Liquid Hope
Parker has had quite a few trips up to Primary Children’s lately. One appointment we had been waiting months for was to the Intergrative Medicine clinic. I’ve had some specific questions that only someone with an open mind concerning Blenderized Diets could answer. Especially about Functional Formularies Whole Food Meal Replacement: Liquid Hope.
( Stay tuned for a great giveaway opportunity below!)
Now most people wouldn’t be so concerned about changing out their kid’s formula. But Parker is the entire reason Murphy’s Law was created and I do nothing without passing it by his team. Including what foods he gets.
We began blenderizing Parker’s diet several years ago after the thought kept coming to me that nobody really should live their lives off of bottles of lab created ‘food’ that……..get this…..was over 90% water and high fructose corn syrup. Don’t believe me? Go check out a label or two the next time you are at your local big box store.
We could pour quarts of the store bought stuff down Parker’s g-tube and the kid still didn’t gain weight…….and still didn’t look healthy.
One day when I was figuring out how much it was costing to feed Parker per day it hit me that for the same price we could be giving him REAL, organic, WHOLE food instead of what he was getting.
I won’t deny, it was scary at first. How much of what would equal what a Hero needed per day to get him where we wanted him to be? At the time there weren’t a lot of dieticians at PCMC who were crazy about the idea of blenderized diets. But I kept bugging and finally was given a recipe template of what Parker needed.
In order to create a blend each day for Parker I needed a blender. A rather hefty investment. Because we couldn’t get a blend to go through our Joey Pump for love or money we were still feeding Parker 500 ccs of the boxed stuff at night. We also had to rely totally on the boxed stuff if we went anywhere for any length of time.
sigh.
Recently I was contacted by Robin Gentry McGee about her new whole foods meal replacement. A shelf stable blenderized meal using only organic whole foods.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Manna. Ready to eat. Or bolus, which ever your need might be.
Poor Robin. I had sooo many questions for her. Each question was answered quickly and in depth. Like, how do you make this stuff shelf stable and still keep the nutrients locked in? Additives? Heat? We grow an organic garden with organic fruit bushes to insure we can give Parker the freshest nutrition possible. Answer? They just suck the air out of the pouch. It does remove a few nutrients, but this is anticipated and they created the recipe to reflect that.
I liked what I read.
A lot.
Still…..
If I was going to use Liquid Hope, well it needed to pass the in real life Tammy Test.
I’m happy to say that the Naturopath (Nurse Practitoner) LOVED the ingredients found in Liquid Hope. At Primary’s the best you can get is the boxed stuff with a scoop of powdered greens thrown as a type of dietary Hail Mary. She was so impressed that she is going to work on trying to bring Liquid Hope to Primary Children’s. Liquid Hope has already been in numerous hospitals and ECU’s including Mayo, MD Anderson and Boston Children’s.
But just in case, we met with a Dietitian to go over all the goodness found within this feeding tube formula first created for Robin’s father, who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. She, too, gave us the thumbs up. Which is good because by then we’d already been trialing the stuff.
phew.
Take a look at the ingredients and then we’ll talk more:
To see this better you can view it right on Liquid Love’s website.
Because you guys know that I always give an honest review, I do need to tell you that while bolusing this whole foods meal replacement worked fine, trying to get it to go through our Joey Pump was impossible. Robin does warn customers about this right up front. The next run of Liquid Hope will have a couple of teeny changes to help with this issue.
I can honestly say that Functional Formularies Whole Food Meal Replacement Liquid Hope is worth your time to investigate for yourself. As of right now most insurances don’t cover it, but I think that will change. Robin walks you through the process of getting your insurance company to cover Liquid Hope on the Liquid Hope website.
Now. Here’s the biggie.
I have TWELVE pouches of Liquid Hope for TWO lucky readers. Simply leave a comment in the comment section telling me who your Tubie is and why you would like to try Liquid Hope. Parker will pick a winner that will be announced on Monday!
PS: THIS JUST IN: Liquid Hope was just approved by CMS as a recognized billable product and that we feel is an insurance game changer!
PSS: Liquid Hope can be used as a base for other ingredients to be added such as wild salmon which Robin did for her father. We intentionally kept any meat or dairy out, not because we are opposed to them but it shortens the hang time considerable and we have a lot of customers using this with J-Tubes who do have extended hang times.
Fine Print: It is my responsibility to inform you that I was NOT paid for this review. While I know there are some big name bloggers out there silently sending me the Stink Eye for this, I don’t think this sort of thing can be fair and honest if you are being paid to do it. We are talking keeping kids alive here. I did however receive a case of Liquid Hope for Parker. It is kinda hard to review something you have never tried.
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