Topic: Why does your child have the tube they have now- a highlight of the medical conditions that require tube feeding.

Kai was a great eater for the first 8 months of his life. In fact he e nursed constantly and loved solids just as much. He gained weight rapidly right from birth.

At 8 months he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, which is resting on his hypothalamus and was causing fluid and preasure to build in his head. I now believe he was nursing so often to relieve some of that preasure or because of the tumors affect on the hypothalamus.

The day after Kai was diagnosed he had surgery to place a shunt to redirect the building fluid. That is when everything changed.

After surgery he couldn’t stop vomiting for days. His appetite never really came back after that. By the time we started chemo 5 weeks later Kai had lost almost 2 pounds. 2 pounds for a 9 month old is pretty drastic.

Starting chemo only the made his appetite worse and a few months in they started talking to us about the possibility of a feeding tube.
In August 2011 he had surgery for a peg. Tomorrow we are finally switching to a button!