Using the Feeding Tube, Part Two

After I got a little food into Bullwinkle, I unscrewed the food syringe, and screwed on the syringe with his antibiotic. Then, when I'd gotten all the antibiotic into the feeding tube, I unscrewed that syringe, and screwed the food syringe back on, and resumed feeding him. I made sure I held the tube up when I was changing syringes because I learned very early on that if I didn't, gravity would let the food and water flow out of the tube.

Also this process of giving him the pain meds, a bit of food, the antibiotic, and more food is not one the clinic told me to adopt -- it's just what I started doing because it seemed to work best for both Bullwinkle & me.

I started, in the video, to say that the feeding process is a little boring. Up until this morning, the only place Bullwinkle would allow me to feed him was on top of the washer. Yesterday I went out and bought a new blanket for him -- a soft fleece thing from the thrift store -- and to my great surprise and pleasure, he was sleeping on it this morning. I'd put it on the sofa, which meant that I was able to sit next to him when I started feeding him -- and he very quickly crawled into my lap for the rest of the feeding. The only thing missing was a cup of tea for myself.

Anyway, especially at the beginning, it was hard to keep both Bullwinkle and me still for 20 or 30 minutes. Also I think he may still have been agitated from the anesthesia he was given when they put his feeding tube in. So I read children's books out loud to him. I got the idea from when my friend Deb had lung cancer and had one lobe of her lung, and five ribs, removed. She was very, very sick and hallucinating like crazy from all the drugs they were giving her. I kept going to visit her but it was kind of the same thing -- she didn't have much to say and I didn't want to blather on incessantly and in a cheerful way -- so I read the Harry Potter stories to her. She says now that she really liked hearing me read them to her (although she can't remember any of them). In any case, if nothing else, reading stories aloud to Bullwinkle kept me from feeding him too fast.