left of my tongue to get bits of food to go to the right spot to swallow. I had a hard tiem there for a week or so thenit seemed to suddenly get much easier--like my brain had learned the new movements nd it became automatic. Do I just have to keep trying adn I'll relearn this again or does this mean I could have problems for a long time now? I hope not.

Anyway, that's my update. And I plan to keep trying.