d as everyone says

In hospital 2, initial rehab, I had my salt (speech anf language) assessment to see it i could swallow foodand thankfully I could but a softer diet was recommended just for that hospital I don’t remember much more from there but I do remember my family feeding me, in particular a dessert. My mum fed me, hot custard and kept dripping some onto my chest burning me, my dads pithy observation “we should have filmed this titledmum burns adult sons chest with custard, we could have sold it online there’s definitely an audience somewhere on the internet for that”

Hospital 3 was an unusual (to me)set up, an ageressive lady appeared about 7am with fresh water jugsthen immediately wanted to know what I wanted for breakfast, I was still very very tired in a morning and have never been a big eater of breakfast or a morning person but if I said no she took it personally by week 2 I started having cornflakes to make life easier but eating cereal laid down in bed unable to see the bowl is quite the challenge, come the time I was out of bed and the bedding was being changed there would be cornflakes galore sometimes scattered across the room too my mum once told me off for eating Doritos in bed overnight I hadn’t it was just dried cornflakes. The physios once found one stuck to my back too.

Not long after breakfasts thr agressive food lady would appear with an iPad which every day looked a surprise piece of technology tasking what I wanted for lunch, often none of the options, but there was always a tomato soup fall back which I think isurvived on for a few weeks, then during lunch she would appear with the iPad again to order thst evenings meal, the menus were identical week in, week out. I knew Tuesday was pizza for lunch and a decent pizza too, Friday was fish and chips with chocolate sponge with chocolate custard dessertwhich I did enjoy.

I am quite a fussy eater. One of my most hated foods is baked beans and if they couldn’t find a way to get them with a meal it was a failure, even with meals you wouldn’t expect, I’m sure I was offered them with a Sunday lunch, I once ordereda pasta bake thinking it would be pasta. Sauce and cheese, come eating it a river of baked beans fell out, not surprisingly when I got weighed weekly the weight was falling off me, no gym, gymnastics or muscle building exercise and a tiny dailydiet of cereal or toast, soup and sometimes an evening meal,it got so bad my mum started bringing me lunch with high protein such as hot chicken sandwiches,Steak and wealso found that if I wasn’t in bed. (Say in physio or the garden, let’s be honest I wasn’t out running 5k) when theangry food lady came she would pick a meal for me. And picked so many meals I didn’t like my mum wrote a list of my likes and dislikes and placed it on my door. Angry food lady wasn’t keen on mum bringing ne food and would comment on “mamma feed” and how wasteful it was If I didn’t eat a meal she had chosen, it was like she had cooked it herself and I’d launched it on the wall.

During very bad times I sent rich to the costa coffee and for a while survived off ham and cheese toasties alongside soup and toast or cereal. Baring in mind just prior to my surgery I’d done a gym bulk and put on 10kg of muscle and some fat, I was heartbroken every time I got on the scale eventually losing 12.5kg see the “body image post: https://strokeandmirrors.uk/?p=37https://strokeandmirrors.uk/?p=37

I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth but I do like very sour sweet with a specific soft spot for fizzy Percy pigtails which a lot of my family and friends know and to my benefit there was a M&S food in hospital 3, so I had a regular supply, often on an evening I’d poke at the evening meal, lay down put something to watch on my iPad and eat phizzy tails with rich sat at my side. It became abit of a nighttime tradition and even when home I still kept eating them.