I hope this “case manager” can be of some help to you. Just reading your post about the meds and tests made my blood pressure go up. Why does it have to be so fucking difficult? Like having cancer isn’t enough trouble for two people to deal with. I hope you can keep YOUR blood pressure down, Broomstick! It sounds like things are beginning to start to get better; good luck with more of the same.
So good to hear! Does he have anything like a cane or walker or something to help him move around if he’s unsteady on his feet? If not, might something like that help? If for nothing else, to give him confidence that he’s got the extra support.
OK, now we know the man is ill :D. (more seriously: protein, fat, a bit of fiber - not a bad mix all in all).
Might he be able to tolerate a homemade milkshake or fruit smoothie (perhaps with a bit of protein powder)?
ARGH!!! I know virtually nothing about your husband’s medical needs but the asthma thing strikes close to home… the insurance people are REALLY being morons about that. The cost of a steroid inhaler is cheaper than 2 office visits (possibly cheaper than 1) and a WHOLE lot cheaper than an ER visit or hospital stay… plus, steroid inhalers are the STANDARD OF CARE for asthma.
Oh yeah: when / if the time comes you DO need help, it may well be very different if people pay bills on your behalf versus giving you cash to pay the bills.
Well, yeah, probably… if I had time to make it for him… and then clean up the kitchen afterward… as well as care for him… and try to keep working… and the 1,0001 other things I need to do in a day.
We’re trying baby food. Like strained beef and chicken, but further diluted for easier swallowing and it comes in very small portions, which are the only ones he can handle right now. It is a hassle that a lot of baby food really pushes the yogurt, which makes him gag even when he’s healthy (newsflash: not everyone likes yogurt). I managed to get chicken into him yesterday, and beef today. Also, he had about 20 ounces of full-sugar Dr. Pepper today during his chemo session, he could really use the calories.
Yeah, well, apparently the “health” insurance companies never got that message…
How many grams of protein do they want him to have per day? They wanted me to have 60. You can get a lot into him with a smoothie, around 22 with the powder, 7-15 depending on what yogurt you use IF you use it, and a few more if you use milk or almond milk to thin it. I’m slightly lactose-intolerant so I can offer variations on that, too.
I know you’re crazy overwhelmed, but it would be an excellent use of your time and energy if he were able to drink them. You could get over half his daily protein into him if he has around the same recommendations I did. Protein is what helped me heal the most.
I wouldn’t nag about it if I didn’t think it were important, but I’ll stop now. 
I ate a lot of baby food, too. Gerber’s chicken and apples wasn’t bad. I can’t quite describe it, but it was really a mental hit to be reduced to eating baby food. It did help me survive, however. Even now I’ll go look and see what’s new in the baby food section. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
I need protein, and people recommend baby food to me all the time.
I need brutal honesty.
How does it really taste? When my daughter was little, 35 years ago, I’d look at baby food meat and want to gag. I can’t get anything much thicker than a thin cream soup down my throat, so no baby food “dinners”.
Am I going to take a bite and make a bee line for the bathroom? I’m not getting enough protein with two cartons of Activia a day.
Might home-made smoothies work for you, too? Protein powder has a lot of protein. I couldn’t tolerate the sweetness of protein drinks which is why I went to smoothies.
I think baby food is worth a try for you. I didn’t notice much of a smell. I used the stage one in the tiny jars. I don’t know how your tastes are, but it’s very bland so there’s a meat flavor but it’s not overpowering. It thins very well with water so you could drink it easily. I found that heating it gave it a little more flavor, but mostly improved the texture and mixes more easily with water. I hope it works. I’ll try to remember what else I did.
Edited to add HUGS, Pai.
There is no way in hell I’m going to get him to eat or drink anything yogurt-based. Even when healthy he found the taste so revolting as to cause gagging. Right now, it just wouldn’t stay down.
I know yogurt is a health food and trendy, but it’s just not going to work here.
The strained meat versions of baby food are ones he can tolerate with a little extra seasoning, sort of like a thick broth. Also managed to get some Subway’s loaded baked potato soup into him. He’s getting whole milk. He is getting full-sugar soft drinks. Nor more diet anything.
Right now we haven’t been given a target for daily protein, we’re trying to just get enough calories into him. Fortunately, he started somewhat overweight so right now his weight is still in the normal range, albeit at the bottom of it by this week.
Oh, I get it - I’m always nagging him about eating these days.
A lot of what’s in the baby section is yogurt base, that’s what I found this week.
The shakes have been OK, but how many chocolate shakes can anyone drink? Boredom with food is also a problem.
He really likes things like vegetables and beans, and there are selections featuring those (one I bought for him to try is a mix of cherries, spinach, black beans, and oats). One good thing about the baby food is that you can buy small portions to try and there is considerable variety. Although some of the combos are a bit puzzling to me.
According to the husband really, really bland. The addition of some salt made a considerable difference. You’d probably want some seasoning.
As someone who works in a store that sells baby food, we get a LOT of adults shopping in that aisle - people getting extensive dental work, people on chemo, and so forth.
Vegetables and beans, eh? How about a very thoroughly pureed split pea soup, on the thin side so it can be drunk rather than eaten? Come to think of it, that’s sounding pretty good. I think I’ll make some this weekend.
Ice cream? Milk shakes?
Yogurt isn’t a requirement in smoothies. I have a scoop of protein powder in almond milk a few times a week. It’s still an easy 20+ grams of protein. If I want a little flavor I add a tiny bit of one of the Torani syrups that I put in my coffee.
I PROMISE I will shut up about smoothies now, except to post my favorite unflavored protein powder. I’m sure I’ve posted it before, maybe even earlier in this thread, but it really is a good one. It only has a very slight malt flavor, so it isn’t strongly-flavored like some of the others.
Ok, no more on smoothies unless someone asks me a question! 
Got extra-fortified oatmeal made with whole milk into him tonight.
Still pouring V-8 into him.
Good nutrition, not enough calories (also need more protein, but one step at a time).
Getting concerned about the bedsore area - the infection seems to be subsiding, and much of it is looking better, but there’s two spots looking worse. Have follow up visit with a doc on Monday, we’ll have someone take a look at it then.
Vanilla shake stuff, instant coffee, new flavor.
Thank you. With my low blood pressure and low sodium I don’t think the doctor would care if I added salt tablets to my diet, so adding salt won’t be a problem. With my esophageal stricture, ensure is about as thick a food as I can handle, so I will see about pureeing it in a soup or something. Esophageal cancer doesn’t go well with being a picky eater.
I’m here to pimp for Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. Yes, that’s really what it’s called, and it’s sold in the baby aisle of CVS. It’s what the very helpful PT who did home therapy for my mother recommended for her bedsores.
I wouldn’t use it on the infected spots, but on healing ones and “hot spots” it protects the skin from friction and helps keep crud from getting into the wound.
Well, today he’s actually going to a wound clinic for professional evaluation and advice, so I’ll go with what they say.
Due to husband’s decreased sensitivity on his buttocks anyway, even when healthy, he’s long been a user of such products as “butt paste” but right now, apparently, it’s not enough. I was told I did a good job, but the chemo interferes with healing and the pros need to step in to keep things under enough control to keep him at home and avoid serious infection, surgery, or the like.
The wound doctor said it wasn’t infected (yay!) but did need treatment. Apparently I did a good enough job cleaning it this morning (I boiled filtered water for 10 minutes then let it cool thoroughly and used that) so they did not feel a need to re-clean it. Medihoney was applied as a dressing, then a bandage on top of that.
Unfortunately, the bandage was already showing wear by the time we got home and did not survive the transition from rollator to bed. So I re-dressed it and applied a colloidal bandage I picked up from the OTC pharmacy at work. The ones I grabbed are waaaaaay bigger than needed for this wound, but better bigger than too small. It will also give the skin that’s been putting up with adhesive tape a rest.
Two days from now I remove the bandage, clean with sterile saline (the doc will get me a supply), re-apply the medihoney, and rebandage. Back to the wound clinic next Monday.
Meanwhile, we also saw the cancer doctor this morning (she’s the one who referred us to the wound clinic) who said his blood counts are still good and he’s still doing well. I will note that this is “well” in the context of having stage IV cancer. He’s still very weak, still having trouble eating, and still having some pain.
On the upside, he’s taken to cleaning and playing the music box collection on the window sill in the living room. My mom collected music boxes and about half of the ones I inherited were actually ones I made for her. I think my sisters got a few, too. He’s talking daily to a friend or two, and taking a bit more interest in things. He lost about three months of time in there, having very hazy recollections between mid-November and Mid-January. Which is probably just as well, because he was in a lot of horrible pain and pretty messed up most of that time, so who would want to remember that? He does remember me bringing Christmas to his room, and getting home in time for the tail end of Hanukkah.
Babies get constipated by protein, so a lot of the meat foods are mixed with high fiber stuff–pureed apricots and prunes were my favorite antidotes for my daughter. I guess we assume the babies don’t know enough to object to the strange flavor combos.
So, we have an outbreak of tornadoes about 70 miles west of here. Not just little baby tornadoes, but big-ass wedges and long-track ones, shit that is big and scary and stays on the ground for a long time/distance. Baseball-sized hail. Torrential rain. Horizontal rain. Baseball sized hail. More rain. Raining branches and debris. Wing gusts peaking at 95 mph. No, that was not a tornado, that was straight-line wind gust outside the tornadoes. All this weather marching eastward at about 60 mph. Right towards us.
Of course this is the night the husband’s health takes a nose-dive and I have to drive him to the ER.
Rain so fast and thick the wipers can’t keep up. At one point, standing water in the road almost sufficient to float the tires off the pavement. Slow driving. Shit hitting the car. Wind rocking the car and making it hard to steer. More rain. Have I mentioned it was raining fucking hard?
Not quite sure what’s up with the husband, other than he’s developed swallowing problems such that he couldn’t get any medication down this evening, dizziness, and shortness of breath. They’ve ruled out heart attack, blood clot, and not much else. They are admitting him, but I took off for home in between waves of Bad Weather rather than trying to stick it out and maybe driving back exhausted in dangerous weather. At least they got some pain medication into him so he’s a bit more comfortable.
I may call off work tomorrow. I probably could force myself to go (don’t have to start until 1:30 pm) but I feel so run down and ragged maybe it really is time for a mental health day.
On the upside - the husband is under the care of professionals, we still have power, and the tornadoes didn’t hit my neighborhood. Still jangled nerves, might have a stiff drink so I can relax enough to get some sleep.
Re baby food: a friend of a friend was reduced to living on that and grateful for the calories (long story / bad medical care / the hospital was literally letting the person starve to death until her friends had baby food delivered).
Re yogurt (and I know I’m waaaaay behind on the thread, still working my way through): I’ve always loathed the stuff. The texture. The tangyness. It literally caused me to gag any time I tried forcing it. Then I found that Yoplait Custard Style (I know they’ve renamed it to Smooth and Creamy or something) was actually quite tolerable - not tangy, and a pudding-like texture. It might not work for your husband, but I thought I’d at least mention it as a possibility.