We have been teaching Sadbh baby signs over the past couple of months, and from time to time she responds. Yesterday evening I noticed that she was tapping her chest with her right hand, however neither Katie nor I could figure it out.
Around 11pm, Katie noticed on the video monitor that the nurse was working on the humidifier, and when she turned up the volume, she could hear that the humidifier was alarming, indicating that there was a malfunction.
Katie headed down to help the nurse and it was then that they realized that the humidifier had likely been malfunctioning for the past couple of days. Apparently, the humidifier was not heating the sterile water as it was meant to, and it was blowing warm dry air into Sadbh’s trach.
As a result, Sadbh’s trach and airway had become dried out, and she was under a lot of discomfort.
Katie then noticed that Sadbh was breathing quite heavily and that her airway was very raspy.
With that, she suctioned Sadbh’s trach and after the first or second pass, Sadbh coughed up a large glob of mucus that contained blood. As you can imagine, this was quite upsetting for Katie, however she remained calm and called the medical equipment company to have a replacement humidifier sent over as soon as possible.
The equipment rep arrived about an hour and a half later and despite being a qualified respiratory therapist, she did not have a clue how to operate the equipment.
It was extremely frustrating for both Katie and the nurse, however Sadbh slept soundly through the entire experience.
Within an hour, the humidifier, chamber and other necessary equipment had been changed out and Sadbh was breathing warm humid air again.
This would explain why she was so fussy throughout the day and why she was thumping her chest.
Since Katie had taken care of the night shift, I took over in the morning allowing her to get some much needed rest.
Sadbh slept great through the rest of the night and was in great spirits when she woke up in the morning. In fact, when she opened her eyes to find me standing at the end of her cot, she started waving at me with a huge smile. When I reached in to give her a good morning kiss, I first had to remove the binky from her mouth, just as I did so, she popped another binky in that she was holding in her other hand.
She’s such a character!
Our fill in day nurse, who usually works at Children’s hospital was able to work today and was excited to look after Sadbh during the day rather than nights when she often works.
Even though we only get to work with Su Jin once in a while, she typically works the night shift and only get’s to see Sadbh sleeping.
We are very fortunate to have her working with Sadbh two days this week.
Even though she has a full time job at Children’s, she is always working on ways to help us out with care coverage, and today she had arranged for two of her colleagues to come meet Sadbh and Katie and to see if they were a good fit.
Everyone hit it off well and since they both have plenty of experience with babies like Sadbh, they are both going to apply at the agency for assignments with Sadbh. Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long to get signed up as it did for Su Jin.
Needless to say, Sadbh had a much better day than yesterday and even though her airway is still a little bit raw, she is much more comfortable.
We are so lucky that we have a great night nurse, and even more grateful that Katie took charge of the situation and was able to resolve the situation before it got any worse.
All the best,
Wayne, Katie and Sadbh.
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