Operation Garbage Plate: The Avocado Mission

Things have been moving slowly in the last week or so. I had a regular checkup with the medical oncologist and I dropped 5 pounds or so since the last visit. It was suggested, in a nice way, that I shouldn't measure success by getting off of the PEG tube as fast as possible. In other words focus on the weight. :-)

I had tried to get to the point where I would use the PEG tube for about half of my nutrition and would try other things. The problem there is that it is hard to get in the calories when it takes a half hour to eat a poached egg. So I am back to using the PEG tube as my primary source for calories and nutrition. I can drink things like Ensure and Carnation Instant Breakfast but they are not meant as a long term by themselves diet where the feeding supplies they give me are. Right now I use Ensure primarily as a portable nutrition when I may not be able to get back to do PEG tube feedings.

There has been some moderate success on identifying foods that I can eat. I may do a post at some time about what I have learned from my food experiments. One thing that was suggested to me was to try a mashed up avocado. In essence guacamole without the solids like tomatoes or onion. It turns out that the avocado actually went down pretty well. It wasn't fast and still took almost an hour but it is a pretty good source of calories and does have some nutritional value unlike the milkshakes I make on occasion. It isn't going to replace the PEG tube feedings but it is something else to eat on occasion.