Hello everyone,
Just as a child in distress runs to the bosom of its mother for comfort, I have come running to TP with my latest dilemma.
My mother has moved onto the last stage of the disease and cannot walk nor speak and has difficulties swallowing so much so that she was taken to hospital last Friday as she choked on her food and had trouble breathing. Some food had entered her lungs which caused this problem.
She is now back at the assisted living facility with a nasal gastric tube. Even in her present condition, she is restless and tends to move around the bed and tends to pull out the tube. In order to prevent her from doing this, doctors have suggested that her hands be 'fixed' with a kind of finger belt or whatever that's called.
You can very well imagine the torture of all this. I am wondering if I should go the PEG route which is percutaneous endoscopic gastrotomy which means the food goes in directly into the stomach through a PEG fitting. Doctors however think that she will have a tendency to pull this out as well (with/without a protective waist belt) and if so, the consequences can be worse than expected.
Has anyone been in this dilemma before? Nasal feeding - PEG feeding - no feeding (only IV fluids) - the latter would actually cause starvation, wouldn't it? and the very thought of it frightens me. As an only child, I find this dilemma worse than all the previous ones.
Any thoughts or advice would be gratefully accepted.
With love to all those going through the tempest of AD ...
Just as a child in distress runs to the bosom of its mother for comfort, I have come running to TP with my latest dilemma.
My mother has moved onto the last stage of the disease and cannot walk nor speak and has difficulties swallowing so much so that she was taken to hospital last Friday as she choked on her food and had trouble breathing. Some food had entered her lungs which caused this problem.
She is now back at the assisted living facility with a nasal gastric tube. Even in her present condition, she is restless and tends to move around the bed and tends to pull out the tube. In order to prevent her from doing this, doctors have suggested that her hands be 'fixed' with a kind of finger belt or whatever that's called.
You can very well imagine the torture of all this. I am wondering if I should go the PEG route which is percutaneous endoscopic gastrotomy which means the food goes in directly into the stomach through a PEG fitting. Doctors however think that she will have a tendency to pull this out as well (with/without a protective waist belt) and if so, the consequences can be worse than expected.
Has anyone been in this dilemma before? Nasal feeding - PEG feeding - no feeding (only IV fluids) - the latter would actually cause starvation, wouldn't it? and the very thought of it frightens me. As an only child, I find this dilemma worse than all the previous ones.
Any thoughts or advice would be gratefully accepted.
With love to all those going through the tempest of AD ...