I've been following the blogs of people with PEGS and feeding tubes and here is a recent post that explains her trepidation on an upcoming flight and a prior bad experience with TSA doing a body search on her due to the feeding tube. As regular readers here know, I avoided most of this by ignoring TSA shouted demands to keep my hands up and instead just pulled up my shirt to let my feeding tube and it's eight inch extension just hang out - (if you got it flaunt it)
[quote]So, will a tube feeder�s equipment alert TSA to check my bag? Well, my four syringes look like dynamite sticks on a xray. The extra Mic-key button kit (insurance that nothing goes wrong w my system) looks like a boxed up bomb. Should I just open the kit and take out what I need? After all, most of the stuff in it is for bed ridden feeders. I hate tearing open a $350 kit to get the single peg button out, just in case. It contaminates the button and allows the little balloon device to dry out and possibly crack when it�s installed. I�ve already thrown away one of these devices after a long trip. It was just too dangerous to use it later.
Then there�s the 18� snap on feeding tube itself. That will look mighty suspicious to an alert agent. And the pipe cleaner I use to clean it with. Could that be fuse material?And when they unzip one side pouch, twenty packets of small and large rayon sponges will eject like somebody just broke a pi�ata.
And when they find all that incendiary looking stuff, they may do the full body search AGAIN. I�ve been through this when my doctor�s note failed to protect me from probing fingers. One of the female TSA inspectors choked up when she shared w me a story about frisking an eight year old tube feeder. She didn�t realize how painful tubes are when disturbed, and she frisked right over the inflamed area, setting off waves of pain in the little girl. Unfortunately for me, what triggered this story from her was her fellow agent frisking over my tube area. I don�t know if it was the wince of pain or the muffled yelp, but both agents knew they�d hit a bad place. Dear God, I hope I get lucky this time and don�t go through the full body frisk.[/quote]