Patty:
Hello and welcome to OCF. I know you are new so try to take a few minutes and read some important info under the heading "New Posters". It will make it easier to learn how to navigate this site. Please start a new post so others can respond directly to you.

Ive had a PEG tube while going thru treatments. I had so many problems with being able to get proper nutrition. A few times I was admitted to the hospital for malnutrition and dehydration. Along the way I learned some PEG tube tricks. Since your husband has lost so much weight, he should be taking extra cans of formula to try to gain some weight so he feels better.

First trick is getting the right formula. I went thru several before I got one that I could tolerate. If you dont already have a feeding pump machine, ask the doc and get one. I was not able to use the syringe method or gravity feed way either. I could only use the pump. If he is already using it, turn it way down to 20. Another trick is to water down the solution. Use an extra 3/4 can of water per can of liquid feeding formula.

Keep the speed very low and make sure he is propped up with 2 pillows and run the pump overnight. If possible stick a couple think hardcover books under the top of the bed frame to help give more of an incline. That is very very important to prevent aspiration.

After about a week of the slow pump speed and watered down formula, then increase the speed to 40 and cut the water to 1/2 a can extra. Give that several days and increase the speed again, dont cut the water down too much or he will get sick again.

Hope this works as well for your husband as it did for me.

What I do, based on tips from Christine, is set my food pump up so it's pumping food in while I read in bed and then sleep. I can stuf four cans of Nutren 2.0, 2,000 calories, into the 'Roo bag, set it for a suitable feed rate and then there's no fuss.

I don't have to do anything beyond loading it all up and the cord is long enough to drag the pump to the bathroom should the urge hit me. Actually, it's kind of pleasant to have the pump chugging along in the background.

The big thing is that I don't feel 'tied down' like I do if feeding during the day.

Sandy, I am new to this site but I am not new to the problems we all are sharing with this SCC. I have not eaten solid food in over a year. Everything I have taken in is through my tube, and as of last month I have a new, improved low profile gastrostomy feeding tube. thanks in part to the nurse who inadventently pulled my other tube out while changing my surgical gown.'

My wife has been on the front line, right there with me and is making sure I get the right stuff. If you are not aware of it, Ensure is 30% sugar. Cancer feeds on sugar. Why would they recommend we continue to ingest sugar when we are trying to get rid of the cancer? Here is question you can ask your Dr. Is a patient cured, a customer lost? They do NOT like to be reminded of that.

My wife feeds me all natural, uncooked vegetables and fruits by blending it in a Vita mix. Other blenders lack the strength to do the job right. It is the only blender we have found that is strong enough to liquify what I need. Here is a sample, one days mix. Celery, apple, zucchini, beets, carrots, spinach, protein (Shaklee), extra virgin oil, and flax seed oil. This is then blended with soy milk. After losing 66 lbs at the get go, I am staying steady between 157- 161 I have plenty of energy and sleep well. I am 69 and I still work every day.

I had a spontaneous remission of a return of the cancer in my tongue. From one week, biopsy-positive, CT scan-positive to the next week. Everything gone. The doctor removed a clean portion of my tongue because he had no way of knowing it was gone until the lab report came in two weeks later.

I agree, a cook book is in order but if I wrote it, there would be nothing but raw materials involved. Nothing cooked. Asparagus, colliflour, beets, etc. All can be liquified in my wife's blender. blessings gnoled.blogspot.com

My experience is that you could likely have put the first PEG right back in -- I took mine out a couple of times to clean it when it was really clogged and put it back in -- Hard part was getting the abdominal and stomach wall holes lined up!

Cancer feeds on sugar????? is this a scientific fact?
http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/can...gar-and-cancer-is-there-a-connection.htm http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/can...gar-and-cancer-is-there-a-connection.htm

Nutrition is not just about weight.It is also about getting all the things you need for tissue regeneration,healing,energy and digestive motility in an easy and compact manner.There is little point in maintaining weight if you get vitamin or mineral deficiency,and unless the chemical balance of your blood is correct in terms of salts,heamoglobin,white cell count,potassium ect you are going to be very sick.Ensure ,fortisip,carnation breakfast food etc all contain all the components the body requires and have been formulated to replace a balanced diet when you cannot eat.
Vegeatables are not sugar free (beets!!!) Its the age old story really .if you think that works for you ...great but for the ones not as fortunate as you they are life savers.Implying they are forced on patients for commercial gain is really not helpful to people here.No matter what you need to survive this disease someone is making money from it, thats life.
If attitude was all it took to survive then these boards would not have seen the heartbreak and loss it has since i have been a member it helps for sure but only as part of the overall plan

Cancer does feed on sugar -- That's the fundamental principle of a PET scan -- Inject radioactive sugar, wait 45 minutes or so, and then do the scan, looking for the places where the sugar has gathered.

http://www.pcca.net/PET_scan.htm

I take it you didnt read the link then?

[quote]The concept that sugar feeds cancer is not useful. Sugar feeds every cell in our bodies. Our bodies need glucose, or simple sugar, for energy. Even if you cut every bit of sugar out of your diet, your body will make sugar from other sources, such as protein and fat.
So cancer cells need sugar to grow, just like healthy cells. It helps to remember that there is nothing particular about sugar that �feeds� cancer cells any more than sugar feeds all cells in our body.
[/quote]
My point in answering the post in the first place was the implication that regular recommended feeding products are prescribed for their commercial gain rather than their beneficial properties.I truly feel such remarks are not helpful to the newly diagnosed and the desperate people who come here for help and advice.There are a lot of people who fight cancer by following their own chosen path,and of course this is their choice and their right,and i imagine if i had the disease myself in the face of the failure of conventional treatment i might be tempted to try anything ,but my common sense and my training will always lead me to listen to the science and weigh up the proven facts,and then make a properly informed decision.If brian were to jump in here and shoot me down in flames with a definitive statement that prescribed feeding products are harmful then i will be the first to apologise

A PET scan is not specific for cancer. It finds cells with high metabolism (in the crudest of terms sugar burn) but not cancer. There are lots of things that cause this that have nothing to do with cancer. Infection, inflammation, cell repair from trauma just to name a few that are not caner. Every cell needs blood sugars to exist. All of our cells are burning it all the time. If you do not eat it your body will covert other things to sugars as it is programmed to do everyday. You cannot stop eating sugar and change anything. Your body will just make its own. Please do a search for sugars in this board - this has be discussed and dissected ad nausem, several times. People who believe this do not have a basic understanding of cell biology nor blood sugars.

Cells that are in a state of repair will throw the SUV of a PET scan high and light you up like a xmas tree. Is this cancer? Is it a bad thing? No. Do our surgeries, radiation treatments etc. cause cellular damage that in itself lights up a PET? Yes, if the scan is soon enough after the treatments to have the body's repair process still in effect. It is finding what a PET scan does, high metabolism. Repair. Inflammation. Does cancer also produce elevated SUV's? Yup. Can a PET scan tell the difference between the two? No. But at the end of the day, you are not going to impact any cancer via sugar consumption. That would be assuming that the sugar that you eat stays as sugar. It would also assume that anything else that you eat (carbs, protein, fats, etc.) could/would not be converted by your normal body functions to sugar. Both are wrong assumptions.

gnoled - I find this quote of your particularly distasteful and makes an assumption about doctors that is just not true. "Why would they recommend we continue to ingest sugar when we are trying to get rid of the cancer? Here is question you can ask your Dr. Is a patient cured, a customer lost? They do NOT like to be reminded of that." Your take is that the majority of doctors want to keep us sick for financial gain. Keep this paranoid nonsense off the boards. It helps no one, and is not true of the majority of doctors who have saved many of our lives here on the board, who work for straight salary at CCC's all around the US, are not paid per patient but by the year, regardless if they see one patient, or the usual number which is more than they can handle. It would make an assumption that as a group of tens of thousands of individual practitioners, they conspire as a group to keep us sick for the shear purpose of milking every last cent out of us. Conspiracy theories can be posted on some other board. Not here.

I have a couple of recipes to add to the cook book. LOL

This is the 1st time I have read these posts, Good job Brian. You did that just like a true leader should. Congrats.