People hear the phrase feeding tube and imagine nutrition, support, recovery — something clinical and straightforward. A medical solution. A helping hand.
What they don’t imagine is hunger.
Yet being RIG-fed is, in many ways, the real Hunger Games.
It certainly isn’t cinematic but it is dramatic and sometimes traumatic.
A RIG tube keeps you alive. That part matters enormously, it is literally a lifeline. It delivers calories, nutrients, survival itself through a carefully measured system of bags, syringes, connectors, and schedules. It is modern medicine doing remarkable work.
And yet, hunger remains.
Being RIG-fed is hard work in ways people rarely understand. You are not eating; you are filling – and filling means volume. Liquid nutrition arrives steadily, measured and necessary, but volume behaves differently from food. Your stomach expands. You feel physically full, sometimes uncomfortably so. Bloated. Heavy. As though there is no room left for anything else.
And yet, hunger remains.
It is entirely possible to be medically nourished, physically full, and still hungry at the same time.
The body receives calories, but the brain recognises the absence of eating. There is no chewing, no texture, no gradual satisfaction that signals completion. Fullness arrives without fulfilment.
It is a strange contradiction: your stomach says enough, while your mind says something is missing.
Liquid bypasses many of the rituals that tell us we have eaten – the smells, the anticipation, the slowing down, the sensory cues that close the loop between hunger and satisfaction. Instead, nutrition becomes mechanical, necessary, functional, and life-sustaining – but detached from instinct.
Truth be known, I hate living like this. You live in an unusual state of being: physically full yet hungry, sustained but unsatisfied. I’m grateful for the feed but I long for the experience it replaces.
That tension is part of the unseen labour of tube feeding – a daily negotiation between survival and sensation.
The body receives nutrition, yet the brain remembers eating. It remembers texture, warmth, routine, smell, spontaneity.
Eating is not only fuel; it is participation in normal life. When food arrives through a tube instead of a plate, something deeply human feels paused.
Meals continue around you while your ‘feed’ hangs from a stand.
Others sit, chat, reach, taste, and choose. You measure millilitres. You flush lines. You calculate timings. You plan movement around feeds because you are tethered.
It is survival, but it is also negotiation.
Every day becomes a quiet contest between patience and frustration. Feeding takes time – long stretches where life slows whether you want it to or not.
What I have found is that my mobility is massively restricted compared to my life before the RIG tube and so my spontaneity has disappeared. Even simple acts require planning: walking, leaving the house and sleeping.
You don’t just eat differently. You live differently. It is also actually really hard to put on much weight being tube fed. You have to work hard to get food down the tube and what does go down is just volume and so you feel bloated.
And then there is the emotional side.
Food is social glue, comfort and celebration. When eating changes, your relationship with the world changes too. You attend meals but do not quite join them. You are present but operating under different rules.
It can feel like watching life from the side-lines while still being grateful to remain in the game at all.
That contradiction is the hardest part. I’m damn grateful to be here but I’d rather not have the tubing into my stomach and having to live like this.
Gratitude and frustration coexist. Relief and loss sit side by side. You are thankful for the technology keeping you going, while quietly mourning the simplicity of something once effortless.
This is the real Hunger Games: learning to adapt without surrendering hope.
Survival here is not passive. It requires problem-solving, resilience, humour, and constant adjustment. You learn new routines. You experiment with hybrid approaches. You celebrate small victories – improved digestion, a little more energy, a blended meal tolerated well, a moment that feels closer to normal.
Progress becomes measured not in leaps but in tolerances.
And slowly, something shifts.
You realise survival is not just about receiving nutrition; it is about preserving identity. About remaining yourself even when circumstances rewrite daily life. About refusing to let medical equipment define the whole story.
The tube feeds the body.
But mindset feeds the person.
So yes, being RIG-fed is the real Hunger Games. It demands endurance, adaptation, and quiet courage every single day.
Enjoyed reading this? Please consider donating to my GoFundMe and help support me through my own cancer journey: https://gofund.me/2a6d5199