My first elemental drink (1 down, 377 to go)

Hurrah!

LOL, you will get there although to be fair you might be sick to death of, what was it, summer fruits by the end of it:)
I guess it really is a mind game as in telling yourself that you don't need/have to eat solid food(easier said than done!)

Good Luck NCOT...we'll all be cheering for you!

Thanks NCOT and knock on wood sounds like a good start for you!
Yes, i think so too, i'd pay for it if necessary but we can't find one my daughter can tolerate (didn't do well with splash eo28 or whatever it's called. she actually liked it, shows how deprived she is, poor thing.).

Well, that didn't take long for it to all go pear-shaped :-/

@killcolitis - I googled Splash E028 and it looked almost identical to Elemental 028. Looks like the American version of it in fact and aimed at children. Interesting to see it was indicated for a wider range of conditions, eg autism, food allergies, even GERD. I couldn't imagine liking it in a million years, however... :-/

@ivy - Didn't do so well tonight =/ Felt so hungry earlier on and yet couldn't face another 028 drink. At any rate I fell into a depressed and negative mood, where I told my mum I really, really did not feel like going babysitting tomorrow. It's a long day, not made any shorter by my mum always wanting to go shopping in the town centre beforehand. Some weeks I don't mind, other weeks I'm just not in the mood. (It involves quite a bit of walking around.) Also I'm expected to drive my nephew to tennis tomorrow and I feel like that even less. It's an occasionally nerve-wracking drive through rush hour traffic, then when I get there I hang about for 2 hours until the lesson is over, and drive him home. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I think it's a bit unfair to dump that on me at the moment. It's not like the boy is even desperate to go to these lessons - he'd be quite happy to skip a lesson, I suspect.

And maybe I'm just a whinger, but nobody in my offline life understands how all this is getting to me on a deep level. At any rate, I'm already scared of failing, 'cos I only had 7 out of the 9 drinks today. I meant to have the last two this evening, but I was so unusually fatigued (suspect that's from the Remicade) that I dozed off. The hunger faded too.

Bleurgh :-/ Well at any rate the dietitian phoned today. Missed her call, so I will call her tomorrow.

Believe me, I appreciate even that much (which is actually quite a lot). That also helped quite a bit; thank you massively.

The psychological aspect is also proving tough. For example, the dropping my nephew off at tennis. Normally I would sit in a coffee shop and read until his lesson was over; I don't mind that, in fact I quite enjoy it. So the passing pleasant thought of looking forward to a cup of coffee was quickly followed by the realisation that there would be nothing I could drink or eat apart from water or weak black tea. And those passing thoughts of looking forward to a snack or meal have been happening a lot; I wasn't prepared for that and they have been getting me down.

Anyhow, it's morning now, so I'm gonna get dressed, brush teeth, cup of weak white Chinese tea (it's all right...) and phone the dietitian :-/

Yep, it's hard. You're already noticing the social aspects of eating and drinking, and it really is hard to be divorced from that.

It will get easier, though. A lot of the trick is simply telling your brain to shut up and stop whining while it adjusts to the new timetable and eventually, with luck, the benefits of the drinks may be so good that these temporary losses will be worth it, and therefore less hard to cope with, emotionally.

Have you tried simple hot water? That can be a surprisingly soothing drink. I do worry about all this tea you're drinking: tea can be hard on the stomach at the best of times, and may not be the best thing to be sipping on when you're trying to heal your gut.

What did the dietitian say? Was she helpful?

I'm emailing you...

Ivy.

I see my mum has just left with my dad without saying anything.

If she throws this back in my face later - how I don't do 'anything' - I will go bat****t crazy, I swear.

Thanks ambling!

If it was just one or two elemental drinks a day, it'd be no problem, but 9 of them - with nothing in between - well, that's a different kettle of fish. Or fish broken down into its constituent nutrients :-/

The dietitian did say she didn't like to prescribe the elemental drinks, I suppose because people do have a hard time drinking them. My respect goes out to anybody who can stay on them for as long as a few weeks!

I'll give it a few more days or try to... Maybe I can do a half elemental, half Fortisip diet. Even that, I think, would be quite a bit more manageable.

Well, I made it to my brother's, drove my nephew to tennis, hung around in town for two hours, drove him back, got driven bonkers by the smell of dinner as soon as I walked through the door, had two 028s for dinner, read my smaller nephew two bedtime stories, drove home. And now I am shattered.

I don't think I can do it in all honesty. It's like a form of torture at times. Probably doesn't help that I am sick of liquid diets in general; I long for normal food in a way I literally cannot describe.

The only thing that's stopping me from giving up every liquid diet going is the fear of obstruction; I couldn't care less about anything else. It's not like I even think the elemental diet will do anything; not really.

And vixen, nah, Elemental 028 ice lollies just doesn't appeal....

Thanks Becky! *hugs back* :p

The first day of the diet was a nightmare: I plunged straight into a depression that I wasn't expecting. The second day (the day that I had to drive my nephew to tennis) was also a struggle. By yesterday the depression lifted, luckily, and I felt better. I still think the Elemental 028 tastes absolutely rank, but I've gotten more used to it now: my tastebuds have resigned themselves to the fact that this is all they're getting, like it or lump it.

I've already got some Fox's glacier mints <_<. Bit nervous about eating too many of those, because my dietitian forbade literally anything else except water and weak black tea. But I've seen other folks who were allowed glacier mints on an elemental diet, so I decided if they could have them, so could I...

Incidentally, NHS incompetency strikes again. My GP left a message a couple of days ago saying that he'd spoken to L&D (my hospital) and that care of my diet had been transferred to the dietetics unit. Rang the number I was given today and got through to my dietitian. She didn't know anything about it, hadn't heard a thing from anyone. In the meantime, I can't order any more drinks from my GP's surgery because they're not allowed to prescribe them any more, apparently. The dietitian can't prescribe the drinks either. So I'm left not knowing who on earth my GP spoke to and nobody as yet who I can get my drinks from. *rolls eyes*

Argh. Pathetic.

I did write you a reply, but the computer ate it.

Sounds as if you've come through the first, hard, days, though. Congratulations!

You can do this