Feeding Tube Diet

   Picture yourself in this situation...you are being held down by nurses and doctors as another doctor forces a tube down your nose that hurts as it passes up your nose it hurts...a lot and then comes the gagging and throwing up bile or whatever as it passes down your throat. They leave you there with a guide wire down the tube to take an x ray to make sure the tube is placed properly and if it isnt they will come back in and pull it out or push it in as much as the radiologist suggests. Finally the guidewire is pulled out and they tape the tube to your face and hook you up to a pump that will pump formula into you that while its helping you its making you sick to your stomach and ontop of that your throat is killing you because there is tube down it and your nose hurts and runs and eventually you end up with a sinus infection. That was me in my anorexia...I was tube fed multiple times because I wouldn't feed myself and my body was in serious need of nutrition. I've resisted and been held down by everyone in their brother, I've pulled the tube out only to have it shoved back in with the threat of restraits. They put my feeding pump and the formula bottle inside a cage known as "the box" that has a pad lock on it so I couldn't tamper with it. Does that not sound like a crappy situation and yet this knew found diet has perfectly healthy women going to a doctor to have a feeding tube put in to lose weight.
   There is nothing pleasant about getting a feeding tube put in, if you have ever seen it done or been the one getting you know. It is absolutely sickening that they are using them now for weight loss. The very item that was used to keep me alive during my anorexia and the one in my intestine now due to the gastroparesis, an item that was intended for live saving treatments is now being used as a weightloss trick. This doctor assures his "patients" that they will lose twenty pounds in the ten days the tube is in their nose and they are running his "formula" in the backpack. The "formula" these women are placed on induces ketosis which is seriously dangerous and can lead to serious complications including death, it lacks any carbohydrates which the body needs and basically induces starvation. So, for ten days these women, most of which are brides trying to look good in their wedding dresses starve themselves and exist only on this "formula" going through the tube. Sure, they lose weight, but at what cost...looking pale and ready to fall over at the alter?
   This whole thing is completely outrageous and really pisses me off beyond belief, maybe some of it is that old eating disorder mindset...every tube shoved down my face or surgically placed in my intestine has never been for weightloss only for weight gain and maintaning my weight. I almost feel like people will stare at me now when they see me out with my backpact running my nutrition into my intestines wondering if I'm one of "those" girls who are doing it to lose weight, its setting back feeding tube awareness so much. There have been comments made by media about how "yucky" the tubes look, I've walked around in public for years with feeding tubes and I've dealt with the questions and the stares but for the most part it hasnt been too bad because people could see that I was sick. I don't consider my tube "yucky" for other people to look at, honestly I don't care what other people think about it, it keeps me alive and able to raise my son. There are so many of us that do this because we have to not because we want to. I don't understand how this quack of a doctor can justify doing this to people and taking advantage of women who already have serious body image issues if they are willing to resort to a freaking tube in their nose to lose weight. He is preying on these women who are already in a vulnerable state...brides trying to fit into a wedding dress, women who have never had a hint of an eating disorder can develope some serious eating disorder behaviors to fit into that damn dress and now here is a person telling them to hand him fifteen hundred dollars and he will give them the "miracle" cure. I wonder if he explains all the things that could go wrong like say the tube ends up in the lung rather than the stomach or what happens if they get a dangerous electrolyte imbalance and go to bed two weeks before their wedding and never wake up all to fit into their dress? Do these women understand that once the tube is pulled and they are back eating food that they weight that fell off is going to come back because they are no longer on a starvation diet?
   I suffered from anorexia and bulimia for so many years and it took so much from me and looking back I wish I hadn't destroyed my body like that. I believe that anyone who electively lets someone shove a tube down their nose to lose weight has some serious issues with body image and eating disorder behaviors and they need to see a therapist before things get worse. I think that this so called "doctor" should be booted out of the medical community and thrown in jail if he ever practices medicine again. There are so many people that are dealing with eating disorders and the diet industry just plays off of it promising more and more weightloss to women who don't even have the ten or twenty pounds to lose. But, the only way for us to stop this is to fight back, stop letting scales and calories control you...I wish that I still had a stomach and intestine that functioned and I could eat all the things I deprived myself for all those years, but instead I hook up to a really gross bag of tube feed formula that contains all the things my body needs to stay nourished, I am twenty six years old and no longer have a functioning stomach and intestines that are failing, eventually I will require once again nutrition through an IV that is placed directly into my heart and the solution that is put through keeps you alive while killing your liver and the central line puts you are serious risk for sepsis which I had a few years ago with my port. We have to rise up against this, too many young women and men are losing their fights with their eating disorders. Its hard to fight that voice in year head that screams at you to be thin, tells you that you are fat and not good enough and then see a tv commercial that tells you its ok to feel like that and they will help you drop those pounds. I've lost friends to anorexia and bulimia and I don't want to lose anymore. A feeding tube is used to give people nutrition who cannot take it in themselves not for people to shed pounds.