Hi Katie,

Merry Christmas and I hope that the treatment didn't take too much out of the festive season and you were able to enjoy time with loved ones.

For pain relief - my wife took paracetamol to start off with and then moved on to Endone - Oxynom - MS Contin (20mg - 30mg) as the pain got progressively worse towards the end of treatment.

You might also want to ask for lignocaine & cocaine mouthwash as well for temporary relief before and/or after eating.

Please note it is very important to stay ahead of the pain whilst not trying to over take the medication. Every morning & evening, rate your pain between 1-10 and try and keep it below 4.

As with any opiate based drug (morphine, oxycodone etc.), there is a high level of dependency that forms with it, and I have seen too many patients just go nuts on it and have an incredibly difficult time getting off the medication and suffering it's side affects.

Furthermore, your body's tolerance levels for these drugs form very rapidly meaning you will have to continually increase your dosage for it to be of any use. Hence - the later you start, the better effectiveness it will have when the pain gets REALLY unbearable.

As for eating, make sure you eat EVERYTHING & ANYTHING during the first few weeks of treatment as you will become increasingly dependent on the Nasal Gastric Tube over the next few weeks.

Stock up heavily on Ensure 2.0 and make sure you get yourself a blender (preferably one of those magic bullets) so you can mix it up with more stuff as well. For my wife, I used to give her 3 of these per day and it would top over 2100 calories:

1 x Ensure 2.0 (450 kcal)
1 Tbsp x Manuka Honey (Active 30+)
1 Tbsp x Sustagen Powder
1 Tbsp x Peanut Butter
100 ml x Full Cream milk
1 Serving x Blueberries
1 x Banana

Hope that helps and let me know if you need any further info.