"What have you eaten" Parallel Chat

As a trial, I ordered some Slimfast products from Amazon at the same time as ordering th yeast - that was yesterday afternoon. They arrived in the post today. I ordered Caramel bars, pretzels and cheddar bakes. I tried a caramel bar - very chewy and soo very sweet! Not something I would want to have much of - even Em thinks they are too sugary; and it is sugar, not sweetener. But at 20g carb a bar, I wouldn't want to have one very often anyway. The cheddar bakes taste fine (I shared a very small packet with Em) but they are 15 g carbs per packet of 22 grams; the pretzels are 17 g carbs per 23 gram packet (I tasted one little pretzel - and they are very small and Em is currently munching the rest of the packet). The savoury ones are quite tasty, but I don't think I'll be having them very often.

Update: my brother is still not coming out of the sedation and his lungs are very bad despite lots of antibiotics. He had to go back onto the ventilator, which involves intubation again. They are hoping to do a tracheostomy and to get the tubes out again. If that succeeds, they should then be able to use suction to help clear his lungs. If (and it is a big IF) that all works, they'll think about transferring him to the Swindon hospital. Then his wife will be able to visit him. From this week on, she will have to get lodgings in Oxford - visiting from Swindon would involve 2 buses and 2 trains and several hours to get there for a short visit and then the same back again. She will do it, but it would be so much easier if they can get him back to Swindon. It also depends, of course, on Swindon having a spare bed in ICU. The hospital has, finally, admitted that it's going to take weeks or months for him to come out of it, not the days that they had estimated. I guess, given that helpful arrangements can be made, that's allright. Just as long as he does come out of it.

This whole thing is far more difficult for SIL because her sister's husband was taken into St George's hospital in Croydon to remove a growth on his scalp, just a few months ago. It was not an easy operation but a good recovery was anticipated. He never recovered sufficiently to breath independently and after a while the machines were turned off.

Just had a hot cross bun sans cross, very nice as well.

An easter cartoon from my favourite cartoonist Leunig which is very relevant to what is happening in the world today.

Very sleepy today even after plenty of sleep - most of which was in my bed. I have things to do, but I just want to sit and doze in the chair. When I do eat, it will be some more of the ratatouille with some eggs perhaps. Can't figure out why I am so very tired these last few days - I've even been going to bed at a reasonable time (about 1-2 hours before my normal time) and sleeping later than usual. I'm trying to keep myself awake just now by sitting at the laptop and keying in this post, but it isn't really working, so I might just settle into the chair again and have another doze.

Annb said:

Very sleepy today even after plenty of sleep - most of which was in my bed. I have things to do, but I just want to sit and doze in the chair. When I do eat, it will be some more of the ratatouille with some eggs perhaps. Can't figure out why I am so very tired these last few days - I've even been going to bed at a reasonable time (about 1-2 hours before my normal time) and sleeping later than usual. I'm trying to keep myself awake just now by sitting at the laptop and keying in this post, but it isn't really working, so I might just settle into the chair again and have another doze.

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Listening to your body is good

MrsA2 said:

Listening to your body is good

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Finally forced myself awake mid afternoon. Didn't want to, but had dreamed up an experimental dish while dozing, so had to move myself and try it. Fried courgette and onion in a mustard cream sauce works pretty well. Odd because I've never liked mustard. I will probably use some of it tomorrow.

Antje77 said:

How did you make the sauce?
I don't like courgette, but this sounds very good, possibly with onion and cucumber. Might go very well with the last of my chicken livers.

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I cut the courgettes and onions into 1 cm cubes and fried them in olive oil. I didn't brown them, but softened them (about 5 minutes). Then I stirred in some ground turmeric, sweet paprika, celery salt and about 4 teaspoons of ready made Dijon mustard. I let them warm through thoroughly and added double cream, stirring to make a fairly thick sauce and then added lemon juice. Took irt off the heat as soon as the lemon was stirred in so as not to let it curdle the cream. Not too mustardy for me with the Dijon but could be made hotter with either more Dijon or a hotter mustard (eg English mustard) or mustard powder.

Had 1st meal about 11.30. It was some more of the ratatouille with a couple of fried eggs on top. Still have another serving of the ratatouille to use. Might add some peas and some kind of meat (chicken possibly) to make a kind of minestrone (without the pasta) for tomorrow.

I thought I had some gammon steaks in the freezer but searched for it last night and couldn't find it, but I did find a pre-baked chunk of gammon and it's defrosting ready for my 2nd meal today of gammon and courgette in mustard sauce with some quickly cooked cabbage in butter.

The reason I was looking for ways of cooking courgettes was that I asked Neil to buy me one moderately sized courgette but all he could get was a pack of 3 very large courgettes, so I'm looking for ways to use them up before they go off. Still have one to use so am trying to invent something for that and am thinking in terms of something layered with onion, tomato and another vegetable, the name of which escapes me at the moment (it's white, turnippy kind of thing - not kohl rabi, often used instead of potato). You know the one I mean. My memory often fails me this way - worse these days than it used to be, but I've always had problems this way.

Oops - this is not the thread I meant to post the above to. I'll copy and paste it over.

@Annb when my son was put into a medically induced coma (combination of flu, pneumonia and sepsis) he had to be intubated again. We had a couple of very touch and go days because his blood wasn't oxygenating and sepsis well, enough said. When he came out the first time he was hallucinating. That's one of the reasons they put him back under and intubated him again. The second time they brought him up they used a drug they were trying which had been successful at bringing them around when they'd been in the coma for a while. Son was about 16 days and he was kept in ICU for a while after. Two things, he was a lot younger than your brother and he hadn't been under as long. At the same time though, there were a number of elderly patients in the same situation but they had this protocol for bringing them round and, it worked on them too. It took longer but they made it. There's always hope.

Other relatives that were in the family area with us said they found it so comforting to listen to us as we were the furthest on so, they knew what to expect and nit get too worried. A lovely little Glaswegian lady had us in fits. Her husband had to be intubated again and, like my son, he was hallucinating when he came up. When they were going to bring him up the second time she said "If he still thinks he's been abducted and I'm an alien, they won't need to put him under again. I'll clobber him!".

Son made a full recovery by the way - 6 months though.

I'm sure the hospital has a good idea of what they are about - they have done this operation before, after all. Probably not on someone the age of my brother but if they had not been confident, they wouldn't have tried to do it. I think the problem is that they are not really sharing their ideas with his wife and she has only limited medical knowledge - she was a medical secretary - enough to make her worry but not to give her understanding of exactly what is happening to him. She is remaining fairly calm but the problems involved with getting to the hospital on a regular basis are causing some extra stress that she could do without.

That said - he was trying, unsuccessfully, to speak to her and their daughter on Thursday. To me that is a good sign. His HB level is still low, despite blood transfusions. That, and the chest infection, will be making him weak so the most urgent issue, I'd guess, is to deal with those 2 things.

It would help if she was getting the same story from everyone there but there seem to be 2 versions of expectations in terms of what medication is being used to help and the potential recovery time. The original plan was for him to be home by now, but that, of course, didn't happen.

Spent an hour asleep in the chair yesterday evening but eventually got to bed at 1.30 am. About 2.15 my Libre alarm went off due to low BG reading. I tried to check it, but it wouldn't give me a figure so I ate an emergency biscuit and went back to sleep. The alarm beeped at me again a few minutes later and then again at 2.40. I gave up then and came through to the kitchen. The problem was that the reader needed recharging so I turned to the old Aviva monitor to check but I seem to have put it away somewhere "safe" and can't find it. Had a cup of tea and just sat in the chair for a bit but started sweating (always the start of a hypo) so had a handful of cashews from a jar which had been conveniently left on the worktop and another cup of tea. Seems to have sorted it out. Sat and watched "Animal Cops" and then, turning back to BBC1 discovered that there was an interview with Omid Djalili. He is a nephew of a friend of mine, so I sat and watched it. I now have more time for him than I used to after seeing him on some comedy show some time ago. Glad I saw that.

As it happens, I didn't have anything after my brunch of ratatouille and eggs - felt nauseous during the late afternoon and evening - maybe that's why my BG dropped.

It's now 5.30 am and I'm going back to bed for an hour or so.

Woke up again at 8.30 after a fairly sound 21/2 hour sleep.BG has been jumping up and down all day. Just had to have a slice of wholemeal bread to stop the drop - BG was down to 3.5. That's after my brunch for which I took a lower dose of insulin than usual. I started the day at 16.4 and it's been dropping and rising ever since then but never where it ought to be. Still haven't found my Aviva meter.

I was surprised to hear yesterday that my brother has now been put onto insulin because his BG is too high. It shouldn't be food causing it - he is being drip fed still - so I can only think it is caused by the medication he is on. His blood pressure is also causing problems - it is too low and they are treating that with adrenalin but I haven't heard anywhere that adrenalin causes BG to rise. He is, of course, on various other medications that I don't know about. I just hope that, once over this, he won't need to continue on insulin.

Edit: Correction - he is being fed through a gastric tube, so there may be something in the solution that is putting his BG up. Or perhaps, it's just the trauma that his body has suffered.

Antje77 said:

Has he been put on steroids?
The adrenalin may also raise his BG. I'm not sure how it works with adrenalin as a medication, but one of the things our own adrenalin does is prepare the body for a 'fight or flight' situation. Among other things it does this by telling the liver to splurt out an extra portion of glucose for an instant energy boost.
In either case, I thing his BGis the least of his worries at the moment.

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Agreed, BG is not the major issue, except in terms of what it can do to his already weakened organs. But it makes sense that the adrenalin could cause a rise in BG and that's why they need to give him insulin as well as everything else. I don't know if he is on steroids. Being so far away means I only get bits and pieces of information - whatever my sister-in-law remembers to tell me in e-mails, in fact. No complaints, she does her best under difficult circumstances.

But from reports received, he is a little better in some ways in that, although his head is down and his eyes closed much of the time, he does either nod or kind of shake his head in response to direct questions. So his brain is working, even if his body isn't. Difficult for a man like him to cope with, but a good sign, I think.

Wonder of wonders, my brother is on his way back to Swindon! His BP rose so they stopped the adrenalin, took him off the tubes, lifted the sedation level and decided they could let him go. They warned his wife that they would be transferring him in a day or so, but then phoned in the afternoon and told her he was on his way. Wonderful news. Apparently, this morning, he managed to put his arm around her and to hold the hand of his ex daughter-in-law who had driven SIL to Oxford, so he clearly knew who they were. I am really hopeful now.