Susan

My wife just verified how worried she was the whole time I refused to get a PEG the first go round, especially when I would vomit up the Ensure Plus I had painstakingly forced down. Still she knew how important it was to me to maintain the feeling of active resistance to this cancer so supported me. She knew when she married me just how stubborn I am and it sounds like Dave may have a similar streak.
Again, while there is certainly no shame in getting a PEG if it gets too much for Dave, I was exuberant that I got thru 40 rounds of radiation and eight chemos without one. For me the trick was to sip Seltzer water and then spit it out with the mucous between each and every swallow of Ensure Plus Sounds worse than it was. Again, this elective decision is highly personal but I was always that guy in the 10K race who started to sprint at the 5 mile mark when others were slowing down, or started to pick up the pace at Mile 25 of the Marathon. Amazingly I would end up passing literally dozens of people at the 10K and hundreds at the Marathons because they did not think the extra pain and effort were worth it at that point. It was that way with the PEG for me - I knew if I just hung tough and kept on I could finish the TX without it even while the rest of my group in the waiting room faltered.
As for healthy choices, even with the second round of radiation and chemo less than a year ago, I just finished spreading out one thousand four hundred pounds of while marble chips to make a little patio for our fire pit (with lifting each 50lb bag twice, that's over a ton).
Dave is lucky to have a caregiver who can understand that sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do.
Charm