I realized not everyone might know what TPN is. It basically means I will be getting most to all of my nutrition through an IV, as my digestive tract seems to be working less and less. TPN is essentially life support, without it I will likely die of starvation in a few months as I can’t eat more than a few hundred calories.
There are huge risks to IV nutrition too, the worst being sepsis and liver damage. This is a treatment that could very well kill me (5 year survival is 40-60%) but without it I’d certainly wind up dead. It’s scary, but necessary.
I have a really hard time thinking myself as ‘sick.’ That’s beginning to change as my symptoms get more severe, but each new thing becomes a new normal for me. Of course when I get used to a new thing the next thing tends to show up. Case in point, I just got used to tube feeds, and now there’s daily IV infusions of nutrients around the clock.
Funny story with the tube feeds too, occasionally when I see a character stand up on TV my brain thinks, “They forgot their backpack! They’re going to pull on their tubes!” Brains are weird.
