Some progress was made on the food issues today.\u00a0 The speech and swallowing specialist worked with Nancy prior to lunch and then came to her room to watch while she chewed and swallowed.\u00a0 When one doesn\u2019t swallow well it is called dysphagia, or disordered swallowing.<\/p>\n
To get proper nutrition food has to be prepared in a manner to make it easy to swallow and some foods have to be avoided.\u00a0 We have assumed, in Nancy\u2019s case, that her difficulties originated from the insertion of a breathing tube (endotracheal intubation) in the ICU.\u00a0 There is a possibility that her problem preceded that and the intubation just added to an existing issue.<\/p>\n
As early as last spring we recall some episodes of her not being able to swallow well, followed by spitting up something she had just tried to swallow.\u00a0 This may be a false lead and her problem might clear up with a bit more time and exercise.\u00a0 Swallowing a liquid such as water or anything else like water can be a problem because it goes down so quickly that your throat, being a bit out of practice, doesn\u2019t have time to close off the airway.\u00a0 Liquids that are a bit thicker \u2013 tomato juice, say \u2013 allow more time for a sluggish throat to function.\u00a0 Thickened soups and drinks are recommended.<\/p>\n
So, the dysphagia consultant examined the food in Nancy\u2019s lunch.\u00a0 There was ground meat (beef, maybe) with a gravy and mashed potatoes without gravy.\u00a0 Well the problem with ground beef is that when cooked it adheres together (think of a grilled burger \u2013 if it didn\u2019t stick together it would fall through the bars of the grill).\u00a0 Thus, the meat portion met the letter of the directive but not the intent. \u00a0The consultant took it back to the kitchen and came back with the stuff newly ground.\u00a0 That helped.<\/p>\n
At supper the protein portion (tuna, I think) was prepared properly and brought in a bowl, that is, not as a sandwich.\u00a0 No chewy sticky bread is good.\u00a0 A thin watery soup accompanied the meal.\u00a0 Not good.<\/p>\n
I keep two canisters of yogurt in a small ice filled cooler in her closet.\u00a0 We used one of those with supper to help add calories and nutrients.\u00a0 The soup went back to the kitchen untouched.\u00a0 I suppose I will be carrying corn starch or tapioca in small plastic bags to add to soups such as that tonight.\u00a0 Carrying small bags of white power around in these troubled times seems to be unwise, however.\u00a0 I may rethink this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some progress was made on the food issues today.\u00a0 The speech and swallowing specialist worked with Nancy prior to lunch and then came to her room to watch while she chewed and swallowed.\u00a0 When one doesn\u2019t swallow well it is called dysphagia, or disordered swallowing. To get proper nutrition food has to be prepared in … Continue reading “MONDAY — on the food front”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-4P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}