It's been over a week since my last update and it's been a pretty rough time at that. I'll try and recap what's happened to get caught up.
My primary care doctors office got the gravity feed bags approved without another office visit. I got delivery of the bags around Jan. 26th. I used them the day prior to my chemo and up through the following Monday but ran into some problems with them. I think I might have over filled my stomach from using them which caused some bloating feeling along with what felt like heartburn/acid reflux. This caused some incredible discomfort.
Actually I'm not sure if I did actually overfill my stomach or if my feeding tube got displaced or a combination thereof. This discomfort was so bad I went to the hospital for fear I had a blockage in my bowels somewhere. After about six hours there the X-ray's showed no blockage. What they found was my g-tube balloon had descended to my duodenum. Unfortunately they didn't have anyone qualified there to reposition it. They said I had to go to another hospital to have it repositioned. At that point I was pretty exhausted so I just decided to go home and wait to see what the next day would bring.
That night I thought about my situation. Several things changed which may have contributed to this happening. One, I switched to gravity bags. Two, I was trying to stay on top of my six cans of formula and 64-96 ounces of water per day per my chemo instructions. Three, I lost one of the three buttons securing my stomach to my abdomen. In anticipation of the other ones following suit I stopped securing the tube to my skin to allow it slack for when the other ones fell off. This may have been the cause of the balloon slipping into my duodenum. Taking these things into consideration I decided to go back to the way I was doing things since that was working for me up until this point.
So, I pulled the g-tube out from my stomach up to the markers on the tube indicating the distance to the balloon and resecured it to my skin as I had done up until things went wrong. The following day, Wednesday, I did a feeding in the morning using the syringes and felt fine. Then I went to my radiation appointment. On my way to my appointment I informed my wife about my plans to return to my routine that was working to see how I felt before making another trip to the hospital.
She wasn't pleased with this and wanted some insurance that my g-tube was in the correct position. To give her piece-of-mind I went to the hospital where I had it inserted so they could check it. They checked it and sure enough it was in the correct position and told us it was fine.
I went back to administering my formula via syringes since it's a lot faster. The bags, although easier and less messy, just take too long. A two can feeding with the gravity bags take about an hour and a half and the syringes only take a half hour. I do use the gravity bags for water since that will run through the bag a lot faster and due to the volume is more convenient.
That Monday, Jan. 30th, due to my extreme discomfort and exhaustion I started my medical leave from work. I was really hoping to work through but with all the complications, fatique and increased pain in my mouth it's getting harder to perform my normal job functions. My goal is to return to work Feb. 27th, but we'll see.
Oh, one final thing. I found out I only have 33 treatments instead of 35. So I'll be finished with my radiation treatments 4 days earlier. It doesn't seem like much but I'm happy to shave a few days off. I'm eager to start the healing process.
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