Basekamp Laundry Mountain

The events of the NG experiment weighed heavily on me the next day. When I spoke with the fellow, he agreed that starting slow “listening to the Momma” might have been a better idea. He told me we could try it again and run it slower or have her stick it out for 2 more days until she could try to pass a swallow the day after the stent was out. I opted to wait. She had already made it nearly a week, 2 more days would not be much longer.

By this time Trachboy had begun to feel better and was playing more actively in his crib. He was taking all fluids through his GTube or by mouth so he no longer had an IV. Sometimes I would place them together in Trachgirl’s crib so they could snuggle together or play with small toys. Fortunately we got through the next few days without incident. Trachgirl’s follow-up x-rays did not show progressive pneumonia from the aspiration and she handled the removal of the stent well.

Her swallow study the next day cleared her for nectar thick liquids and she happily took her first bottle in over a week while in my arms. Things were definitely looking up. The hospital scheduled us to leave the next day and visitors from the Dept. of Social Services & our Community Medical Alliance team spent part of the afternoon with the kids and I. It was during this visit that we learned there was a new baby and tried to wrap our head around what that might mean to us as a family.

When we headed home, Trachboy went in the car with a nurse and Nana while Trachgirl & I rode medical transport to ensure a safe trip. The joy and ear-to-ear smiles on our arrival back to the home playroom were priceless.

Within a couple days I returned to the hospital for Trachboy’s next follow-up bronk. The docs were thrilled that the repair had held. He did not require any dilation of the area in any follow-up bronk post-op.

Trachgirl was another story altogether. The ENT fellow had explained to me that the usual course post-op was that things look amazing on bronk #1, then bronk#2 is usually when they scratch their head and wonder why they put in all the effort. This was the case for Trachgirl whose airway had swollen back to the narrow pinhole she had had pre-op. With balloon dilation, they were able to open up her airway to a better size and she returned weekly for another month to continue the process of opening the subglottis. The appointments were then spread out to every two weeks and dilation continued until about 2.5 months later when they determined they had gotten the result they were going to get with her.

Several months later, my house became a home of sounds and giggles, words and some phrases. By just before their second birthday, both twins had found their voice and begun to use phrases with their signs to communicate. Since that time, communication has been mostly by voice- quieter than most young children their age, but quite a miraculous blessing considering their start.