Operation Garbage Plate: New Mission This Week

Another dilation mission, I mean procedure, is on for this week. This one will be two weeks and two days after the last one and hopefully my esophagus won't have closed up again. To help avoid giving back any ground that was gained I have developed a new strategy regarding eating. My first strategy was to try to get back to eating some of the foods that I normally would have eaten before starting treatments for cancer. I tried, without much success, things like bits of a cheeseburger, clam chowder soup and such. Foods that I though would be obvious success's but didn't work out so well.

The axiom that a battle plan is only good up until the time a battle is joined rings true in this case. As I have mentioned before there are several physical aspects to swallowing one of which is the ability of the esophagus to open up enough to swallow solids. This time around I decided that the primary goal in eating was just that, eating. Anything that I could get down even if it wasn't pleasant or something I would usually eat is what I planned on trying. That along with drinking large sips of water. While I have a nifty thermos bottle with a straw that I carry around with me at home the goal was large gulps of water from a glass. That is a much more efficient means of drinking large amounts of water. The goal with all of this was to keep using the esophagus, hopefully up to its current maximum size, so that it couldn't start to seal back up. On Thursday we will know if this works or not.

The idea for this approach came to me when I started the exercises to increase the opening of my mouth. The morning is the time when my mouth opens the least. I think this is because it has had all night to start to go back to where it was and give up some ground. To counteract this I have to do exercises multiple times a day. Then it came to me (Que revelation music now) that this may be what is happening to my throat. It is still healing from the treatments and if it isn't being used then it will close back up.

The primary foods that I am eating are deviled eggs with the egg whites, Jello Instant Pudding Cheesecake, waffles cut into minuscule pieces with lots of maple syrup, home made candied peanuts (I would have never bet that would work but it does, sort of.) and pureed soups. I picked up a small food processor with a big motor to puree soups like split pea. So far it is working out well. A larger food processor would not do as good of a job. Thanks to the Mega Industrial Food Appliance Complex (M.I.F.A.C. for short. :)) for providing an endless set of kitchen gadgets.

I plan to keep up the eating attempts to keep the esophagus open and hopefully this week we will find out that has worked. Hopefully we can keep to the same schedule and have the next two procedures also scheduled only 2 weeks apart. Then I could get in 2-3 more procedures before Thanksgiving.