Lina Breik

“I feel so lucky to be able to get to know [my clients] at that deeper level…!!”

Tell us a little about yourself and your story.

I'm a super passionate dietitian that has spent more than a decade of my career inside hospitals, but then when COVID hit, I lost all passion for the hospital environment. It felt too impersonal so I ventured out on my own and opened Tube Dietitian - a community based home tube feeding service for adults. We offer home visits and virtual consultations and I absolutely LOVE learning about all the tips and tricks of home tube feeding from my clients themselves when I visit them in their own homes. I feel so lucky to be able to get to know them at that deeper level and be a part of their lives in health!! Oh and what I love to do in my free time - SWIM!!

Tell us more about your new book Your Tube and why you wrote it.

Put simply, I wrote Your Tube to offload all the information I learnt in "the textbooks" about how to manage home tube feeding and put it in the consumers hands. It's so empowering to know the options you have to maximise and improve/ease life with a feeding tube and so I think it's important that this information is in the hands of the consumer NOT only the clinician. I think tube feeding is being managed in a very clinical way and I am definitely guilty of doing that throughout my hospital years but now I've realised that this approach can be very hurtful and harmful to people who are on home tube feeding lifelong. I was SO nervous excited about setting this book free into the world! It's been sitting on my laptop desktop for almost a year now. Even if one person finds value in it, that's a victory for me. I genuinely hope that the content of Your Tube empowers people to pose more questions to themselves and their care team, enhancing their tube feeding nutrition experience. 

 It's your life's mission to make tube feeding easier for families. How do families react when you tell them about the FreeArm for the first time?  

I often open the website and show them the picture of the charming man on the home page down below with both his hands up in the air FREE while the FreeArm is holding his syringe bolus feed. I love it so much. A picture speaks a thousand words. They get excited when they see it and realize they don't have to have someone hovering over them or next to them while they have their bolus feed and watch their favorite TV show. It empowers them!!

Where is your favorite place to see families using their FreeArm?

The plane!! I LOVE seeing the FreeArm clamped to a wobbly plane seat table but still deliver the feed with stability!

Anything else you would like to share or for us to know?

FreeArm is paving the way for removing the stigma of tube feeding with the beautiful photos of kiddos and adults with the FreeArm eating everywhere around the world. I love those photos so much and am so happy to see them be generated. We need more of that so that future generations can see that home tube feeding isn't something to pity. As Dr Palipana (a doctor, lawyer and disability advocate that wrote the forward in Your Tube said "For some, it's with a spoon and fork. For some, it's with their hands. For some, it's with chopsticks. For some, it's with a feeding tube".