Liv Rose has been struggling with stomach pain since she was a child and was eventually diagnosed with gastroparesis - when food passes through the stomach slower than it should.
Credit: SWNS
Credit: SWNS
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00:00I don't have to eat or drink and I haven't for the past seven years now.
00:04My name is Liv and I'm fed through this tube that goes into my heart.
00:09I get all my nutrition and all my hydration intravenously.
00:13This is called TPN and it does that to completely bypass my GI tract.
00:19My stomach is paralysed and none of my digestive system works as it should.
00:24This means I can't digest food and it ends up making me very sick and causes me a lot of pain.
00:30I therefore get everything I need through this tube and it means that I can be alive without taking anything orally.
00:38I was wondering if anybody had any questions because I know this is quite an unusual thing.
00:43It can be about my tube, it can be about my condition, it can be about what it's like not eating or drinking anything.
00:51Please feel free to drop some questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer them for you.
00:56Hi sunshines! My name is Liv. I've got a paralysed stomach which means I'm fed through this tube that goes into my heart.
01:04I'm going to explain a bit about how it works.
01:07Deceivingly, it sounds like the heart is doing all the hard work but there's actually an unsung hero you'll hear about in a little bit.
01:16The heart actually doesn't do all that much.
01:19The line just needs to be in a big vein like a proper thick with several C's chunky vein so that the line can stay in long term.
01:30One of the best veins is the ones that feed into the heart. These are your central veins.
01:35The line goes into the heart like the tip of the line is in the tip of the heart so it's in a big vein and it can stay in long term and withstand the feed.
01:47All the heart does is pump the feed or the fluid whatever is going down there, it pumps it through the bloodstream.
01:55The bloodstream then carries everything to the unsung hero which is the liver.
02:02The liver does all the hard work.
02:05My GI tract literally tapped out and was like you're on your own sis, we're leaving you to it, survive without us.
02:13My liver now does the job of what my GI tract should be doing.
02:18It processes all the nutrients that go through my bloodstream and then it pushes any waste to the kidneys and then it comes out of your body.
02:29It's the bloodstream that is used to feed me and the liver does the majority if not all of the processing of that.
02:39I hope that makes sense and I hope you understand a bit more now about how it works.
02:44So I'm just popping back in to say this is called intravenous feeding.
02:48Intravenous means through the bloodstream and sometimes you'll hear it abbreviated to IV.
02:54Hi sunshines, my name is Liv. I've got a paralysed stomach meaning I can't eat or drink anything.
03:01I get everything through this tube that goes into my heart and a lot of people wonder what happens in terms of thirst.
03:08So when I'm thirsty, the same way as you will have a drink, I will also have a drink but I drink through my heart instead.
03:15A bit extra, I know. I'm on fluids today actually so this is what it looks like.
03:21I personally don't take sips. One, because I can't tolerate anything in my stomach, it will make me sick.
03:30Two, if I just swill my mouth out, I get the urge to down it, like down water, so zero self-control, not great.
03:40When I do get a dry mouth, I have IV fluids and even though they go in through the bloodstream, they do wet my mouth and throat.
03:48If I'm really dry, I can use artificial saliva to help with that dryness but I find fluids very effective.
03:56But it was 17 when I stopped being able to eat. I got my first feeding tube when I was 18.
04:02It was an NJ tube so it went up my nose and into my intestines and I was fed that way for about 9 months and then I ended up starting TPN.
04:14So TPN is the name of the feed that goes down this line and I started that a few weeks before my 19th birthday and I've been on that ever since.
04:26For more information visit www.FEMA.gov
04:56For more information visit www.FEMA.gov