Congee for cancer

Another significance for Tuesday besides being Subway tuna day, PDT lab day! Like what i've mentioned in one of the previous posts, we would be cooking for cancer patients in this lab. Mine was a nasopharyngeal cancer patient, Mr. T.

Mr T, 39 years old, unemployed Chinese man, was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer on radiotherapy treatment. Currently, he is only able to tolerate soft diet due to dysphagia and experienced several complications of NPC such as blur vision, chronic headache and right-sided tinnitus. Patient was admitted to surgical ward for 3 cycles of chemotherapy and experienced acute vomiting after each time. Current weight is 46.4kg and 168cm tall. Patient had experienced severe weight loss (>7%) in the last 2 weeks, with sodium, urea and creatinine, although normal, is in the decreasing trend. SGA score is C. Patient is ambulatory, however complained of lethargy, loss of appetite and early satiety. Current diet intake is estimated around 400kcal/day with 14.4g protein/day. Patient was referred for high protein high calorie diet.

I know you'll probably skip the whole text. Haha. In short, we were required to prepare lunch and a snack if our menu planning includes small and frequent mealtimes. We decided to cook porridge. Energy and nutrient dense fish porridge with egg. Since the patient is experiencing LOA, we didn't want to further suppress his appetite by providing blenderised diet (which can look extremely gross although it might taste okay).

Just at what the other group had prepared for their NPC patient. Yuckkk.

Photo credit to Pei Yee.

Nasi sudah menjadi bubur~

Amazingly, it tasted good. Haha.

Better than my food trial at home. Of course, thanks to my secret inedible ingredient ;)

Lunch : Fish porridge with egg, steamed spinach and papaya milk.

Chose a snack that will melt in the mouth, my favourite snack too, kuih bangkit~ Perfect for NPC patient who can only tolerate soft diet. Haha~ Alongside with yummy honeydew milk.

To end this post, a picture of the only thorn among the roses in our course. Hahaha.

Today he became the deal-with-all-the-fish man!

It's not easy to be a dietitian. Not to mention being a great one.

Now it is even harder to get a place in this course.

Like what our lecturer told us, there were about 500 applications for this in UKM alone for this new intake. 500 people chose dietetics in UKM as their first choice. 100 were called for an interview and only 20 qualifiers. 

Dietetics was not my choice. Neither was it the second. Shouldn't i be extremely grateful for being here right now? =/

Anyway, next lab is about modified diet for diabetes. My case would be an overweight pregnant mother with GDM and one previous miscarriage. Owh, and she is a Sarawakian!