Timmy makes trouble!

As a lot of you know, Timmy has a habit of taking his medical care into his own hands and causing all sorts of chaos. When he was intubated (pre-trach) and had a critical airway after his first surgery, the doctors began talking about the possibility of extubating him (pulling out his breathing tube). That night Timmy decided he was done with the breathing tube and managed to work his breathing tube out. (That didn't go so well and he was back on the ventilator a few days later.)

For awhile now, they've been talking about the need to downsize Timmy's G-tube. It's so big that it's actually sucking part of his stomach up into it. Well, several nights ago Timmy apparently got fed up waiting for them to decide what to do, and he yanked his G-tube out. No harm done in the end, but when they put a new one in, they put a smaller size in! (This new one has been a constant pain, though, as the drain is always coming off, resulting in gastric secretions everywhere...yummy...)


So Timmy's latest escapade involved the suctioning adapter on his trach. The suctioning adapter is essentially a little piece of plastic that attaches to his trach (between the trach and ventilator tubing). It has a little flip-open cap that you can open up to stick a suction catheter down to suction out his airway secretions. When Timmy came back from the OR last Friday, the suction catheter was missing (the vent tubing was attached directly to the trach). So they tracked down a new one, but apparently the hospital had just switched to a new brand. They put that one on and we used it for a day or two. Then a couple of nights ago, apparently somehow a little piece of plastic broke off the adapter and went down his trach tube. This was potentially an extremely dangerous situation, but thankfully they got the plastic out and Timmy is fine.

The end result of Timmy's most recent adventure? The hospital pulled the trach adapters from all the kids in the hospital. And now apparently the company that made the adapter is issuing a country-wide recall. All due to Timmy. :)

(I don't mean to make light of what could have been a potentially very serious situation. But thankfully the flaw in the adapters was found before anyone was seriously hurt. Unfortunately, though, that means that for now you have to pop off the vent tubing in order to suction Timmy. That's fine for Timmy since he does really well off the vent, but for the kids who are much more vent dependent it's a more difficult situation. I talked with the respiratory therapist today about getting a different type of suction set up for Timmy--an in-line suction catheter, which is what we used in Columbus. Hopefully we'll have that ready to go later today.)

--Timmy is up to 7lbs, 15.6 oz today! He's now nearly 16 weeks old, and it's exactly two months past his due date. He's finally starting to fit into 0-3 month clothes. He's reaching for things more often and loves interacting with people.

(Mortimer is taking a brief hiatus from posting, so he asked me to step in with an update.)