Well, Deb and I thought we understood how to use the food tube. We'd had a tutorial from one of our wonderful Visiting Nurses and Deb did a feeding for me while the Nurse was there.
I mean, you open the end of the tube, insert a big plastic open-ended syringe, fill it with Jevity (the name of the balanced nutrition liquid we're using), and wait for the syringe to empty. Then fill it again and repeat until a half can of the liquid is safely stored in Randy's tummy.
Turns out that things weren't quite as simple as we thought.
The second Visiting Nurse that gave us a food tube tutorial corrected several of our misunderstandings about the tube and its use:
Those of you who know me at all well will not be surprised that I had looked at my tummy as being basically a biochemical reactor vessel. And it didn't really matter how quickly you inserted stuff into it. And the quicker the better. (Hey, we've all scarfed down a meal when in a rush, right? A few burps, maybe, then you get on with life.) So Deb and I had developed several techniques to speed the flow of this very heavy liquid. Get it down, get it done.
But Lori the Nurse explained that one's stomach is actually living tissue, with some very definite opinions as to what should show up inside, when it should show up, and how quickly it should show up. How about that? Quel surprise!
So Deb and I had to abandon several of our clever techniques to follow a more sedate routine. But the good news is that Lori said we could aim at ingesting a complete can of Jevity per "feeding" rather than just a half can. So that the entire "eating" procedure really takes less time out of the day.
During the transition in techniques, I lost another pound or two. But that's one of those "one-step-back-two-steps-forward" thingys.
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The lesson to be learned here is that although your stomach may be LIKE a biochemical reactor vessel, it is NOT one. I certainly enjoyed the analogy though. Now get back to packing on the poundage-
ReplyDeleteEllen