I appreciate the response. I was worried because of the weird sensations that were coming from the stoma area and nearby in my abdomen/thorax region so I first went to an urgent care and they told me I would have to go to an ER, but I didn't want to do that so I came home and called a home nurse service that was scheduled to visit in a couple days and they sent an LVN to check me. She told me it was most likely no big deal.

I got the first tube implanted a little more than two years ago, and it just fell out one morning for no particular reason after about four months. I got a new one installed immediately but then after another few months a cat accidentally pulled it out of me while jumping off my lap. So I got a third tube inserted and then I inadvertently cut the end off of it while changing the dressing, so I had to be hospitalized again to get a new one. After a few more months I had to have that one replaced because it had apparently come out of place and caused an infection and pancreatitis and coincidentally I turned out to have a kidney stone, so it was like a "perfect storm" of abdominal pain.

I am really glad that I have been able to regain the ability to chew and swallow. I hated being anchored to the feeding pump for hours a day, and the tubes kept getting infected or clogged. There were other hassles related to my hearing loss, like I could not hear the alarm sounding on the pump if it ran out of fluid or became clogged but everyone else would hear it and get annoyed at me for letting it beep. Good riddance to Kangaroo Joey and that darn hose hanging out of my belly!

I sure hope I don't have the same kind of trouble your son had with the stoma refusing to close. The LVN told me to just apply gentle pressure to the site over the next couple days to push any scar tissue back down below the surface and says I might have a small permanent bump there but it will eventually heal over.