Progress?

Abby had an appointment with her ENT last Thursday. We got some more information about what needs to be done in order for Abby to be decannulated and her ENT wants to continue to move forward with these steps. He wanted to have this done during her admission next week, but it couldn't be scheduled that quickly. So on December 29th, Abby will be admitted for a sleep study in which her trach will be capped overnight. The following day, she will have an ML&B done to look at her airway and make sure that the swelling from the new tissue has gone down enough so that it doesn't block her airway while asleep. Following the bronchoscopy, she will then be capped for 48 hours while in the hospital. If all goes well, then she should be able to be decannulated. The catch is that it takes four weeks to get the results of the sleep study, so she doesn't have an appointment scheduled until March, so I can't get my hopes up about decannulation happening before then.

In the meantime, we are to cap Abby during all waking hours. In previous attempts to cap, her body has handled it just fine, but she really didn't like it and would scream, yell, etc. any time she had it on. Thankfully, she has done very well with the cap so far. She yells about it at various times during the day, but it's not much.

I'm allowing myself to dream about what life without a trach will be like again. It will be so nice to be able to leave Abby with someone other than Leonard and me. We could leave the house with just a diaper bag and feed bag, not the huge suction machine and trach-to-go bag. We could put Abby back in her own bed. It would be nice.