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4:47pm July 28, 2013
This is how everything goes into my body now. The tube on the left is full of food. I turned that off to give myself a PRN medication through a small syringe in the side port. And was just flushing it with water when I took the photo. All of that goes through a tube into my jejunum, which is the first part of the small intestine. Then I turned the food back on, which pushed everything else into me. Intestines don’t expand the way stomachs do. So you can’t fill them up with food rapidly. It takes nearly 24 hours to go through one bottle of food. (Actually it takes exactly 24 hours. Except that I don’t eat the whole bottle. They give me way too much food for a sedentary person. So I skip a few hours at the end, which gives my guts some time to rest.  I just don’t feel comfortable with the food on 24/7, it really makes me kind of queasy and overly full.) I didn’t understand why it was when I first saw someone giving herself meds through a g tube, that she pulled out a syringe to do it. But the syringe has no needle. It’s just a way to push liquid into a tube. In my case a j tube, which is smaller than a g tube. There’s a silicone (?) thing at the entrance to the tube, that gives a place for a large syringe and a place for a small syringe. Whatever one you use, you have to cover up the second port or it will spray out in your face. So that’s maybe more than you ever wanted to know about j tubes. I actually have a GJ tube, which is a g tube and a j tube at the same time. But the g tube is only for draining things out, and the j tube is only for putting things in.  And I’ve said it a bunch of times before but, I LOVE MY TUBE.  Compared to my life before the tube, things are a thousand times easier. Sure I miss food, but not as much as I expected, and eating was so hard towards the end that this has been nothing but an improvement. Done right, I never feel hungry, I never feel full, I never even notice I’m eating. And being able to drain stomach fluid has literally saved my life, since it tries to back up into my lungs and give me pneumonia.

This is how everything goes into my body now. The tube on the left is full of food. I turned that off to give myself a PRN medication through a small syringe in the side port. And was just flushing it with water when I took the photo. All of that goes through a tube into my jejunum, which is the first part of the small intestine.

Then I turned the food back on, which pushed everything else into me. Intestines don’t expand the way stomachs do. So you can’t fill them up with food rapidly. It takes nearly 24 hours to go through one bottle of food.

(Actually it takes exactly 24 hours. Except that I don’t eat the whole bottle. They give me way too much food for a sedentary person. So I skip a few hours at the end, which gives my guts some time to rest.  I just don’t feel comfortable with the food on 24/7, it really makes me kind of queasy and overly full.)

I didn’t understand why it was when I first saw someone giving herself meds through a g tube, that she pulled out a syringe to do it. But the syringe has no needle. It’s just a way to push liquid into a tube. In my case a j tube, which is smaller than a g tube. There’s a silicone (?) thing at the entrance to the tube, that gives a place for a large syringe and a place for a small syringe. Whatever one you use, you have to cover up the second port or it will spray out in your face.

So that’s maybe more than you ever wanted to know about j tubes.

I actually have a GJ tube, which is a g tube and a j tube at the same time. But the g tube is only for draining things out, and the j tube is only for putting things in. 

And I’ve said it a bunch of times before but, I LOVE MY TUBE.  Compared to my life before the tube, things are a thousand times easier. Sure I miss food, but not as much as I expected, and eating was so hard towards the end that this has been nothing but an improvement. Done right, I never feel hungry, I never feel full, I never even notice I’m eating. And being able to drain stomach fluid has literally saved my life, since it tries to back up into my lungs and give me pneumonia.

Notes:
  1. withasmoothroundstone posted this