Ray

While I briefly responded to your private message on this subject, I wanted to share my thoughts on the public forum so the other OCF members can chime in.
First and foremost, only your brother Fred can make the decision to come to peace with his PEG and have an active social life and deal with being literally excommunicated from the social fabric of eating & drinking. I've been struggling with writing a piece for Brian for a long while and am still not satisfied with it's whining undercurrent plus it's just not polished and witty enough to be a final product I can be proud of. Still here are some thoughts on this.
The PEG may not be permanent for Fred. He needs to be seeing a speech and swallowing therapist and should consider getting VitalStim electrical therapy and perhaps he can pass a Modified Barium Swallow test.
If Fred falls into the chosen few of us who never pass a MBS, it is devastating but hardly fatal although he may feel like he'd be better off dead sometimes due to the social isolation. The kindest thing you can do is to fully Understand that and not downplay it or minimize it. Most of the OCF posters only had a PEG for less than a year so they are more sanguine about it but I hate my PEG and always have.
I assume that right now Fred is on a gravity bag dripping food into his PEG or worse, stuck with a pump. In either event, Fred should try and use "bolus" feedings with a syringe as often as possible. Over a year later, my stomach is slowly transitioning and it took time. But I can assure you that it is so much easier to go out to restaurants with just a can of Jevity and a syringe instead of lugging a 6 foot pole and a feeding bag. (And YES, I have done it both ways, setting up my pole and bag in a corner where other diners did not trip over it.)
Your timing is perfect. Just yesterday my caregiver wife was feeling "guilty" about my plans for a lovely Easter Brunch at a Georgetown restaurant since I couldn't eat. I reassured her I loved to see her happy and that it did not bother me. I noticed on the Oprah show about Roger Ebert that his wife eats alone at the dinner table every night while Roger sits in his den with his feeding tube and feeding bag all alone and refused to let the camera take even one shot of him hooked up to the PEG. That seems awful lonely to me . So don't cut Fred off from the family dinner table.
A few months ago, I bought a VitaMix blender at a medical discount and now for most lunches and dinners, my wife just takes my plate of the same food she is eating and we liquefy it and I put it down my PEG tube. Psychologically and nutritionally it is much better. Long term, thing about a blenderized diet for Fred to supplement the canned corn syrup solids prescribed by so called dietitians in the medical profession.
Last but not least, consider an apron at home with a slit in it for Fred's feeding as nothing is more humiliating and frustrating then when something leaks and spills over your clothes. I have two of them and it's easier to laugh accidents off this way.
So my advice to Fred is : Keep your sense of humor and learn how to syringe your food in so you can join people out. Yesterday my wife ordered the shrimp biryani while I told the waiter my "entree" was the bottle of Taj Mahal beer.
That's my final hint: wine or beer (wine is much easier and less messy) down the PEG tube. No alcohol hits the oral tissues. Life can still be good and Easter is a wonderful time to contemplate rebirth and going foward
You are a great brother to worry about Fred
Charm