Hi Pete! Sounds like you made a good call to go after the beast with the other barrel. It is a sneaky devil - prone to get back up... I've lived by my peg tube for two and half years now. Jevity and Ensure are made by the same company and are nearly identical in content. Ensure has no non-food sugars in it, so don't worry about getting too much. The easiest and cheapest place to buy Ensure is Wal-Mart. Its a stock item for even their medium size stores, and they can order and stock just the ones you want.

The PLUS products have 350 calories per can - saves both time and money. For further savings, buy some of the store brand (equate at Wal-Mart). The contents are identical, and the generic is a ton cheaper - just less fancy package. I use a 60cc syringe to eat. It kind of hurries the stuff into my stomach, and lets my system maintain a bit of a schedule for 'eating'. During tx I poured in two cans at a sitting, four times per day. Now I can maintain my weight and strength (185) with 7 cans per day.

The fiber idea is a really good one. I use Benefiber. Buy it at Wal-Mart in a big green plastic jar. It dissolves pretty completely and pours into the peg without blocking. I usually have most of a 20oz bottle of water at each meal, and I pour about 2tsp of Benefiber into the water bottle at each noon meal. You can take more or less depending on the way your gut reacts to the drugs. I continue to consume the fiber just for gut health now - 2 years post tx.

The buzz in the waiting room at the radiation oncologist's office was: Double your water intake during tx, cut your tx side-effects in half. It worked for me. Dehydration is a real risk during chemo and the 'ray gun' doesn't help at all. And hey, while you are laying there, with your head clamped to the table, think about all the cool things you can do with the mask when tx is over!

You can do it Pete. We are with you. Tom J