Life doesn't stop
at the end of a feeding line.

My journey into life on artificial nutrition did not happen overnight. It came after years of health problems and far too many operations. Then, on Christmas Day 2017 of all days, I found that I could no longer swallow my food. What should have been a day around the table with family became the moment everything changed.

In 2018 I had an emergency Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, and that was the true beginning of my life on artificial nutrition. It started with a jejunostomy tube, a soft tube fed through the wall of my abdomen and directly into my small intestine. For a while it did its job, but by 2020 it was causing me too much discomfort and I was steadily losing weight. So I moved onto a Hickman line, a central line that sits in a vein near the heart, and that is how I am fed to this day.

I will be honest about what that means, because pretending otherwise helps no one. This has never been an easy journey, and not only for me. It affects my whole family. Food is one of the most social and ordinary things we do. We build our celebrations, our comfort and our everyday routines around it. When you can no longer take part in that, the loss runs far deeper than the meal itself.

When I first came to terms with all of this, back in 2022, one thing hit me harder than almost anything else. There was next to no mental health support for people living without food, and none at all for the families trying to cope alongside them. I had been left to work it out on my own, and I decided that no one else should have to.

That is the gap I have set out to close, and it is the whole reason TPN Explorer exists. My aim is simple to say, even if it is not simple to do. To offer real, human support to fellow tubies and their families. To build a community hub, so there is always someone local to turn to. To arrange meetings and day trips, so no one feels shut away. To raise awareness of the daily reality of life on artificial nutrition. And to fight for better understanding from the professionals whose care we depend on.

I am living proof that this life does not have to be a small one. And I want every tubie who finds this page to believe the very same about theirs.

People often ask me what a normal day actually looks like, so here it is, without the gloss. I feed for twelve hours a day, five days a week. I am what is known as a day feeder, which means my feed runs through the daytime rather than overnight while I sleep.

The honest downside is the planning. Your whole day, and to a large extent your whole life, gets built around your feed times. Something as simple as getting away for a night or two, which most people never think twice about, takes real organisation and can be a genuine struggle. The feed, the pump and the routine all have to come with me.

And I will not pretend that I take it in my stride every single day. Some days I simply do not want to do it. Some days it feels like a weight I could do without. But it is the thing that keeps me here and keeps me going, so I get on with it, and I hold on tight to the days that are good.

This is the part that people do not talk about enough, so I am going to.

For my first three years on artificial nutrition, I found it almost impossible to accept. I went to a very dark place, somewhere I would not wish on anyone. There were times when I did not want to be here any more. It reached the point where I went on hunger strike and refused my feed altogether, because it truly felt like no one was listening, and there was no one there to support me or my family through it.

I came out the other side, but I have never forgotten how alone it felt, and I never want to. That feeling is the reason behind everything I do now. Living on artificial nutrition takes a toll that does not show on the outside. The grief of losing something as simple as eating. The isolation of a body that runs on its own schedule. The low days that can creep up even when everything else is going well.

So if you are a tubie, or you love one, and you are sitting in that dark place right now, please hear this. You are not on your own. It is okay to not be okay about it. Talking about it honestly, and finding other people who simply get it without you having to explain, is what helped me more than anything else ever has. If that is all you take from this page, then it is enough.