Jim finished his treatments two weeks ago. Yay! He has continued to swallow water and small pills thru the treatment, but all nutrition has been liquid through his g-tube. His MO said 4 weeks after treatment he may begin to eat soft foods such as pudding, yogurt, cream soups. Can he try sooner or is there a risk of getting choked before then?

It is not an issue of choking as much as an issue of pain. I went to a liquid diet for a while after radiation (no peg). The first thing semi-solid I went to after that was pudding. I started that about 2 weeks after treatment and that was always about how much pain I could tolerate and what I felt I could keep down as the no taste issue made me want to gag on all food at that point.

For me, eating got better fairly fast after that and I was back to solid foods in no time.

Congratulations to Jim on completing treatments. Everyone has different issues with eating. I wasn't able to eat "real" food for about 16 months, but had my peg out well before that as I was able to swallow Ensure, smoothies and milkshakes and such, just couldn't handle anything solid due to the combination of bad taste and no saliva. Others are on solids much sooner and some few take even longer. You just have to try whenever you feel up to it and hope it works.

John started eating by mouth around 6 weeks out of treatments.

Three weeks post Tx and I started "eating" things like mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, fruit cocktail, cut up ham. Nothing tasted right but boy was I glad I was eating solid foods again.

Thanks for letting me know what to expect. It is so hard to eat in front of him because he wants real food so bad. I just keep telling him we're one day closer to it. Shhhhh...I haven't told him the food won't taste good at first.

For those of us that didn't have a peg, we started eating real food as soon as we could swallow it. I don't remember anyone setting any time limit on when I could start. I lived on Ensure Plus for a couple of weeks after treatment and then started on eggs, apple sauce, yogurt, soup, etc.

I'd ask the doc if there is any reason why he can't try now. The more he swallows, the less likely he is to lose the ability.

Take care,
Eileen

Agree with Eileen. The time I stared is when I walked out of my tunnel and I finally felt I could try something solid. I didn't have a PEG and my throat wasn't that sore but nausea was my problem so I started trying solid foods as soon as my nausea slacked off. Up until that point I was barely living on swallowing VHC.

David, when did your nausea slack off? Jim has had constant nausea from about day 4 of the treatment regimen. The cisplatin was the first culprit. Then carboplatin, even though MO said it rarely caused much nausea. Wrong! He threw up the first night! So he has pretty much stayed on his Zofran and Phenergan. It's been two weeks since he finished the treatments, the mucous has slacked off and he feels better but we're hesitant about putting the anti-nausea pills away. Do you remember when your nausea subsided?

[quote=Jim and Deb]David, when did your nausea slack off? Jim has had constant nausea from about day 4 of the treatment regimen. The cisplatin was the first culprit. Then carboplatin, even though MO said it rarely caused much nausea. Wrong! He threw up the first night! So he has pretty much stayed on his Zofran and Phenergan. It's been two weeks since he finished the treatments, the mucous has slacked off and he feels better but we're hesitant about putting the anti-nausea pills away. Do you remember when your nausea subsided? [/quote]

Hi Debbie. I hope you don't mind if I jump in here. My husband John was on both Zofran and Companize all through treatments because the nausea was so bad. He didn't talk for a month because every time he tried the mucus would make him gag and throw up. He was totally off all anti-nausea meds about 1 month after treatments ended.