Bringing food to hospitals

[snowangel]

My dad just had heart bypass surgery a few days ago. I was totally blown away by how bad the food was. His first meal following surgery was broccoli cheese rice casserole with fritos (????) on the side. outside of the fact that it looked awful, the fritos were on the same plate as the casserole. One of those heated plate things with the dome cover. Fritos that have been covered with steam taste worse than what I can only imagine that salty, damp cardboard tastes like.

In six days, the only fresh anything he saw were two baby carrots, which were shriveled and had a white film.

Heart healthy. Yikes.

[Madge]

When my Dad was in the hospital last fall we could get anything we wanted from the cafeteria. Just get the dietician to make a note of it to the caf staff. Also, to spare your patient the perhaps off-putting experience of witnessing the hospital meal tell them not to send him a tray.

[Marlene]

Chicken wings deep fried this morning to take to the hospital. I'll hold them in a 200 degree oven, uncovered until it's time to leave, then cover them with tin foil to transport. With any luck, they'll still be at least warm when I arrive at the hospital.

We did tell them yesterday not to send the tray anymore. Just seeing that tray seems to make him gag.

[Pookie]

A lot of it is cost. Hospitals only get so much per day per patient and have to cover staff, equipment and food costs. Since the staff are all unionised and are making 18- 20$ an hour it really adds up.

Plus the kitchens have to cover all the costs of things like Ensure and Tube feedings for the really sick which are horrendously expensive.

Many hospitals have moved to buying everything in and reheating, or even having it all cooked at a central location and shipped out three times a day. Supposedly this reduces costs. We have just moved to that model at one of the hospitals in London.

Other hospitals heat on the plate. Which does result in grey steamed food. But once again it's a cost factor.

We do try, we really do. We are constantly doing taste tests and trying to make the food more appealing. Admittedly I work at a smaller hospital that the one you are dealing with, but we do try.

I hope you can get the caf exception to help with decent food.

[Pan]

Marlene, you are a really wonderful person to bring all that delicious food!

[mizducky]

We do try, we really do. We are constantly doing taste tests and trying to make the food more appealing. Admittedly I work at a smaller hospital that the one you are dealing with, but we do try.

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Oh, I totally believe you. I'm sure it's frustrating working in a field where they don't give you enough budget to do it the way you feel it should be done. I realize there are a lot of budgetary pressures on hospitals. I just wish they'd give you a bigger piece of that admittedly-spartan budgetary pie to work with (or better, that the pie was bigger to start with).

I wonder if someone has calculated the cost of all the hospital meals that go to waste because patients refuse to eat them, and thereby demonstrated to those responsible for hospital funding that these cost-cutting but taste-destroying food prep methods are penny-wise but pound-foolish. (Actually, I kinda suspect other people must have thought of that tactic long before me, and that it probably didn't budge the purse-string holders one bit. )

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Cold rare steak, cut into thin slices, same with duck breast and boned rack of lamb and prime rib, the kind of stuff you don't get in hospital. A pepper grinder; salt if allowed on patient's diet. Chocolates.

[Marlene]

I hope you can get the caf exception to help with decent food.

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We did! We've ordered a fried egg sandwich with coleslaw for him every day for lunch. He can eat them till he's sick of them as far as I'm concerned. He's assured me that will never happen.

Marlene, you are a really wonderful person to bring all that delicious food!

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How could I not?

Cold rare steak, cut into thin slices, same with duck breast and boned rack of lamb and prime rib, the kind of stuff you don't get in hospital.  A pepper grinder; salt if allowed on patient's diet.  Chocolates.

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I'm finding he's liking things that slide down easily or that don't take a lot of cutting, since he doesn't have a lot of strength in his hands yet. Today was another really good food day and the better eating is really starting to show. He was much stronger today than he has been for some time. Today was lasagne for lunch, chicken wings and greek pasta salad for dinner. Fried egg sandwich for breakfast. A butter tart and a couple of cookies. An Ensure, and a ginger ale and always, lots of water. I brought him a pepper grinder and a salt shaker last week.

We also asked them to only bring the breakfast tray and stop bringing the others. As he says, they can't do much to harm cold cereal. Well, he said it a lot more strongly than that, but we are a family site after all.

He's got a weekend pass to go home this weekend for a couple of days (it's a long weekend up here), and I'll do so food up tomorrow for his girlfriend to take home so she doesn't have to spend a lot of time prepping stuff.

[Pan]

Marlene, you are a really wonderful person to bring all that delicious food!

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How could I not?

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Most people don't. Some don't even visit.

You've really gone out of your way to be wonderful and nurturing.

[jsolomon]

Egad, Ensure is evil. You're sure they won't provide you with the ensure so you can make it palatable as the milk in a milkshake?

Probably chocolate peanut butter should cover up the nasty taste of it...

[Marlene]

Egad, Ensure is evil.  You're sure they won't provide you with the ensure so you can make it palatable as the milk in a milkshake?

Probably chocolate peanut butter should cover up the nasty taste of it...

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Hey, the patient likes it, and who am I to argue? When he wouldn't take anything else, he would drink one of those, and at that point, anything we got into him was good. I never thought about using it in a milkshake though. What a good idea!

[Pookie]

Re: Ensure

You can get it as a pudding too. The Hospital might not carry it, but you can buy it that way in the drugstore. The butterscotch is not bad.

But if he likes it........

Just be glad he can eat, and doesnt need a pureed diet. No matter what we do to the taste, they always look nasty.

I am glad he gets to go home for the weekend.

[Marlene]

Re: Ensure

You can get it as a pudding too. The Hospital might not carry it, but you can buy it that way in the drugstore. The butterscotch is not bad.

But if he likes it........

Just be glad he can eat, and doesnt need a pureed diet. No matter what we do to the taste, they always look nasty.

I am glad he gets to go home for the weekend.

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I don't think I've ever seen it as pudding! As for him liking it, although he is a stunning cook in his own right, he likes the oddest things sometimes. I mean, really likes McDonald's breakfasts

[Zen Baker]

I don't know if I'm too late for this thread, but I thought I'd add a quick word.

FRESH FRUIT.

I have battled recurrent cancer for longer than I want to think about, and have spent more time in and out of hospitals than a person should. People have brought me a generous array of goodies, from entire meatloaf dinners complete with mashed potatoes and green beans, to Chinese zong zi, sticky rice triangles stuffed with yummy things and wrapped in bamboo leaves, to Chicago-style hot dogs from Portillos. When I was alone in Boston for 8 weeks for my radiation treatments, the nurses smuggled me clam chowder and sourdough bread.

But I will never forget the giant Tupperware of fresh fruit that my aunt brought me after surgery, when I was tired of heavy food and limp bland gray hospital food. It was a salad of melon, berries, tangerine segments, pineapple, kiwi, all sorts of things. The "freshness" was what I craved. It made me extremely happy, as happy as anyone can be in such a circumstance. Oh, and chocolate too, which can cure a number of illnesses. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

[MelissaH]

Also worth noting here is the chapter of Mimi Sheraton's memoir Eating My Words about her attempt to improve hospital food. That chapter alone is worth the purchase price of the book.

MelissaH

[Marlene]

Fresh fruit is always a good idea.

He is now able to sit in a wheelchair so we've been taking him down to the cafeteria for dinner most nights. The food is better, and it's better for his spirits to be sitting at a proper table and eating with us.

I'll have some leftover braised pot roast and some cookies to take to him tomorrow though.

[goldie]

When my brother-in-law was undergoing chemo I brought him a lot of food. Some of his favorites were:

Homemade chicken and rice soup- easy to get and keep down

Lentil soup

Fresh cold pea soup

Mushroom and barley soup- again filling but easy to get down

Potato soup- sometimes with cheddar cheese

Bean soups

On days he was feeling a bit better he enjoyed:

Meatloaf- turkey or beef

Vats of mashed potatoes

Roasted chicken, pork, or turkey reheat well

Veal or eggplant parm

Salads with flank steak, carmelized onions, and bleu cheese

Pasta with cheese sauces (ie. alfredo or mac and cheese)

Bean Burritos

One thing to keep in mind is calories be damned- pick items loaded with calories. I used full fat cream cheesse, real butter, heavy cream. You can beef up milkshakes by adding powdered whole milk- works best with malted milkshakes. High calorie breads for nausea-fighting toast is good, too. My brother-in-law loved cheese so we would bring over the richest triple cream cheeses. If he likes pate that would be a good option.

For snacks in his room I'd provide full fat yogurt (Stoneyfield Farm is yummy), nuts, dried fruit, and potato chips (they can help with the nausea). Also, provide lots of caloric drinks- smoothies and the like.

I wish you both the best.

[Marlene]

Definately full fat stuff. The more weight I can get him to gain, the stronger he will be.

He's eating more now, although his next round of chemo starts on Monday so we shall see if that sets him back at all. He's developed a craving for Egg McMuffins. By the time I get them out to him they are cold, but he really doesn't care.

For Monday's visit he has requested butter tart squares and spareribs and saurkraut, a dish he hasn't had since our youth, but loves to pieces.

Guess I'll be cooking on Sunday.

[snowangel]

He's eating more now, although his next round of chemo starts on Monday so we shall see if that sets him back at all.  He's developed a craving for Egg McMuffins.  By the time I get them out to him they are cold, but he really doesn't care.

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Take along a coule of kitchen towels and wrap the wrapped McMuffins in towels and they will stay warmer.

[ratgirlny]

I don't know if I'm too late for this thread, but I thought I'd add a quick word.

FRESH FRUIT.

You do need to check ahead before bringing fresh fruit for a patient undergoing chemo. My son was not allowed to have fresh fruit whenever he was neutropenic (low white blood cell count), which for him was 2 out of every 3 weeks while he was doing treatment. He had a long list of foods he was not allowed, but fresh fruit was very high on the list. Which was too bad because fresh fruit and tomatoes were some of the few things we could get him to eat.

This was on the pediatric floor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, by the way. We also were not allowed to have fresh flowers in his room.

[Pan]

That's a really good point, Ratgirl. For the same reason, people undergoing chemotherapy have to avoid salads.

[Marlene]

That's interesting. He is now about to undergo his second chemo treatment and not once have we been told there are foods he cannot have. I'll add it to my list of questions for the doctor.

[snowangel]

A friend who has worked in an oncology ward just happened to call, and I asked her this question. Her comment was that there are no blanket statements about chemo. Most chemo treatments are a "cocktail" of a variety of different drugs, and these patients are often on other meds as well, so you need to check with the doctor before automatically excluding or including food. She also added that if your doctor has said "no food restrictions," he/she has probably included all meds in the evaluation, but do double check again.

[Pan]

I may have overstated my point. The concern is in cases of patients whose immune systems are severely compromised by the deaths of neutrophils and such-like while the chemotherapeutic chemical is in their bodies.

[Marlene]

But I appreciate you alerting me to this Pan because in fact his white blood cell counts are way down and he's about to start a (very expensive) medication to assist with that. So I will indeed check with the doctor first thing on Monday!