Forty five thousand Australians eat without using their mouth, thanks to tube feeding.
This week marked Feeding Tube Awareness Week which aims to bring light to the thousands of Australians using tube feeding to save their lives.
Lambton resident Kathryn Lean, 35, developed an illness that stopped allowing her to consume food, forcing her to depend on tube feeding in 2018.
While it wasn't an easy transition to make, she said tube feeding saved her life.
"It is not a treatment but it allows me to have nourishment so that I can actually live my life," she said.
"Prior to tube feeding I was struggling with study, I barely left the house, I just couldn't do anything.
"Even though it doesn't fix the condition that I have it allows me to live my life alongside the condition, which has been the biggest benefit to me."
Supporting Children with Complex Feeding Difficulties study group co-ordinator Doctor Chris Elliot said their are many misconceptions around tube feeding.
"For some tube feeding can be life-enabling, not just life-saving," he said.
"It can simply be one part of living a full and healthy life."
Because Ms Lean had used feeding tubes when she was younger the transition was manageable, but it was still a learning curve.
"You have to learn a whole new routine," she said.
"You have learn how to use the pump, how to care for it, because if you don't care for it properly they can break and clog which causes more problems."
Her feeding tube requires 15 to 20 minutes of setting up each night and morning, so that it can give her the nutrition she needs overnight, and necessary fluids during the day.
Melanie Dimmitt knows the impacts of tube feeding after administering it each day for her young son Arlo.
She launched 'The Blend Magazine' last week to inform, comfort and inspire individuals and families who are tube-feeding.
"When the G-tube was inserted, Arlo's diet changed from his regular breakfast, lunch and dinner to six bottles of commercial formula," she said.
"Getting tube feeding right can take a bit of trial and error and a lot of trusting your gut, but with the help of our dietitian, we've rejigged Arlo's meals to get his calories up and he is back to his sparkling self."
According to Dr Elliot, the initial transition period from a regular diet to tube feeding is the hardest.
"Our qualitative research, based on people's experience, shows that the first four days to four weeks are the hardest time," he said.
"It does get better and the really hard, dark days at the beginning give way to competence, confidence and knowledge."
