Dear Mike,

My husband started using his peg pretty quickly as he began treatment with trismus and the combo of induction chemo he was receiving led to thrush, mouth sores and nausea. Because he would not be tasting the food put through his tube, the nutritionist at Hopkins arranged for him to have a flavorless (and very little odor because that can cause nausea in some) drink high in protein and other daily requirements called Osmolite made by Ross. I think a lot of people on this site drink or use in their peg Carnation VHC because it is high calorie per ounce. Although we are pretty new at this, I think he recovered pretty quickly from the nausea and pain because he was getting adequate nutrition (and nausea and pain meds) and just as important- adequate hydration through his peg tube as he has been taking about 3 additional liters of water a day through the peg. We were told to simply flush the peg daily and we do so with regular water after he was osmolite. If he doesn't use the peg for a day, we were told to do the flush just as you have. After several days of using the peg for most of his food and water, my husband has been feeling so much better and has been eating small meals of all sorts of food (not enough to keep his weight up). Sometimes he will think he wants a certain type of food and then just find it doesn't taste as good or go down as well as he'd thought. I think that key thing for him was that he quickly became dehydrated when he started to eat less and that increased his reaction to the chemo and the side effects.