Breakfast. I’m talking breakfasts, not Monty.
Would you like to join me? What’s your choice? Eggs scrambled, fried, poached or boiled? Bacon? Baked beans? Hash browns? Mushrooms? Sausages – how many? Black pudding or not? Fried tomatoes? Chips? Sauce? Toast – white, brown, how many? Butter? Tea – what type? Coffee? Juice?
Doesn’t it look good?!
My own breakfast today was this. Two bottles (400ml total) of Ensure, a medium thick liquid. One third of a bottle of Procal (40ml of the 120ml, the rest taken later). 10ml Riluzole, the only medication authorised for MND in UK – it’s supposed to extend life expectancy by up to eighteen months. 10ml of a laxative. 5ml of Carbocisteine, which helps to thin the mucus in the mouth. And 200ml of water, boiled and then cooled.
Actually that’s my breakfast every day, through the PEG tube into the stomach. It’s quite a lot and if it goes in too quickly it can hurt, so I don’t syringe. I pour it slowly into the open syringe case and then gravity does its work. Preparing and ‘consuming’ breakfast takes about 50 minutes.
So that’s breakfast for David these days. The last time I tasted any of your breakfast was about nine months ago, on the journey from ‘normal’ to ‘small and bite-sized’ to minced to puréed to liquid.
If you know anyone with MND/ALS, tell them this regime isn’t so bad. Of course I miss ‘real food’. And drink! I miss them badly. But since mid-November when the PEG was inserted, life has settled into a daily rhythm of ‘feeds’. It’s boring but there’s no discomfort or pain. It keeps me going. And quite unexpectedly, little by little I seem to be gaining weight! In the 15 months from diagnosis to PEG I lost 15 kg. In the three months since the operation I’ve gained three kilos. So do assure them that the PEG is worth having. Thank you.
Could I have some of your baked beans, please ….. ?
I don’t know how you manage to combine this brilliant awareness raising of the wretchedness of MND (and yet with some reassurances for others with it), with such lightness and even positivity. Amazing! I’m so sorry you can no longer enjoy a full English, or even a bean. I’ll really try never to take food for granted again. We’ve just had beans on toast in your honour dear boy.
It’s a first! First time I’ve been toasted in beans on toast!
Ha! Not sure what Dad would make of this toast! I’d have raised a Black Country black pudding if I’d had one to hand too.. (he def wouldn’t like that). And something stronger too obvs!
Hello David. Funnily enough, I cooked myself a “Full English” last week. Breakfast is normally Orange Juice, Cereal and coffee but I decided to treat myself!! Scotish pork sausages with Mustard and Honey, dry cured Wiltshire bacon, mushrooms and fried eggs! Absolutely delicious! Well, delicious at the time. Within half an hour my stomach felt like lead!!! I had awful indigestion for the rest of the day. So it’s back to Bran Flakes for me. Eheu fugaces labuntur anni!!
How do you keep so cheerful but then you do have the Fisher genes in you
I adore a Full English! Many years ago I went to the Edinburgh Festival. The B&B served a fabulous breakfast – I didn’t have to eat again until the next morning. Now that I’ve moved South, I can get biscuits and sausage gravy. Don’t get it often, of course – you can feel your arteries hardening just smelling it. Kentucky’s not quite far enough south that grits (2 syllables in that) are offered with everything. I actually like grits done the Texas way – with cheese and green chiles. OK, enough dreams; back to the grapefruit and dry toast.
I’m so sorry you can’t enjoy a Full English any more Dave, and you are just amazing to still write in such a lighthearted way, updating us all – I’m very pleased to hear of the 3kg weight gain, and do hope it continues going in that direction. Slowly introducing the boys to the idea of a Full English, and they think ‘brunch’ as a concept is highly amusing!! Why combine two meals into one and only have two in a day when you can otherwise have three??!! xxxx