I made it through rads without a feeding tube and if I remember correctly one of the easiest things to eat was pasta with butter and green peas. The smooth rounded types (for example cavaletti or orecchiette) didn’t hurt my tongue and they just glided down. Oven-baked cod and mashed root vegetables (again, with a generous amount of butter) was also one of the last things I could eat before I stopped eating real food completely. I sauteed chopped spinach (it had to be chopped or else I couldn’t swallow it) and mixed it with plain yoghurt and used it as the sauce to help the cod go down easier. I also liked dunking biscuits in tea but not any biscuit, the kind that falls apart as soon as you dunk it. I don’t know the name of them in english but if you google “Marie kex” you’ll see what I mean. However, it was absolutely impossible for me to consume the recommended amount of calories and nutrients with the very small amount of food I was eating. I basically survived on high calorie nutritional drinks and shots I got from the hospital. I think it’s the same as the ensure/boost Christine and Denise wrote about earlier. I would definitely try those out and see if your father likes them. They really helped me out a lot and eliminated the anxiety I was having about food and calories.
My dietician also told me to put a little oil (healthy oil of course) in my smoothies and soups to bump up the calorie count. But that’s something to talk to your father’s dietician or doctor about since he has high cholesterol.
When it comes to the opioids, I understand your father completely. I also love driving (it calms me) and had a hard time with the idea of sitting next to a stranger everyday to and from the hospital, not being able to drive myself. Plus I wasn’t looking forward to the side effects either. That being said, I had the fentanyl patch, lidocaine mouthwash, morphine-lidocaine gel AND liquid morphine. The gel and mouthwash helped when I was brushing my teeth but did nothing for me when it came to eating. The patch and morphine were the lifesavers there. I hated how they made me feel and I hated the cab rides to the hospital but the alternative was getting a tube and I disliked that idea even more.
If I remember correctly my doctor said I could drive if I only took the morphine and if I stopped taking it at a certain time during the day (so it would be out of my system the next morning). Maybe that’s something to ask his doctor about. If this is true, and I haven’t completely made it up in my head, then he could at least take some before meals.
