Gastroparesis Awareness Month: A Day In The Life

This is my second post for Gastroparesis Awareness Month.  Read my first post, Tube Love, here.  My first post was a love poem to my feeding tube.  :-)  My second one is a little more serious and a lot longer.  I apologize for the length.  I have trouble reading lengthy posts myself.  But sometimes I’m incapable of summarizing myself, so I have to write posts that are too long for even me to read.  I hope you’ll at least be able to skim through the important parts.  I’ve tried to break up the text with lots of photos, to see if that helps any. A DAY IN THE LIFE My day starts when my morning caregiver arrives.  I don’t just have gastroparesis.  I have a variety of physical, cognitive, and developmental disabilities that make it so that I need help to do a lot of things to get through my day.  So there are several times throughout the day when there is a caregiver here, the rest of the time there is one on call at short notice, and my day officially starts when the morning caregiver comes in the door. My GJ feeding tube The very first thing we do is start cleaning out my feeding tube.  Nobody taught us to do this.  This is something I learned how to do, in order to avoid having to keep getting it replaced due to clogs.  I push water directly into the j-tube, then I pull it out again, over and over.  Slowly, with the water come what we call “tube worms” — long wormy-looking pieces of food that have gotten stuck inside of the tube and wou...
Source: Ballastexistenz - Category: Autism Authors: Tags: Adrenal insufficiency Aspiration pneumonia Bronchiectasis Education Feeding tube Food Gastroparesis Life Skills Medical Medical stuff Personal history Treatment adult tubie adult tubies awareness awareness months bipap ce Source Type: blogs