Okay, I'm trying to get stuff ready for my son's surgery on April 6. He's 18, 6'3" and still growing, and so he eats ALOT!
But I keep reading that sucking through straws is a no-no after surgery. But, if the jaw is wired shut, how can you drink anything? Right now there's plenty of space between his teeth on upper and lower jaw, but the surgery is going to bring the lower jaw forward and that will eliminate the space. So how could food enter the mouth?
You need to use a syringe that has a rubber tube on the end, and just feed it to the back of the mouth from the side. Others can tell you more about using them because I'm not there yet
Crazybeautiful is exactly right with the syringe. The hospital supplied me with several of those when they sent me home. You might also want to look into the "zip-n-squeeze" bags that are frequently mentioned on this site. I invested in a few of those, but found the syringe was easier to use in the early days. Good luck with everything!
I agree with Skitters...the syringe is easier the first few days, and then I found the Zip-N-Squeeze bags to be convenient. The issue I have with the syringe, though, is it takes FOREVER to get something down. I think it took me 15 minutes to get down a bowl of broth or a bottle of Ensure.
One tip on the syringes you get from the hospital...Try to TEST THEM before you leave. I left with 3 of them, only to get home and find out none of them worked! The rubber part didn't form a tight seal and they didn't suck anything up! Thankfully, my OS gave me one in my pre-op appointment so I had one that worked
Thanks so much for your replies. I had no idea that syringes were needed, and all along I thought Zip and Squeeze bags were just pre-made food, like baby food in some sort of bag, LOL.
How many Zip and Squeeze bags would you guys recommend? Do you wash them after each use, or are they disposable? Also, does your surgeon usually give you some? My son's surgeon hasn't said a single word about any special ways to eat...if it weren't for this forum, we'd really be lost!
Monarch - I bought 3 liquid zip-n-squeeze bags and 3 of the pureed food bags (the pureed food bags basically just have bigger tubes and are alittle more sturdy). I only ended up using 1 of each.
You can wash and re-use them, but they will eventually wear out from all the abuse. Don't feel bad for feeling like you're going into this blind - we all felt that way! My doctor never mentioned anything about this stuff to me either. Thank goodness for this board!
How long is he gong to be wired shut? Zip-n-Squeeze recommends using a new bag every couple of days. You could probably get away with using them a bit longer, though, as long as you wash them really well. Zip-N-Squeeze also sells a cookbook, which is really helpful if you have never had to make pureed meals before. It is truly hard to eat when you are wired shut - it takes a lot of patience. You have to make sure everything is pureed really well, with no chunks in it (putting it through a strainer can help with that). And try to get as many calories into each meal, because it is going to be tiring to eat, especially for the first few days. One last tip - make sure you have lots of comfort foods, like ice cream, etc, because sometimes you just don't have the motivation to eat!
Since you will only have liquid to throw up it will easily slide through your teeth. As disgusting as that sounds....that is how it will work. If you had eaten whole food it could be chunky and cause problems but since there is no way to eat anything but pureed food.....your puke will also be pureed
Just make sure and ask for some anti-nausea drugs so you hopefully won't have to discover what its like to throw up with a mouth wired shut.
I was tight-banded (which felt like being "wired" for all intents and purposes) for 5 weeks post-op. I used the Z&S bags primarily-- found the syringes too slow and frustrating to eat out of. The Z&S bags are still pretty slow though and a couple weeks post-op I discovered that I had enough movement (though not feeling) back in my lips to manage curling them up to drink my purees through very small cups.
My favorite trick was to re-use Boost or Ensure bottles for this purpose-- the circumference of the opening was about the largest size opening I could manage without spilling all over myself. So yeah, soups, milkshakes, etc, poured back into empty Boost bottles works great, and my food intake went up SIGNIFICANTLY over the Z&S bags once I figured that out. The trick is to "find" your lower lip with the lower edge of the bottle, then tip it up and down-- you (and your son) may not realize this yet, but slurping food through those tiny holes in your teeth takes forever and you have to take breaths in between through those same openings. Good times.
I liked the syringe bottles from the hospital since they were made of hard plastic and I could feel them on my partially numb tongue. Then I progressed to zip and squeeze until my surgeon gave me the okay to use a straw ten days post-op.
