PEG feeding

[noelphobic]

Hi Niall

Welcome to TP and thank you for sharing your experience with me. I will certainly bear everything you have said in mind, should the time come when a decision of this nature has to be made.

The point you make about depression is a very interesting one. It is very difficult to say whether my mum is depressed or not, although she has certainly suffered from depression in the past many times, even back to when I was a child. It is also hard to imagine not being depressed in her situation, unless you take the stance that she really does not know what is happening to her.

Take care
Brenda

 

[Grannie G]

Hi Brenda,

I`ve only just caught up with this thread.

I`m so sorry your mother`s condition has deteriorated so much. It`s enough to have to sit and watch the suffering, but to have to make such decisions, regarding the use of a peg or not must be agonizing.

For what it`s worth, my neighbour, a practicing Catholic, suffering cancer of the oesophagus, was fitted with a peg. Because of his weakened condition, it became infected and never healed.

Whatever happens, you know in your heart you are doing the best you possibly can for your mother, and guilt doesn`t come into it.

Take care, with love

 

[DeborahBlythe]

Hi Brenda

The staff at the new home may not have been very good with the PEG tube but amazingly they made special efforts and were able to encourage her to start eating again. She is still eating away to this day.

Niall

I am not desperately happy with the staff or rather the staffing levels, in my mum's NH, but like Niall's mum, somehow my mum has sort of stabilised and is eating fairly steadily now, after a year of going off her food. She doesn't eat as much as she used to but at least she has regained some sort of an appetite, usually eats a decent lunch and she never refuses tea nor these days, cakes and biscuits ( like mother: like daughter). I think the recommendations in that scientific article you found were very good Brenda, and you could use them as a basis for discussions perhaps. Also, try to get a dietician involved in your mum's nutrition if you don't already have one. They can help to advise the home on supplements, feeding arrangements, etc etc and tend to make the homes sit up a bit.( Sorry, you may have already mentioned this earlier.) Love and best wishes, Deborah