I’m Drinking Again

Judging by the title of this entry you may think I have become an alcoholic…again - this isn’t the case. I will explain, it’s a long story.

As you may know I have muscular dystrophy. It is common for someone with my disease to have difficulty swallowing food, at least enough to sustain life. The solution to this is to have a peg tube inserted. This is simply a tube that attaches your stomach to the outside of your abdomen.

I had my first peg tube inserted over 10 years ago. Six months after this I my first peg change this is where they pull out the old peg and insert a new one. A couple of weeks after this my peg started leaking, basically vomiting into my lap. Over the next five years the leaks got steadily worse until eventually I would wake up in the middle of the night covered in vomit.

The solution to this was to have the peg resited a couple of centimetres to the left of my original peg. Then all we had to do is wait for the old peg site to close - it never did. There is more details about this in my earlier post Fighting Illness – How to Win.

Eventually, I had surgery to fix the old hole, but in the meantime I stopped eating and drinking anything through my mouth in an attempt to stop the leakage and allow the site to heal naturally. This also did not work while also having the side-effect that I forgot how to swallow. I also thought maybe I had simply lost the ability to swallow in a use it or lose it scenario.

I have made several attempts at drinking since then, but all have failed. This time I doggedly tried to drink every day after I got out of bed. Only a week later I am drinking again and even had a hot chocolate yesterday.