All the best for your surgery, @Nadi - it is great you have found some terrific online help as well for your condition. Keep us in the loop.
Hoping some of my squishy food suggestions help .... you don’t have to have bland horrible stuff - get some tinned rice pudding & pulverise that too - it is really scrummy, mixed in with tinned peaches. Really refreshing. Make sure you add the peach juice too. Just keep sucking it on down - small bits, regularly!
A bit of my background .... I worked as a Dietary Aide at Royal North Shore Hospital for some years back in the 80s ....and had a few different 'permanent' wards to look after - including the cancer ward, Maternity, and burns & plastic surgery. In the Burns & Plastic surgery ward, a lot of my patients were of 'Full Fluid' diets only, with busted jaws, burns, no jaw (from cancer), wired jaws, & other stuff - so I got used to being 'really inventive' wth providing interesting meals for them other than custard, egg flips & similar! So I used a 'mega' food processor to smash roast lamb, mint sauce & veg, roast chicken & veg, casseroles & veg - all with extra gravy, so it would fit thru a really big straw - or that they could drink like a soup. They got the real flavour of a 'natural meal', even if they weren't chewing it! Even my egg flips had added extras - the custard, cream, ice-cream, extra vanilla, even fruit .... I reckon I was making Smoothies WELL before the word had even been invented! ;)
In 2010, when Keith had most of his stomach removed due to cancer - all my training kicked back in & I started 'value adding' to all his early 'slushy meals' - I even added Baby Milk Powder to all his sweet stuff, as it was more 'fatty' than regular milk powder & had higher calories. I added heaps of melted cheese to add calories (as he'd dropped to 50kg in weight & the surgeon said he MUST NOT go lower!) I added custard & ice cream & full cream to a lot of his sweet stuff (smoothies with tinned peaches, rice pudding & added extras) and he was getting way more calories than he ever knew about! Initially after we came home, he ate too 'quickly' and 'too much' and experienced 'dumping' - where the stomach couldn't take what was hitting it & he was throwing up & feeling faint .... not a good start! But, regular small, slow meals - and by Xmas, he was eating full sized meals again (he'd been told he's be eating cups of food for the rest of his life!!)
Nadi - Once you've had your surgery, I reckon you'll be right on track for as normal a life again, as Keith has! I certainly hope so! Just take it slowly! ;) Take care & thinking of you xxx
