Katie,
Hopefully he'll be better soon. My grandparents have both been through that in the past several years.
I don't know how familiar you are with some healthy products...but I'm a cooking fanatic so I'll through a few ideas out here for anyone that's concerned about their health...
Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil is really Partially hydrogenated death...it is what Crisco and margarine are made from. This is what trans fat actually is, but it can be hidden by a small enough serving size. Avoid it by reading labels.
Use Smart Balance Light spread in place of margarine or butter. Use butter as a back up and use normal Smart Balance spread for baking.
Avoid vegtable/soybean oil. It is unhealthy. Use Canola or Olive Oil in its place. Deep fry with Canola instead of vegtable oil. I'm not familiar with the healthyness of peanut and grapeseed oils.
Only eat red meat twice a week...work in plenty of chicken, pork, and fish once a week. Grill more and fry less.
Don't eat dessert very often.
Exercise to what ever extent you can.
Use 1% milk in cooking rather than cream or half & half...I've built up a good reputation in the kitchen eventhough my cooking is low fat.
Avoid mixes and eating out wherever possible...they typically use lower quality ingredients...stores typically only sell Grade A dairy, meats, and eggs...so what happens to grades B & C? They go to restraunts and such. Btw, don't eat the fat globs on steaks...pork chops...etc...trim it before eating because I want to see you at NRHS/NMRA/etc conventions of the next several decades!
EDIT: be sure to use the full spice cabinet to help minimize your salt intake...there are other things which can really do amazing things while minimizing salt. Here are a couple cream soup ideas:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cream-of-Broccoli-Soup-I/Detail.aspx and
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Delicious-Ham-and-Potato-Soup/Detail.aspx. By using Smart balance light in place of the butter and 1% milk in place of the whole milk...the fat and cholestral content gets slashed. Use Corn starch to help thicken the soup to make up for the reduction in fat. For the broccoli soup, I recommend boiling the broccoli for 10mins to turn it into mush and then purreeing all of it...add a little bit of the water to help the food processor to puree it...use white pepper instead of black pepper. Also, when adding water to the flour paste...add just a little bit at a time...that way you can eliminate the clumps in order to have a smooth soup and also take a little bit of the soup broth out and use it to dissolve the nutmeg and pepper in a small side container...otherwise they'll form little spice clumps in the soup that may overpower your taste buds.
Also consider using egg whites only in foods such as pancakes. A classic fine French cooking technique is to seperate the eggs, whip the egg whites into a foam, trash the yolk, and then fold the whites into the batter. This is one of the keys in making Crepes. This eliminates the cholestral content of the eggs and also allows people with certain egg allergies to eat eggs.
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