October 6, 2007

I hardly know where to begin! It’s that old curse, “may you live in interesting times.” The adventures of the past two days may take two postings!

Well, as you know, yesterday started out rough. We went to see Dr. C___, who diagnosed Michael with “tracheaitis” which is an infection of the trachea. The humidifier failure was at worst a contributor to something that was brewing. So much for the clean bill of health on Thursday, eh? It took awhile to get the antibiotic prescription filled (another trip to the specialty pharmacy) but Michael tolerated the wait. We had noticed some redness around his G-Tube site, and a small lump for a brief time in the morning, and I had been relieved for the antibiotics because it looked like another infection was brewing there, too.

We finally made it home, he got his meds, and the nurse left. I settled down to nebulize him and feed him, while waiting for the home equipment guy (G____) to come over with some new bottles for the humidifier. Apparently the equipment failure was due to some bad bottles which should have been recalled. Our lot numbers weren’t part of the recall, but the problem was the same.

Anyway, Michael was coughing up stuff and crying out loud. I suctioned his trach and started to feed him through the tube in his stomach. The phone rang, and G____ was on the way. Michael cried louder, and started to scare me with how loud he was. I have one clear memory of telling G____ that Michael was sick and upset and panicking, and I was starting to panic too. G____ said, “don’t panic.” Then Michael coughed BIG time, so I hung up with G_____, put Michael down to suction his trach again, and somehow in the process of putting him in his crib, the tubing that attaches to the button on his stomach got caught, and HIS ENTIRE STOMACH TUBE POPPED OUT OF MICHAEL'S BELLY. OH CRAP! (That isn’t really what I said.) This thing was shaped like a pacifier, and about that size, and it came out of a hole in his stomach smaller than the nail on my little finger. Needless to say, Michael was VERY unhappy! He cried and cried. I think the tube was on the verge of coming out anyway, which is why he was upset, but this was nothing compared to my shock.

Now, I knew this was possible. They told me that in the hospital, but no one told me how to put it back in. I knew it could be done, but I was looking at this balloon, and the little hole, and decided balloon A could not fit into slot B. I now know I should have taken a syringe and deflated the balloon, but live and learn. Thankfully, someone at the hospital had told me that I needed to get a special catheter into his belly to hold the hole open, or it would close in as early as 30 minutes. I ran to the closet, where the “to go bag” of emergency medical equipment was – it was unzipped and dumped all over the floor. I found the catheter, which is like a foot long, unwrapped it, and stared at it. Which end goes in the baby? No idea. I picked the rounded end – it looked better – aimed, and pushed. It went in fairly easily, but now there is like 10-11 inches of tubing sticking straight up out of Michael. Now what? How to I get this kid into the car seat? And with all that coughing (and my shaking), how could I make it to the hospital? All of this took maybe 5 minutes. It felt like 5 hours. Anyway, after arguing with myself for half an hour (or about 2 seconds) I decided to call 911, and they sent an ambulance over.

Well, there is a word limit on these [orginal Care Page posts]. I know you want to know the whole story, so let’s make this a short series. Suffice it to way that we are all fine, and we will pick up our story next time with Michael's trip in the ambulance.