DM has terminal cancer, with no known timeline. She’s finding it almost impossible to eat; I’d say she’s lucky if she reaches 1000 calories on a good day. She hates all the calorie drinks and won’t take them, which is an issue. She’s skin and bone now and I’m worried we’re soon going to hit the stage where one of her major organs just gives up the ghost, or a simple cold becomes fatal. She’s fatigued all the time and wants to sleep a lot and right now we don’t know if that is the cancer or the lack of food. She’s not in any pain so at the moment I suspect it the not eating more than anything, though there is a chance it might be that the cancer has spread.
We are trying to make the difficult decision whether to push her “care” (that is a laugh in itself because I never realised once they cant treat the cancer you basically get discharged from oncology with no other care…) to discuss a feeding tube in the hope this will make her feel better and she will have some quality of life. Given that there is no pain from the cancer this might be worth doing. But we also have no idea what tube feeding is like and whether it’s as simple as saying, let’s do that instead.
Sorry as I’m writing this I realise we actually have a hundred other questions to ask and no one in charge of her care really and we’re pretty lost. Has anyone had a parent on a feeding tube, is it worth pushing for or is it just something else invasive and uncomfortable?