samantha
TrachKid Profile
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Samantha was a 26 week premie. After spending three weeks in the high risk maternity ward after my water broke, she was born by c-section and not given very good chances. She was in the NICU from August 26 to December 13. Most of her problems were respiratory. She thankfully had no hemorrhages, optical, or cardiac complications. She spent most of her time there going between the ventilator to the C-PAP. and the nasal cannula. It seemed like every time we got close to bringing her home she would start backpedaling . Finally when we got to bring her home we had to bring her home on the nasal cannula. She was home for a short 8 days. That last day her oxygen stats started dropping and wouldn't come back up so we took her to Vanderbilt Childrens Hospital in Nashville. It was then that the narrowing of her airway was discovered. At first they tried to thin out her oxygen by adiing a helium mixture, which only worked for a short time. She was moved to the LCU for observation until they could get an ENT specialist to take a look at her. While she was in the ICU she couldn't be held and she kept crying to be fed and cuddled. The nurse decided to give her a sedative which we were afraid to let her have. Five minutes later she stopped breathing. When they revived her they rushed her down to emergency surgery. When the doctor took a look at her airway she gave us 3 choices, we could keep her on the ventilator with a bigger tube that could cause even more damage to her airway, we could put her on a smaller tube which runns a greater risk of asphyxiation or we could choose to have the tracheostomy performed. while we felt that it wasn't much of a choice it still felt like the hardest decision we ever made.She spent her first christmas in the NICU completely sedated with us by her side. within 2 weeks of surgery she was bottle feeding again and i never thought i could be prouder. She was discharged from the hospital on January 12. It was very overwhelming at first but with the help of friends and family we are making great strides every day.
History
- Blog
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- Member for
- 1 year 51 weeks
Location
- Country
- United States
- State/Province
- Tennessee
