My dad had his esophagectomy four weeks this coming Tuesday. When he was in the hospital he was on a nutrition bag 24 hours a day. Dad has a J-Tube for his nutrition feeding. Since he has come home he still has the J-Tube, but only receives a 12 hour nutrition feeding. 5 cans a night. Each can is worth 250 calories. During the day I have him eating six times, every two hours. Breakfast is cream of wheat with brown sugar, honey and butter, cranberry juice, yogurt. Lunch is a cream soup, ice cream decaf, dinner is more cream soup, pudding and apple juice. His snacks are Carnations Instant Breakfast with ice cream and peanut butter all blended together or a nutrition milk shack. As you can see dad is still on a all liquid diet.Dad has been holding at 164. He was 172 at the time of his surgery. I have found from this site that someone has to be with dad to encourage him to take that one more bite or have that shake when he does not want one. I keep telling him more calorie in take will help with his strength and healing. The feeding tube is giving him 1250 calories each night and that helps. I do not know how long the J-tube will stay. The nutrition dept. at St. Francis Medical Central has been great in giving me direction in helping dad with his feeding. My goal to load dad up with calories. I hope this helps. You and your family are in my prayers.
Steve