This is not how I wanted to lose weight. (whinging a bit)

PetraStonegirl

Erg. 

So over the weekend, I ended up with a mangled throat from accidental chlorine gas inhalation. It's continued to swell, and not I can't swallow or talk. So I finally went back into the doctors this morning, and the results are... Prednisone, nasty. Codine, not so nasty. Popsicles, yummy, but I was kind of hoping for some food in there somewhere. No such luck, at least for a few more days. 

Well, poop. Any ideas for foods that are on par with popsicles (cold, non-irritating, goes down as a trickle)?

keziah23

applesauce, pudding, jello
I had neck surgery and they had to hold all the "stuff" in my throat aside for 3 hours, the pain and swelling was unbeleivable for a few days.  I had to spray chloraseptic spray beofre even eating any of that or taking my pills.
good luck!

PetraStonegirl

Thanks for the advice! I'm using chloroseptic spray to numb, but it only catches the very top of the swelling, as it extends down past the vocal chords and phenol isn't the best thing to swallow. But, it's enough to let me swallow the codine pill. When that takes effect, I've been able to get down Carnation instant breakfast twice today. Mixing it weakly with nonfat milk made it thin, and that helped. Tomorrow morning I'll try some thinned applesauce, and if I can swallow thicker things tomorrow afternoon, pudding is on the list! Hmm... I miss meat. I do better with a higher protein diet. I wonder when I'll be able to tackle eggs or tofu? 

raynes

Oh wow, that is not fun. 

I definitley second things like greek yogurt (although it's thick, so maybe just plan ff yogurt) and some meal replacement shakes.  Especially the high protein ones!

(I'm also going to bring back up my "string of accidents" comment from before.  You seem accident prone Petra!)

GracefulMeadow86

oh gosh! that sounds horrible - you deserve to whine a little! good luck and just make sure you get lots of protein like pps said

AdeleDazeem

How did you come to inhale chlorine gas?  Pure Cl2 is quite poisonous.

Anyway, I'm just going to throw out there that you're going to need some protein.  When I had my wisdom teeth out, I had my army of ice cream, popsicles, and yogurt.  A few hours in, I was sick from lack of protein and I commenced eating baby food.  The yogurt was strawberry and too sweet after everything else for me to eat and get any protein that way.

Good luck to you!

msange727

holy smokes! hopefully this clears up fast.

i've heard of people doing this - but i have no recipe to offer: mixing a protein shake together with milk or soymilk and freezing them like popsicles... it doesn't sound extremely difficult but it may help to keep you proteinized (that's not a word) while your throat's a mess. in the mean time, take it easy!

PetraStonegirl

Raynes- 

Haahaa! I might be beginning to agree with you! This accident is definitely the most screwball thing that's ever happened to me (and everyone else in the room). Nice thing is the 3-day dose of prednisone the doctor gave me is really helping. I can swallow this morning without much discomfort. Yay!

Joy- 

Well, I work with acids every day, including HFl (ZOMG, that stuff scares the crap out of me), so I do have lab safety in mind daily. But this was out of the lab. I was at a post-wedding G2G at a hotel pool in rural Utah. Indoors, poorly ventilated, over-chlorinated (badly). Of our group, eight of us are scientists and not one single person thought about this beyond the typical 'we just wont soak in the hot tub as long as planned' mentality. Embarrassing, in retrospect! Someone flipped on the pumps for the tub jets. The best we can figure now is that they hadn't been turned on in a while. The air coming out of the pumps had a high enough concentration to cause an instant reaction. 

Those of us sitting in the water ended up with lightly burned throats, just enough to cause swelling in the throat. Thankfully it doesn't extend deeper that just below the vocal chords on any of us. Those sitting on the edge of the tub with their feet in and faces higher and those in the chairs around the tub, were sick that night, but nothing lasting. It wasn't until the drive home the next day that my FI noticed that the sterling silver portion of my makume gane (mixed metal) e-ring had turned pitch black. I've been swimming with it plenty and it's never tarnished even lightly before. Very over-chlorinated. Probably some dumb@ss hotel employee who thought if some is good, more must be better. 

AdeleDazeem

Oh ew... that's awful.  I can't believe somewhere was treating Cl2 gas that poorly.  It was used in bombs in WW2 because it was so poisonous! 

Did you mean HF acid?  That stuff is horrid.  It's a weak acid, too, so you'd think it wouldn't hurt you as badly as, say, HCl or HNO2.  But, it's worse than all of them!  I'm glad I don't work in an organic lab.

I'm a scientist too

PetraStonegirl

Yup, no 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine this morning and I typed HFl, but it is HF acid I'm talking about. 

I don't use dilute HF in the lab, I'm etching minerals and using 48% HF. For those non-science geeks...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid#Safety

Mmmm... cardiac arrest and amputation... fun with science! I think one of the reasons I'm seem to be accident prone out of the lab, is because I'm so damn careful in the lab. I get out, strip off the rubber apron/shoulder high gloves/face mask and relax, and stop paying attention! :P

EDIT: Oh, and go girl scientists! We need more of us!

raynes

We use HF here to etching too, but I don't need to use it.

Man, I loved organic chem.  So much fun.  I remember the lab were we made nylon.  Fun stuff.  Some days I wish I was the kind of Chemical Engineer that worked more with chemicals than the sitting in from of the computer screen all day crunching numbers kind.

PetraStonegirl

Yes! Topic! Yay!

Also, best piece of advice I can give you after you figure out your topic, during your literature review, and before you start your research is to answer the following seven questions in detail;

What is the problem?

Why is it important?

What do we know?

What don't we know?

What is(are) my hypothesis(es)?

What are my predictions?

These seven questions are the single most valuable thing I have learned from my advisor. I wasn't able to do any independent undergrad research as an undergrad, so I had to learn this as a MS student. 

Even though my FI had done research before, and had passed his oral qualifying exam the year before, he hit a brick wall while writing his thesis and made no progress for 4 months. He finally took my advice and backed up, spend two days answering the 7 in detail (plus methods, results, and discussion), and is now flying through his writing.

Have fun finding a topic, it's such an exciting time! I'm already plotting and pondering a potential PhD topic.