May
2008
Home again1
So we are home again and have been since Tuesday. Cross fingers, but so far things are going as well as can be expected. Our new daytime nurse seems okay, though I don’t think she quite realizes that having her here is not precisely a relief. We have her here because it is safer for Dorrie if there are always at least two people in the house with her. (Occasionally we do not follow this rule and people will pop out to the store leaving just one person with Dorrie, but 98% of the time there are always two people here.) But having another person, a stranger, in here with me all day every day is incredibly stressful.
Most people get to go to the hospital, have their baby, and in a day or two bring them home and then start raising them as they see fit. There are occasional checkups, but for the most part they are unsupervised and experience little interference with what they’re trying to do. We’ve had none of that. 8 months of Dorrie’s life has been spent in the hospital with a veritable army of doctors and nurses telling us how much she could eat, what she could wear, when she could have a bath, when we could hold her and so forth. Being at home gets us away from that, but not entirely, because, you see, we still have this person here.
It is always a relief when she leaves. I can spend time with Dorrie without feeling like I have to keep an eye on the nurse or find things for her to do.
Today we did our first trach change at home; it was quite scary, because for some reason we had a lot more blood during the change than I’ve ever seen before. The new trach also did not go in very easily, and I hate feeling like I’m shoving it in. I’m afraid I’m going to puncture something. (And for us, this is not just a worry out of the blue. The ICN people managed to perforate her esophagus right when she was born trying to put a tube into it.)
Dr. Optimist came down in the morning for a home visit, which was nice. It’s possible to get Dorrie and all of her gear into the car, but it is neither simple nor fun, so having the doctor come to us was a big plus. She brought with her the trach tube we later used for the change — we had come home with a trach we thought belonged to her, until on Wed the hospital called us in a tizzy because no, this one was not Dorrie’s, it belonged to L., another long term ICN resident (a July baby like Dorrie). This was not the first time their trach tubes had gotten mixed up, but it was really worrisome that it happened more than once even after everyone was aware of the fact that they were so easily confused.
The outpatient nurse will come down once she is back from vacation (she was unable to come home with us because of that, but we didn’t really want to wait until May 12th to leave the hospital) and then probably she and Dr. Optimist will visit again later in the month. Then we will have to go back up to CHaD for some followup appointments in June and see everyone and their uncle. They’ve been in communication with Dorrie’s ped, but I’m assuming we’re going to have to go and visit him at some point.
Yip Skip!
(May 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 PM)