Brody was much more comfortable today from a pain perspective but was just all around annoyed. His 2 IVs infiltrated so his arms blew up twice their size and then he had to be restrained by 4 grown adults to get another one in his foot. He is just so irritated (and so am I) by the constant poking and prodding, vitals, meds, treatments, checkups, etc.
I feel like as soon as I start my victory dance I'm immediately slapped back into reality with a remainder of what a painstaking process this is with many twists and turns. Brody has never had a problem with food being an aspiration risk but when he was suctioned tonight we found chocolate milk in his trachea. I was devastated and lost it. He hasn't used his gtube in over a year and now we have to feed him through it in attempts to keep his airway safe from infection. I'm praying this is only due to things feeling different in there because of the stent in place (which is what his surgeon thinks) but we knew that there would be risks and setbacks that came along with such a huge step forward. Recreating a whole new airway poses a lot of problems for feeding and this is an obstacle we may face. I need to keep it in perspective but it's just so hard for me to take steps backwards.
Goal of the next 3 months of healing is to keep that airway clean, germ free and guide the scarring in the right direction so that it will hopefully have minimal impact ojibwa vocal chords for speech and swallowing.
Thank you for celebrating this surgery with us but please remember how important the many many more steps that lie ahead of us are.
I can't look too far into the future. Today is all that I can worry about right now.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment