Timmy's Set-Up

Our family has been blessed with meals brought by several wonderful people--some of them we already knew, and some of them were complete strangers to us. Thank you, thank you, thank you! It is hard for this moose to explain how much it helped us to survive when we did not have to worry about cooking or making big grocery store trips. It was also wonderful for Timmy to have visitors. He loves meeting new people, and sometimes he gets bored during the day with just his mommy and me to entertain him. (While I am on the subject, several people have asked if it is okay to visit. We love visitors! We just ask that you let us know before you come and that you please not visit if you are sick or have a cold.)


It seems that one of the things our visitors have been most interested in (besides meeting myself and Timmy) is Timmy's set-up. So this moose thought it might be a good idea to show all of my fans what we have done to get Timmy through his day.


Timmy sleeps in his mommy and daddy's room at night. The machine in the upper right corner is the air compressor that provides mist (through the blue tube) for Timmy to breathe. His feeding bag hangs from an IV pole, and the white machine at the bottom of the picture is his pulse ox--it alarms and tells us if Timmy's heart rate or oxygen levels get too low. To the left of his air compressor is a little caddy that holds suction catheters, saline bullets, and other supplies. Usually the suction machine sits behind that caddy at night, but since this picture was taken during Timmy's nap, the suction machine is on the floor (but really hard to see).



This is a close-up of one of our supply caddies. Meijer was kind enough to sell a caddy that is perfect for holding trach supplies! In two of the front compartments, we keep suction catheter kits (each one holds three kits perfectly). Next to that is a compartment full of saline bullets and HMEs (the things that attach to Timmy's trach). There are two long compartments in the back that are perfect for holding diapers and wipes. Since most of Timmy's supplies are in his room, we have two of these caddies (one for the living room and one for Timmy's parents' room). If we stock these caddies several times during the day, we do not have to spend all our time running around looking for suction catheters!




Timmy has to share his room with his mommy's study. This is his half. He has only used his crib a couple of times for naps, but if we ever get night nursing, he will sleep in his crib at night. (We make him sleep in his crib for naps once in awhile so that he will get used to it.) We do not use the changing table for his diapers, but it works really well to do trach and g-tube care! We also keep all of Timmy's diapers and covers in the shelves of the changing table. And yes, Timmy has two mobiles. The first one his mommy and daddy bought for his hospital room in Columbus. But then the NICU in Cincinnati had a mobile in his hospital room already. Because he got some nasty infections in Cincinnati, they were not allowed to use his mobile for any other babies, so they told his mommy and daddy to take it home or throw it away. We kept it! Timmy's emergency bag always sits on the floor between his changing table and crib--if we always leave it in the same place, it will not be hard to find in an emergency! And the elephant on the wall serves two purposes. When we are doing Timmy's trach care, we take the elephant off the wall and use its hook to hang his feeding bag!





These white drawers hold a lot of Timmy's medical supplies. This moose suggested buying drawers like these to Timmy's mommy and daddy, and they think it was one of the smartest things they ever did!





Here are the rest of Timmy's drawers. Some of them hold more medical supplies, and the rest hold baby things like clothes and blankets.




This is the wall above the second set of drawers. On this dry erase board we keep track of everything we have to do for Timmy. Some things have to be done twice a day, some once a day, some MWF, some TF, some every 10 days, some every two weeks, and some once a month. This is where we keep track of everything! On this wall we also keep all of the phone numbers, emergency contact information, medication list, feeding plan, and "Timmy in a nutshell". This last one is a paper that gives the most important information about Timmy in case an emergency happens where Timmy's mommy and daddy are incapacitated and someone else has to know stuff like whether or not Timmy can be ventilated from his upper airway (he can!).





Behind a chair in the living room is where we keep all of the supplies that do not fit in Timmy's drawers. Most of these boxes hold extra suction catheters. The white box is Q-tips! Timmy's mommy and daddy use lots of Q-tips. (They figured out that they go through a minimum of 1,080 Q-tips a month.) Because the supply company does not provide Q-tips, they went on Amazon and bought a big box of 10,000 Q-tips. Now we do not have to worry about running out!




After a few weeks of being home, Timmy's mommy and daddy got tired of trying to figure out what to do with his feeding bag and pump. So they bought these nifty hooks and put them up all over the apartment. Now almost anywhere in the apartment where Timmy is, there is a handy dandy hook to hang his stuff from! We love portable babies!





Timmy has lots of paperwork. And there is not enough room for all of it in his mommy and daddy's file drawers. So the file box holds some of the most important paperwork. And the blue expanding file holds the most-most important paperwork. Timmy's mommy and daddy have figured out that hospitals and doctors' offices are not always good about transferring paperwork from one place to another. So now they insist on having copies of all the most important stuff, and bring it with them to every single appointment. They also have two notebooks where they have written down everything that has happened to Timmy. This way when a doctor asks a crazy question like "What was the reason Timmy was reintubated back in October?" they can look it up and give an answer!






Some of the parts of Timmy's medical equipment have to be cleaned fairly frequently. Most of them we disinfect with distilled water and vinegar. Here is a picture of some of the parts drying. In the pot is not a yummy concoction for this moose to eat. Instead, Timmy's mommy was boiling some of Timmy's old trachs so that they can have some spares in case of an emergency.





And when we say we go through gallons and gallons of distilled water and vinegar, we mean it! Hmmm...it looks like we are running low on vinegar. This moose better get his heels clicking and run on over to the store to pick up some more.





And last but not least, Timmy and I have a new big brother! This is Derek the Moose. Some of Daddy's friends at his work got Derek for Timmy and I to play with. He is lots of fun, but he scared us one day when we came home and it was dark--we thought someone was
sitting on our couch!