Ever wanted to know what a G-Tube is?
And here you thought the radiation mask was the worst part.
Loosen up my button, baby (uh huh).
They called it a button. What it really was? A piece of plastic inserted directly into my stomach.
A gastric feeding tube (G-tube or "button") is a tube inserted through a small incision in the abdomen into the stomach and is used for long-term enteral nutrition. One type is the percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube which is placed endoscopically. The position of the endoscope can be visualized on the outside of the patient's abdomen because it contains a powerful light source. A needle is inserted through the abdomen, visualized within the stomach by the endoscope, and a suture passed through the needle is grasped by the endoscope and pulled up through the esophagus. The suture is then tied to the end of the PEG tube that will be external, and pulled back down through the esophagus, stomach, and out through the abdominal wall. The insertion takes about 20 minutes. The tube is kept within the stomach either by a balloon on its tip (which can be deflated) or by a retention dome which is wider than the tract of the tube.
Leave it to wikipedia to make you queasy in 250 words or less.
The procedure sounds gruesome, and for the most part, I'm going to tell you it was. I woke up in the most intense pain I've ever been in. It felt like I got stabbed in the gut, and really, I did get stabbed in the gut. Only instead of in and out, quick and to the point like a killer's blade, that thing featured in the picture up there stayed inside me for over a year.
For the first two months, it was almost unbearable. I was already hooked up to IVs constantly, preventing me from sleeping on anything but my back when I was an in-patient, but when I got unhooked and was able to go home, I had free range of movement. The tube restricted that. I had to be careful when I showered, I had to be extra cautious when I hugged people. I had to take the tube portion of it out sometimes so it didn't hang lower than the hem of my shirts. Doing so required me to unhook it, which was easy enough until your stomach contents start pouring out of the little hole in the button, requiring you to plug it up as fast as possible with that piece of clear plastic on the right side of the picture. Can you imagine going swimming with that? I couldn't. I did, though, when I went to Hawaii and Florida and Wildwood. With all the words in the English language, I'm not sure I could describe some of the looks I got when people saw that . . . thing sticking out from my abdomen.
But it saved my life. What it functions as, basically, is a way to eat without actually having to eat.
Following radiation, I was unable to swallow anything other than water. Speech therapists tried everything in their power to teach me how, but when you're throwing up ten to fifteen times a day, trying to retrain your throat to contract in the right way and force food down isn't really high on your list of fun things to do. The doctors gave me a date -- I had to either relearn or get tubed. I told them flat-out to do the procedure, not fully aware what it was going to entail. That's how bad eating sucked.
They pumped Ensure into me for longer than I can remember. Day and night, that thing was slowly pushing muscle-milk directly into my stomach. The bypassed having to swallow, having to chew -- a good thing, for the taste of the Ensure coming up wasn't pleasant. I can only imagine it would have been equally depressing going down.
Slowly, I began to appreciate what the tube was doing for me. After the first month, when the pain finally subsided and didn't flare up every time I puked, coughed, sneezed, breathed, or moved, I almost forgot it was there. Well, not quite. My whole posture changed, and I sort of hunched over more so as not to pop the thing out of my gut from pushing my chest out too far. I don't think it would have happened like that, but I also knew it provided an extra buffer in that I wouldn't turn and bump into something, ripping the tube out that way. When I would hug people, I'd cup my right hand over the tube and go in with one hand, not wanting to poke anyone. It became as much a part of my life as all the other crazy things (see: radiation mask) cancer makes normal. It was my new normal, so to speak.
A gastric feeding tube (G-tube or "button") is a tube inserted through a small incision in the abdomen into the stomach and is used for long-term enteral nutrition. One type is the percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube which is placed endoscopically. The position of the endoscope can be visualized on the outside of the patient's abdomen because it contains a powerful light source. A needle is inserted through the abdomen, visualized within the stomach by the endoscope, and a suture passed through the needle is grasped by the endoscope and pulled up through the esophagus. The suture is then tied to the end of the PEG tube that will be external, and pulled back down through the esophagus, stomach, and out through the abdominal wall. The insertion takes about 20 minutes. The tube is kept within the stomach either by a balloon on its tip (which can be deflated) or by a retention dome which is wider than the tract of the tube.
Leave it to wikipedia to make you queasy in 250 words or less.
The procedure sounds gruesome, and for the most part, I'm going to tell you it was. I woke up in the most intense pain I've ever been in. It felt like I got stabbed in the gut, and really, I did get stabbed in the gut. Only instead of in and out, quick and to the point like a killer's blade, that thing featured in the picture up there stayed inside me for over a year.
For the first two months, it was almost unbearable. I was already hooked up to IVs constantly, preventing me from sleeping on anything but my back when I was an in-patient, but when I got unhooked and was able to go home, I had free range of movement. The tube restricted that. I had to be careful when I showered, I had to be extra cautious when I hugged people. I had to take the tube portion of it out sometimes so it didn't hang lower than the hem of my shirts. Doing so required me to unhook it, which was easy enough until your stomach contents start pouring out of the little hole in the button, requiring you to plug it up as fast as possible with that piece of clear plastic on the right side of the picture. Can you imagine going swimming with that? I couldn't. I did, though, when I went to Hawaii and Florida and Wildwood. With all the words in the English language, I'm not sure I could describe some of the looks I got when people saw that . . . thing sticking out from my abdomen.
But it saved my life. What it functions as, basically, is a way to eat without actually having to eat.
Following radiation, I was unable to swallow anything other than water. Speech therapists tried everything in their power to teach me how, but when you're throwing up ten to fifteen times a day, trying to retrain your throat to contract in the right way and force food down isn't really high on your list of fun things to do. The doctors gave me a date -- I had to either relearn or get tubed. I told them flat-out to do the procedure, not fully aware what it was going to entail. That's how bad eating sucked.
They pumped Ensure into me for longer than I can remember. Day and night, that thing was slowly pushing muscle-milk directly into my stomach. The bypassed having to swallow, having to chew -- a good thing, for the taste of the Ensure coming up wasn't pleasant. I can only imagine it would have been equally depressing going down.
Slowly, I began to appreciate what the tube was doing for me. After the first month, when the pain finally subsided and didn't flare up every time I puked, coughed, sneezed, breathed, or moved, I almost forgot it was there. Well, not quite. My whole posture changed, and I sort of hunched over more so as not to pop the thing out of my gut from pushing my chest out too far. I don't think it would have happened like that, but I also knew it provided an extra buffer in that I wouldn't turn and bump into something, ripping the tube out that way. When I would hug people, I'd cup my right hand over the tube and go in with one hand, not wanting to poke anyone. It became as much a part of my life as all the other crazy things (see: radiation mask) cancer makes normal. It was my new normal, so to speak.