My brother is not able to chew following surgery. He also has to avoid spicey, salty and acidic food. What can he eat other than mashed potatoes and cream of wheat? He has has trouble with some blended foods.

pudding, apple sauce, ice cream, thin soups / creamy soups, broths, oatmeal, cottage cheese, yogurt, smoothies, milk shakes, pureed fruits. That's what I remember eating right after surgery - I think I lived on Ensure and Ice Cream for a good week or two.

Try to blend everything real thin! Really runny mashed potatoes/gravy worked for me. Ice cream workd well and was more soothing because it was cold.

Diana,

I ate everything on Amy's list, plus scrambled eggs, Carnation Instant Breakfast and many different flavors of baby food. Sometimes I would just walk up and down the aisles in the grocery store tracking down anything I could see that fit the "easy to swallow" requirement.

Cathy

Diana, I don't know what your brother's surgery involved, but he might have trouble with dairy products if he has raw, healing tissue in his mouth or throat. Something in milk products, a protein, I think, can be irritating in some people. My husband couldn't eat ice cream or Carnation instant breakfast because it felt like it was burning his throat. We are going to try soy milk next. Try smoothies blended with silken tofu for protein and try adding very small noodles (that don't have to be chewed)to broth. Tom likes Campbell's beef consumme because it tasted a little richer and it has more protein in it than plain broth. Be warned though that all canned soups and broth have a lot of salt in them.

Joyce

oatmeal has some substance. Get the whole rolled oats kind, not the quick oats. Use some honey or brown sugar to sweeten. Put a banana in small pieces in it. It was the first thing I was able to eat.

It's very exciting to be able to eat again. It wil take a while, but things will come around. I can now do mild salsa and have even been able to eat jalipenos.

Steve

Hi all...Diet after surgery is an interesting dilemma. I found that almost everything could go thru the blender. I had fish, hearty soups, asparagus, sweet potates and almost anything...blended, add a bit of water..and you can eat almost anything . My plate looked funny, like colorful mush, but sure tasted good. I moved up to Tuna fish. Just a few bites. But it was wonderful. I lost 13 pounds in 5 weeks..but now its back. I eat normal for the most part now. Swallowing was a big issue, and sometimes only ate few small bites, but gradually things got better.

Hi
For me bland and soft worked best. no tomato based dishes for me.
Canned macaroni cheese, just warm, cheese omelets with lots of butter to help them slide down, mashed potato with butter, I'm not a gravy person, I kept away from fruit juices for a while but peach juice was the most gentle to start.
Try to think maximum calories per swallow, if you can tolerate canned soups stir in some cream or whole milk powder, it will get better with time.
Sunshine.. love and hugs
Helen

Diana,
When I first had my g tube removed I could swallow almost nothing except ensure. Evenutally I worked my way up to cream of wheat and mashed potatoes. I describe my diet as soft wet and bland. I still can't handle spice and I need lots of liquid (gravy etc). Fruit never worked because of the acid in the fruit and very surgary thinkgs such as ice cream really didn't start working until this year. My best advice is keep trying. Put things thru a blender, add gravy, butter, etc and see what works. Try getting an appointment with a dietician who has dealt with cancer patients. My goal was always as many calories in as small a quantity as possible. Eating may not be fun for a while.

i lived on creamy pastsas for weeks and lo mein. both easy to chew/bite and slides down easy

HI MY NAME IS CATHY, I LIVE OFF BABY FOOD AND
HAVE FOR A LONG TIME SINCE MY CANCER IN 1990.
I'M CANCER FREE BUT CAN'T SWALLOW SOLIDS SO
BABY FOOD IT IS FOR ME AND MASHED POTATOES, SWEET
POTATOES IN THIS I PUT BROWN SUGER AND CINAMON AND
IT TASTES LIKE SWWET POTATOE PIE. I EAT EGGS TOO
AND LOTS OF ICE CREAM. HOPE THIS HELPS.
CATHY

For those who are trying to gain weight-whether you are eating via a tube or mouth- we have found a product that is helping John that I'd like to share. It is made by Naturade.[www.Naturade.com] The suppliment we use is called Weight Gain-Instant nutrition mix- 32 oz milk + 4 scoops powder adds 1500 cals. a day- It is a powdered suppliment that when mixed with whole milk can add good calories and protein to your diet. You can also mix the powder with icecream, yogurt, etc. We mix it up in the am and John uses it during the day. Amy

The Naturade weight gain is good stuff and it has lots of different amino acids in it, too. Other stuff I've tried:
Prosure- not bad, 300 calories + protein
Nutren- 1.0, 1.5, 2.0- tolerable, barely
Suplimed- Nasty, medicinal. Couldn't handle it, wasted $$
Naturade also makes a protein supplement powder-nasty, not tolerable, more wasted $$

thanks for the Naturade link--I'm still trying to figure out how to swallow enough to get off the tube. I think that could help.

Nelie

p.s. Does anyone know of something that could be mixed with water to make something smooth and nutritional enough to work as tube food for a few days? I'd like to think if I have to stay on the tube I could eventually go backpacking, for example, without having to carry several cans of stuff around for every day (Heavy!) Likewise for traveling on business trips.....

Nelie, I would think you could find some dehydrated food products in packages, but I'd bet that the calories will be low. Instant oatmeal, powdered milk, Lipton's dried chicken noodle soup, instant rice, instant potatoes could all be put in small zip lock bags and cooked with water over a campfire or in a microwave. Not much help, I know. Amy

We've been using a good cookbook, "The-I-Can't Chew Cookbook" - by J. Randy Wilson. This could be more useful later on in your process, but want to toss this suggestion out to you.

Best,
Anita

Well, it's going to be a while before I recover the stamina to think about backpacking for a couple of days anyway. It's just a long term goal. I can barely get through a normal day at work without collpasing from exhuastion when I get home. My fall semester has just started up and I have to pack up everything in my office for a move--after two hours of packing boxes today, I was physically wiped out. All that esophagus surgery, the collapsed lung and subseuqent chest tube for a week and further surgery to insert the stent earlier this summer really took it out of me (and there's more to come--blech).

I think I'm thinking about hiking because I need the positive goal at this point to keep me going!

Nelie

p.s. I get those pill grinders from Walmart you mentioned in some othyer topic (can't find it now). Do you find they eventually seem to grind less well over time? Almost like the plastic has worn down at the grinding spot? Also I had one get totally jammed once when I was trying to grind a big multivitamin pill in it so now I always have a backup........

Hey Amy, This is the right naturade stuff right?

http://www.naturade.com/products/de...ry=Sports+Nutrition&Flavor=Chocolate

If anyone else has recipes or suggestions for packing max calories and protein into minimum liquid (and something that doesn't taste too bad), other than that high calorie shake recipe everyone passes around here with the ice cream in it, I would very much like to read them. Not only am I going to need to drink stuff like that to get enough calories in if I'm not on the tube, but I have a friend who has a husband with MS who is having swallowing difficulty right now and she doesn't want to put him on a G tube unless it's really necessary. I passed on the shake recipe and naturade recommendation to her but maybe there are others?

Nelie

Nellie,

I haved loved backpacking in the mountains of SW Colo over the years. The side effects of my recent tongue ca have left me on a liquid diet. I can swallow but tongue doesn�t work well and no saliva. I�ve also been trying to figure out how I could get enough calories for a decent hike. My current staple is the Ensure Plus rich dark chocolate. 2 probs., weight,( over 3.5 lbs for 2100 calories and 78 grms of protein plus I�d need probably oanother 3 or 4 lbs of water.) and it only tastes decent real cold. Now with a G tube your actually better off: the SkandiShake powder envelopes have 600 calories and only weigh 85 grams but no protein; so you could get some whey powder protein from walmart wich also weighs nothing. The catch is these things don�t make a true solution � more of a suspension of tiny particles. So you need to test this out with the plunger on your G- Tube. By mouth they only taste decent mixed with milk, but w/ tube you could do it with water.

age 53 TxN2bM0 stage IV tongue and 2 nodes, non smoker, non-drinker, heavy plastic wrap exposure 25+ years, 2 surgeries, neck dissection, 60 GY IMRT+ cisplatin X5 completed 07/09, new primary on tongue 11/09, biopsy got it all, praise God! Tongue overly tethered to floor of mouth.