09/03/2020
Can someone with digestive tract paralysis eat? Yes, most of us are perfectly capable of putting food into our mouths, chewing, and then swallowing the delectable morsel of our choosing.
SHOULD an individual with severe gastroparesis and/or chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction eat? Maybe not. Or at least nothing significant. Every patient varies in their ability (or lack there of) to eat. Still, it’s important to keep introducing food to the gastrointestinal tract. The stomach is a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
So, how do I handle not eating anything substantial? The long periods of being NPO? That’s a loaded question. The answer is—I don’t.
Those with digestive tract paralysis have a strange relationship with food. For me, I do attempt to eat here and there when not in a massive flare, but what I do eat is vented out of my PEG tube attached to my stomach. Essentially, it’s like puking without it coming out of my mouth. Gross. However, venting is not fool proof. Inevitably, minimal amounts of food escape past the tube creating the potential for illness (bowel obstruction, nausea, vomiting, etc).
While trialing bites of food on occasion is important, I’m fully aware that my “pleasure eating” will result in illness comparable to food poisoning or a stomach flu. Yet, I do it anyway. Why?
Food is such a basic component of life. Celebrations stem around food. Families bond over meals. I like to feel included. So, it’s difficult to consider the consequences in the moment.
I may have acquired the skill of being hungry and nauseous simultaneously (I bet you didn’t know that was possible!!), but finding balance between eating enough to preserve bowel motility and not making myself emergently ill is a skill I’m unsure if I will ever successfully master.
As I shove a bite of cupcake into my mouth, nauseating dry heaves overtake my body. I curse my stupidity—claiming “I’m never eating again.” That is, until next time. Because when nausea no longer swirls in the bit of my stomach and the pain relents, I always do it again...eventually.
Some would say that’s the definition of insanity, but I call it hope.
Cre: hospitalprncss
