So from the outset I should explain what an NG (nasogastric) tube is and why I have had one a few times.
An NG tube is a tube which is pushed up the nose until it goes down the back of the throat and down into the stomach.
It is used to feed someone who cannot orally take food themselves, like if they are unconscious for a long amount of time or they are a baby. There are many applications.
After my first course of a drug called prednisone it had some very unpleasant side effects, for more information on that you can read my article on Steroids (they aren’t what you think), and it got to the point where I couldn’t bare to be on the drug anymore and the only other treatment option at that time was to go on a liquid diet called elemental. It is a liquid food that you can make up from a powder and the purpose of this feed, in my case, was to rest my bowel. Because of how the feed is on a chemical level is basically can be absorbed straight away and cuts out any work that my colon does. Which means my colon could rest and ‘heal’ and this would send me into remission. Remission is where the disease and it’s symptoms as less dominant and this can last for any period of time.
Typically you would drink this feed but whenever I would attempt to I would start throwing up and retching. So an NG tube would take out the problem of my swallowing it and it would just go straight into my stomach.
Of course there are two huge down sides to having an NG tube for this reason:
- No eating for at least 6 weeks
- I have a tube in my face.
But it was better than the alternative at the time, which was continuing my course of corticosteroids.
I had just been admitted back into hospital, for trying to kill myself due to the side effects of the prednisone, and a few days before I had tried to drink some of the feed but of course couldn’t keep it down. I woke up and got my breakfast, which was toast, before the doctor came in. She told me that if I was to go on the NG tube feed for no less than 6 weeks then we could start a faster step down of my medication. As after being on a high dose of that kind of medication you have to lower the dose slowly. But going down faster was better than nothing. So I agreed and had one last bite of toast. The last bite of food I would have for 8 weeks. I went into the treatment room and they told me that I should try to continually swallow to help to tube go down better. So they gave me a little cup of water to use to swallow. She measure how far approximately it would be from my nose to my stomach. Then the nurse tilted my head back and they started to push the tube up my nose. Once it made it up my nose I started to cry. But the worst was when it gets to the back of your throat. You get asked to swallow, but because something is being forced down, your gag reflex makes you throw up. Once it was down it just felt like a huge hair in the back of my throat.
Unfortunate, but a necessary evil. It is hard being on the feed, I have to have someone hold up the little syringe of feed for it to go down properly so I hate how dependant I am when I am on it. But I know that it is all for my health.
This is a terrible quality photo of me with my NG tube