How quickly did you start gaining weight after having your feeding tube placed?
My partner (33M) just had an NG feeding tube placed last night because he has been continually struggling with oral food intake for a while dude to repetitive problems with his mouth and esophagus throughout his cancer treatments. He had been loosing weight for a while an reached the point where they can not move forward with his surgery safely until he can gain some weight back so him and his care team agreed that the best option for him was a feeding tube.
The tube was placed late last night (It took them 4+ hours to get the tube placed properly because his stomach is currently displaced due to his sarcoma) and they started him on a trickle feed. From my understanding, they are being a little cautious because they want to see how he tolerates the formula.
They fed him again today and are encouraging him to attempt to eat orally as well to maximize his caloric intake, but they weighed him (they've been weighing him every day as he's currently in the hospital) and he saw that he's lost about 1lb since yesterday.
Even though it's 1lb, seeing his weight go down at all is causing him immense anxiety so I wanted to know what others' experiences were.
How long did it take you to gain weight once your feeding tube was place?
Did you initially loose weight?
Once you started gaining weight, how quickly did you gain?
I plan to talk to his doctors and dietitian tomorrow and unfortunately, don't have all the details right now because I haven't been able to stay in the hospital with him like l'd prefer to be (I had to go back to work and have been visiting him after work each night), but I'll be spending the weekend with him. For now though, I think hearing about others' experiences might help him out a bit.