To my mind, the issues of people who can't swallow well enough to even want a cookbook get buried in the "after treatment issues". I mean, it seems to me at least roughly biweekly someone new shows up with really serious long term swallowing issues: they are using a bougie or they have a stricture or they have been told if they have a dilitation their esophagus could be perforated or their esophagus has been perforated. And often the responses they get in "after treatment issues" are from people who lack knowledge about those issues and they probably have a hard time finding the threads from those of us who do also deal wioth those long term swallowing issues.

Though I am not one of the people who asked Brian for the new forum, and with all due respect to the people who want a cookbook, I think helping these people suffering long term issues with dypsphagia, which has it's own set of medical treatments and procedures, is really critical.

And I honestly can't see why you would need a whole forum for recipes. That should be a thread or two on a larger forum.

Besides, the description of the forum clearly states that it is a forum for discussing issues such as strictures and dypsphagia as well as eating related issues.

Nelie

And chiming in with Nelie, if you are at a decent hospital you should be getting suggestions, handouts, recipes, etc. and advice from a nutritionist anyway. I had weekly meetings with my nutritionist, who also gave me samples of many liquid nutrition drinks to try out (actually with 2 nutritionists - the CCC that did my RT insisted that I meet weekly with theirs as well) . In the HMO I belong to it was automatic and actually mandatory. By all means look for recipes here but don't overlook resources that may be readily available to you.

I have to admit that there have been some very good high calorie drink recipes here and they should be made readily accessible. As Brian suggested there is a LOT in the archives about this.

Swallowing issues tend to be more individual in general since we all respond differently to treatment. The new forum hopefully will facilitate persons with similar experiences and solutions hooking up.

I am glad to see a forum for this since the nutritional aspect is of great importance for the healing process.

Why not concentrate the food suggestions, as Nelie suggested, in one, easy to find, thread.

There could actually be several other dedicated topics to this forum as well such as:
Pre PEG/Treatment
PEG/emotional aspect of having a tube hanging out of your body/installation/care and maintenance/optimal usage, etc.
Post PEG or Transitioning from PEG to soft foods
No PEG (believe it or not a few of us did it without a PEG and we had to eat too)
Aspiration issues and prevention
Esophogeal dilation
Obturators
The emotional aspect of not being able to enjoy food during treatment (this was a big one for me)

This is not all inclusive by any means...

There are also at least 2 cookbooks listed on the OCF webpage for books that have excellent recipes. But I like the idea of having just one thread in the forum for recipes. That way they are all in one place for anyone to find. If we do that, someone should definitely search pasr posts in other fora for the word "recipe" since I know good recipes (including mine for vampire-scaring cream of garlic/onion soup) have been posted elsewhere in the past.

We could also share info. that we get from nutritionists. As well as information about exercises that help strengthen swallowing muscles that can be done even when you are in too much pain to swallow (for eaxmple, the Shaker exercise, which has some good research showing how effective it is).

The nutritionist at my hospital was pretty hopeless by the way (but I was treated at a CCC radiation oncology outpost connected to a smaller hospital so it did not have all the staff a CCC would). I did get nutrition drink samples from the oncology nurse who worked with my RO and the nutritionist taught me the basics of PEG care and cleaning, but there could have been a lot better support.

Nelie

I created some new sub forums in the eating forum. They can be found as links under the new eating forum. I could add more that seem reasonable, and Gary has offered a good list. Let's start here and see how it works. I don't want these boards to become so complex that they are hard to navigate.