Pat,
A frequent reason for diarrhea post PEG tube feeding is due to the osmotic load of the feeding formula. I wrote a little excerpt months ago about how I weaned myself into PEG feedings. I'm attaching below to explain thoroughly what I had to do. Basically small doses and a lot of water were the essentials at the start. As my body adjusted, I added more nutrition. I found that 50% nutrition and 50% H20 was a good way to go. Here's what I posted a while ago. Good luck!:
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When I lost the ability to take in food orally, I had to rely more on my Gtube and Jevity 1.5 Cal cans. I thought the Jevity would surely be the answer to maintaining weight, but I had serious issues with osmotic diarrhea when I first attempted to put a can in. I did not want to be stuck on a pump at night or in the day, so I ended up taking about three days and training my body to accept the gravity feeds and increase tolerance.
For those of you who have had this issue and would like to attempt to remain pump-free...let me explain. The first day of trying Jevity by gravity, I put in 50ml of Jevity and 100 ml of H20 every 2hours starting at 7am until 9am. Then at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm, I added 75 ml Jevity and 150 ml H20. At 5pm, 8pm, and 10pm, I then put in 100 ml Jevity and 200 ml H20. If during any of this I got diarrhea again, I went to the previous dose increment and continued that for a few more hours until I felt ready to try an increase. For Day 2, I did 100 ml Jevity and 200ml H20 at 7am and 10am. If all went well, then I increased to 150 ml Jevity and 250 ml H20 every three hours for the rest of the day. On Day 3, I began with 150 ml Jevity and 250 to 300 ml of H20 at 7am and 10am. Then three hours later I attempted 200 ml of Jevity and 400ml H20. When it was clear I tolerated that, I graduated to putting all 237 ml of Jevity in at a time with 2x the amount of water. I'm sure I could have gotten away with less water, but I was very afraid to encounter osmotic diarrhea again so almost always used the 1:2 ratio of Jevity:H20 from here on out. By day four, I was able to get my 5 cans of Jevity in with 5 feedings. Each feeding took about 20 to 30 minutes (usually water flew in and Jevity took it's time with gravity).
