Pray For Non-Healing

I know I have not blogged in like, well, forever almost. I made a personal determination not to blog again until I cleared off all the old picture files I have on my computer that are really slowing it down. Well, between a family death, two birthday parties, a minor surgery, and four trips this summer, it just hasn’t happened. So, my new determination is to not post new pictures to my blog until I clear off the old ones. That will happen soon, I hope. : )

So here’s what’s the most recent thing going on with Lizzie. The ENT doctor would like to de-canulate Lizzie. In laymen’s terms, take her trach out permanently. WOO-HOO! HOWEVER, several things will have to fall into place before this could potentially happen on September 21st, or we will have to wait a full year to start the process over again. (They will not de-canulate during cold and flu season.) Number one, we have to find out if she still needs to sleep at night with a bi-pap machine for a form of sleep apnea. Number two, if she still needs it, can she tolerate a bi-pap facemask. She currently sleeps with the bi-pap connected directly to her trach, no mask needed. This means we will need one if not two overnight sleep studies to determine all this. I loath sleep studies. We’ve had several the past two years, and they are nothing short of torture for child and parent. A necessary evil I guess.

If it is determined she still needs bi-pap, the trick is how to get her used to a mask between now and the 21st of September. Bi-pap masks suction hard to your face in order to function properly, and to ask a two-year-old to suddenly accept that is near impossible. I don’t think we could just one night suddenly strap in on her head and expect her to be all right, but on the other hand, if we show it to her and play with it too much ahead of time and she doesn’t like it, she may see it coming and never learn to tolerate it. And, we can’t practice a few hours at night and take it off and switch back to the tube connected to her trach, that might confuse a sleeping brain and potentially cause her to stop breathing altogether. AHHH! Please pray for wisdom and insight for our good but very big dilemma.

Now here’s the other part. If we are able to get the trach out, we will go overnight to the hospital for the big event. The doctor will place a special bandage over the whole in her neck and will give it three months to heal up on its own. If it heals on it’s own during that time it will leave an ugly scar on her throat, and Medicaid, Lizzie’s secondary insurance, will not pay for plastic surgery to make it look pretty. If the hole does not heal on its own at the end of the three months, the doctor will do a surgery to close it, and while he’s at it, he can make it look pretty. Go figure. So, for this reason among everything else, we are praying for non-healing. : )