When mine was placed they used stitches and these little metal things they called toggles with one on the outside and one on the inside. I had a lot of redness, swelling, pain and discomfort in the beginning and the doctor thought it was because of the position of my stomach and the small size of it. I went back, had some water let out of the bulb but I still hurt and felt full all the time. I went back and the person that usually does the PEG tubes saw me, immediately clipped all of the stitches and told me the toggles would pass through the digestive system. She said she never uses the stitches because it just causes the tube to irritate and creates sores where the stitches are.

All the problems went away. The infusion nurses gave me some really cool gauze that had a little slot cut out and I put them around the base to soak up the goo that oozed out sometimes. I took baths and just wiped up the fresh goo with a qtip after the bath and never had another problem. I never really used it for much except liquid medicine when I couldn't swallow.

Ed