2:06am April 15, 2013

Please don’t try to apply statistics to a specific person you don’t even know.

Aimed at the person who told me that feeding tubes increase the risk of aspiration pneumonia. They had a specific percentage.

In order to know whether a feeding tube increases or decreases my particular risk of aspiration pneumonia you have to know several things:

1. Why I was originally aspirating.

2. What condition(s) prompted the need for the tube.

3. What kind of feeding tube I got. (They are so different that any generalization about “feeding tubes” is automatically silly and suspect.)

4. How I am using the feeding tube, and what for.

5. What precautions i take to make sure nothing is happening in there that shouldn’t be.

Without knowing every single one of those things, you can’t tell me what a feeding tube will do to my aspiration risk.

I can tell you. Because I know every single one of those things. That its decreased my aspiration risk.

Also? I know because the mechanism for my aspiration was a blatantly obvious occurrence that I could physically feel happening every half hour or so all day long. If it happened in my sleep, I aspirated.

It no longer happens anymore when I’m awake. Ever. It’s really obvious when food or stomach acid or bile rides gas bubbles up to your throat or mouth. Can’t miss it.

Also I was aspirating at least twice a week like clockwork. It hasn’t happened even once since the tube has been used properly.

So. Um. No. My feeding tube is not making me aspirate more. And you can’t make generalizations about feeding tubes because they’re so different from each other it doesn’t even make sense.

I’m fed into my jejunum. I empty my stomach contents all day long. There is nothing going back into my stomach that I put into my jejunum. There is nothing hanging around in my jejunum. It’s all getting absorbed into my intestines. Without stuff in my stomach it is pretty damn hard to reflux it in my sleep and aspirate it into my lungs and develop pneumonia. Because it kind of has to be in my stomach to get anywhere higher up.

And that’s just a brief description. Just trust me when I say that aspiration has already visibly decreased, and the events that would lead to it (that happened all day every day awake or asleep) simply aren’t happening and they’re obvious enough (much more than mere heartburn) I would have noticed.

Aspiration may still happen but the idea I’m more likely to aspirate under these circumstances than before is completely off base. Don’t make generalizations about feeding tubes until you know the individual situation better.

2 notes