I am in desperate need of advice
My dad has cancer and he’ll be going through treatment which will cause him to need a feeding tube. I took him to get his feeding tube put in Wednesday, so 4 days ago now. We were told it would be mild pain and that activity was encouraged. They showed us how to flush it and do the feeds and gave him 10mg of OxyContin every 6 hours for 7 days. They told us cleaning it with unscented soap in the shower would be ok. We were told severe abdominal pain, redness/swelling around the tube weren’t normal.
I see everyone saying PEG, J, GJ, etc. I have no idea which one he has but it’s in his stomach and it’s a long dangling tube. He keeps it taped to the side.
He’s had severe abdominal pain with the tube, and the area around it is red and swollen. He can hardly get up and has mostly stayed in one spot since his procedure. He’s not sleeping as he can’t get comfortable. I’ve never seen him like this.
Since we were told severe abdominal pain/redness and swelling around the tube weren’t normal I took him to the ER. They did bloodwork and a scan of his stomach and said that it was normal postoperative pain and his stomach was just healing from the procedure. His nurse still says “that’s funny, no one’s ever told me they’ve had pain like his.”
His OxyContin isn’t really touching the pain and certainly doesn’t last for the full 6 hours. I got off the phone with his doctor a few minutes ago and she told me there was “nothing stronger they could give him” which was a lie. I asked if they could at least refill the OxyContin because in a couple days it’ll be gone and he’s still in so much pain, to which she replied no.
I’m at a loss with him in so much pain, what can we do? The doctors haven’t been much help honestly, they say it shouldn’t be this bad. They gave him morphine in the ER as well which he said only made him feel bad, it didn’t help with pain either.
I’ve had OxyContin when I got all four wisdom teeth out and I was given morphine once for an injury, I can agree with him that neither of them touched my pain. I guess doctors don’t really know what helps with pain because most of them haven’t actually been in pain and taken these drugs.
Other than the severe pain he’s in, how can we clean it if he can’t get up to shower? And what do we put on it? I thought maybe they’d show us post op or at least in the ER but they didn’t. Any advice is appreciated!