Saturday, December 31, 2011

Sadbh’s update – day 263 December 30, 2011


Sadbh had her most restless nights sleep on Thursday night and Katie spent most of the night taking care of her.
She had to be suctioned a number of times throughout the night and morning, and eventually Katie brought her into our bed.

Later in the morning, she got to Skype with my folks back in Cork and afterwards, we headed out to take care of some errands.

Sadbh has learned how kiss and also how to spit.
The evening before, as I headed out to meet some friends for dinner, I tried to give her a kiss, however she wasn’t having any of it. I then gave Katie a kiss, and immediately Sadbh wanted to copy it and reached out to give me a kiss.

With the good, comes the not so good. We discovered that if she drinks too much water, rather than drinking it down, she wants to spit it out. It’s actually quite funny, despite most of it dribbling down her trach and shirt.

Our friend Neil came over for dinner this evening, however Sadbh was extremely exhausted so she didn’t get to spend much time hanging out.

Katie and I had to make a tough decision regarding one of our nurses and decided to let her go.
This particular nurse worked the night shift on Sunday, and the day shift on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
We had already cancelled the Sunday night shift a couple of weeks ago since this nurse was not good at keeping Sadbh asleep and Katie ended up spending most of the night downstairs with her.
Since my father is back in Ireland, and with Peggy filling in, certain things have come to light.
My father is fantastic with Sadbh, and takes care of everything with Sadbh, and acts as her primary care giver when working with the nurse.
While Peggy was taking care of Sadbh, this nurse revealed quite a few incompetencies and reaffirmed our decision.
We had been going back and forth for the last few months on this nurse and since the agency had failed on providing us with adequate coverage, we felt that we simply had to deal with what we have. We were very confident that since my father could be trusted to take care of the situation, and that through time, the nurse might learn more about Sadbh and how to deal with her.
However, the one question that we kept coming back to was, could we trust this nurse if Sadbh had an emergency situation. And since the answer was no, it was time to let this nurse go.

The hope now is that, since the agency is now making less money from us for health care coverage, that they might actually make an effort to find a couple of good nurses to back fill these shifts.

On the positive side, the nurse that works with Sadbh once or twice a month, is trying to recruit a couple of her colleagues to sign up with the agency and to help out with Sadbh’s coverage.



All the best and Happy New Year!!

Wayne, Katie and Sadbh.

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