DorrieDorrie

T-minus 11 hours4

So, tomorrow morning we’re headed home. I guess it goes without saying that I’m looking forward to it. While on the one hand it means that we’re back to doing all of her care, back to sleeping in shifts, and back to the rigmarole of packing her and 60 pounds of gear into the car every time we have to take her anywhere (which will happen about once every week or so for a while, I have no doubt), I have a feeling that she’s going to do a lot better this time around. For one thing, we’re out of the cold and flu season, so hopefully keeping her healthy will be easier. For another, we no longer have to live in terror that she’s going to go into a death spell from having a tiny bit of reflux, if the number of times she’s thrown up while laying on her back here in the hospital without problem is any indication.

Mind you, I’m not quite as excited about the new equipment we’re going home with. The vent itself isn’t that awful, but it’s definitely bulky — it’s about the size of a laser disc player, I would say. But with any luck, we won’t actually need it for that long — once Dorrie’s pressure need comes down further, we can try her out with just a trach collar, at which point we’re more or less back where we were before as far as equipment is concerned.

Speaking of the trach, while on the one hand the extra care is a nuisance, I do still feel that it will be worth it to be able to do things with Dorrie that we were afraid to do before. She can try out her little chair swing, she can spend time sitting up in her Boppy, we can let her enjoy her tubby time more… except for the fairly heavy plastic tubing connecting her to the vent, we can pretty much start doing more normal baby things with her. Definitely worth the few minutes per day it’ll take to wash her neck and change her trach ties, and occasionally change and clean the trachs themselves.

Of course, there is still the drive home to contend with. We had a dry run yesterday of getting her and all of her equipment down to the car and put in, so we know everything fits, as well as what is involved in getting it there. The only thing we didn’t get a chance to do was try her out in her car seat again, to see if she would tolerate the ride. However, she has tolerated sitting up for long periods since we got here (the OT had her sitting in a foam chair much like a car seat, and she liked it so much she slept in it for much of the afternoon), so I don’t expect any problems.

Posted by dad, under moving forward... or not