Hello - Thank you for reading this.
I hope you are someone who is either being fed via a PEG or a carer for someone who is being fed by a PEG, but if you are not, that is fine too.
I care for my Mum who is PEG fed but she is also aphasiac and so she cannot verbalise what she wants to say/communicate. This makes things a little difficult at times and so I now turn to this forum which has always been helpful and hope that I may get some answers that might help me to help my Mum.
When being fed via a PEG, how do you know you are full?
This is something that is bothering me right now because my Mum has always been PEG fed and her “meals” are based on a dieticians analysis of her dietary needs. Unlike me, Mum cannot choose when and how she wants to eat. She gets what she gets and that is pretty much on a schedule.
Recently, I have noticed, during her feed (which can last anything from 1 hour to 2 hours) she starts “talking”. This is an indicator that something is likely bothering her and usually we can attend to her and figure out what that might be. Unfortunately here we have hit a brick wall 
We think it might be that she is getting bloated (which does happen and we have things in place to try and manage that). Having monitored the meals and the pattern of her “talking” it seems that it is maybe more than bloating.
One thing I am now speculating on is that she is full and does not want any more food and so she is saying “stop the feed I don’t need any more.”
On a couple of occasions when things got really bad i.e. she was clearly in a lot of distress, I did stop the feed and that seemed to help but I cannot categorically say what the cause was and whether the solution solved the real problem.
I am therefore asking if you know whether a person who is PEG fed would know they are full and so not want any more food. Is this what my Mum is doing - asking me to stop her feed?
I have spoken with her dietician about reducing her calories but the dietician is not agreeing as she says Mum gets her dietary needs from the meals that have been designed for her and as she takes no supplements she might get an imbalance of her vitamins and minerals.
When she is “force fed” she can get very distressed and the family (her carers) can then get more distressed - Catch 22.
So the question:
Does a person who is PEG fed know they are full and hence would stop the feed or ask for the feed to be stopped?
Sadly as I write this, I am hearing my Mum and she might be saying just that to me, but I am obliged as her carer to continue the feed until it is finished
Thank you in anticipation.
Namaste|
