Back to the Feeding Tube

I guess the word setback should be familiar by now. At least the time between setbacks is increasing.

I'm back to getting my food out of a can and through a tube until the docs figure out why my digestive system is freaking out. Step 1 is to go back to what was last known to work, which is the feeding tube. The digestive problems began within days of starting to eat solid food.

Everything else is going pretty well. Sleep is still a major issue, and waking up 4 to 6 times a night because of digestive problems doesn't help any.

Eating was progressing nicely. Swallowing was getting more accurate and stronger. I was to the point where I would have eaten salad in public. No meat other than cocktail shrimp on the salad and not much cheese, but I can go that route.

Taste was another matter. At first it was so great just to be able to eat that I ignored what things tasted like. When it comes to repeating foods and trying to figure out a week's worth of food, taste becomes a factor.

Pretty much everything tastes awful and maybe half the things I used to like are just downright nasty tasting. Some are so bad I can't tolerate them in my mouth. I have to have Robby sample my food, because I'm convinced a lot of it is rotten based on my taste. It's not. The big surprise is pasta, which tastes like rancid vegetable oil.

It's pretty tough to enjoy eating when the taste is nasty, chewing everything to a fine pulp is required and tiring to those muscles, and swallowing presents a risk of some unpleasant throat work to clear food out of my air ways. There are some foods I am avoiding because I really like them and don't want to have any memories of how they would taste now. It's too late for shrimp. They lead the way for tasting spoiled. Gotta love the taste of spoiled seafood. Yummy, yummy.

I'm reminded of the description of a smell I was producing at the worst of the chemo and radiation. Stuff was dying all over inside me and there was something I was producing that I described as smelling like two skunks fighting over a dead fish.