2) These tabs are a good starting place for basic info. The blog posts are searchable and have tags to help you navigate around. You can comment there too, and learn from others' comments.
3) Please be nice. I, and everyone else who reads, value your thought and opinion, even and especially if your viewpoint is an opposing one. Expressing such a viewpoint helps us all learn and grow, and can be done in a positive way, so that's what I prefer.
4) I will not ever edit or change a comment, but I do reserve the right to delete those I deem destructive or offensive.
5) Have some fun with it! It's only life, after all.
Why is this site here?
I've started this site for a couple of reasons. The first is to respond to a perceived need. I have frequented Blenderized Diet and tubefeeding fora (see Links) online for some while now. People are joining all the time, seeking information, and just as I did, tend to ask the same sorts of questions. Because of the way things like yahoo! groups are structured, these groups aren't really set up to have easy FAQ and Starter pages, plus, they're necessarily democratic, so it's not an appropriate place to provide what in the end is always going to be opinion. Everyone has one, and fair enough too. Groups are invaluable for the breadth of experience and perspective you can encounter, but not always so easy for a beginner to something so huge and life-changing. Apart from these sorts of groups, there are really only a couple of sites around that can help (see LINKS). So here you'll find information drawn from my own experience and the collected wisdom of the hive mind (such as I find it) on topics like:
How to start a blenderized diet
All manner of tips on blenderized diets
Living with a tube
Stuff like this.
The main pages will be updated as needed to reflect and link blog posts as they grow, so as to make a more streamlined reading and searching experience. This page will change too.
And there will be blog posts on these and related subjects, with open commentary for everyone so the discussions themselves become a common resource. Get into it, share, swap stories, argue if you want. It's all about growing and learning.
Apart from providing a resource for those in need or who are just interested, the second reason for doing this is to have another net presence for blenderized diets - advocacy for real food regardless of whether you use an esophagous or not. Each little bit helps. As you'll see, feeding actual real food to even otherwise healthy people through a tube is very controversial in some circles (like most of modern medical practice), and needlessly so.
The third of two reasons is simply to keep this stuff separate from my other blog, Entropy and Light. It started long before this site did, and its reason for existence is still a complete mystery to me anyway. If you like reading on unpredictable subject matter with philosophy, humour, odd pictures of stuff, painful honesty (in others at least), compassion (as much as I can), matters of spirit (whatever you call it), stupid things and the occasional chocolate rabbit, then you might like it. Try a few random posts. You'll find the fart jokes right up against rants about modern eugenicism.
