CAREGIVING: Kathy has had her PEG tube (feeding tube) since early June. You can read about the decision to put it in; and the ethics to use one elsewhere in the blog. For the most part it works pretty well; except when it doesn’t. It is leaking at the fitting where everything gets pumped in. At one point I worried that the tube would come out. Our nurse, Mary Kate said it was just the disk that was working a little loose. She pushed it back in place.
There have been many times when the male end from the food bag has separated and made a mess. Now it leaks when I am trying to pump her meds and water with the syringe. The little orange “Lopez valves” are useless and Kathy gets drenched. The female end is getting stretched. The food gets plugged in and pulled out several times a day. The syringe with medicine, or water gets pushed in, and pulled out even more often.
Dr. Jackson is referring Kathy to a Gastroenterologist. No one has looked at it, since she came home from the hospital. I was practicing passive aggressive medicine at the time. I didn’t see the value of taking her by ambulance to have a doctor say it looked okay. They wanted her to come in to have the temporary “bumpers” or buttons removed, but I balked at that for months. The sutures dissolved, and they fell off on their own.
In the meanwhile I decided to problem-solve. I tried different things around the house to make the two ends fit better (like tape and other tubes). Saturday I went to Hampden Hardware Store with a syringe and a few other parts. They fixed me up with a few O-rings from the plumbing department.
The combination seems to be working pretty well. I was going to get a little hose clamp, but I figured they were made for cars; not people. It had lots of sharp edges, too. This will tide us over until she can get to the doctor and have the tube replaced.
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