Adjusting

Caydene had her first trach change yesterday morning. Everything went really well. They took the sutures out and took the trach out and put a new one back in. The stoma looks like it is healing the way it should, still a little red and oozy but from what we are told it looks normal for still being fresh. Caydence did so good with the change, she didn't fight it or anything, she just kinda laid there looking at everyone around her. Now that it isn't sutured in anymore we have to be really careful with her until everything heals all the way. Eric and I have already been doing most of her care, but now we really have to do everything. We will be learning more next week on how to care for her trach and everything that goes along with it. We have already been suctioning her and last night after we gave her a good bath we changed the trach tie around her neck. It was a little nerve racking being our first time but it really wasn't hard. It really is a 2 person job though. One person has to hold the actual trach in place while the other puts the collar on and attaches it. I know that the more we do everything the easier it will be for us. Overall Caydence is doing pretty good. You can tell she is feeling better and getting back to her normal self. The first couple days after surgery were really rough, she was in so much pain and just really mad, her sats kept dropping all day and they had to bag her to get her back up. That second day we were really regretting putting her through all of this, but now I think we feel a little better about it. It is still really crazy to see and to think about her having a hole in her neck with a tube coming out of it. It's going to take a lot to fully adjust to all of this but we will. We still have a lot to learn before we will be ready to take her home. That is kinda the point of going to CRC. There we will learn how to handle emergency situations and just everything we really need to know. It kinda makes me sad thinking that we are going to leave this hospital probably within a couple weeks to go to CRC. We know this place so well and all the doctors and nurses here. Going to CRC will be difficult because we have to get to know everyone that will be caring for Caydence. It took us a really long time to be able to put our trust in these nurses here, so going somewhere completely new will be hard. Hopefully we wont end up having to be at CRC very long. We were told that the nursing company we are using has already started recruiting so we just hope they find us some good nurses and we can go home. I hate the not knowing what comes next, I am driving myself crazy with all the "what ifs". If they get us nursing fast then great, we can go home, but if it takes them a long time to find people then we are stuck. I don't know what I'm going to do if we can't go home soon. I can't believe it is already time for me to start going back to work. I go back Monday and I'm freaking out. This is the time we are supposed to be learning as much as possible about caring for Caydence and making sure we are ready to go home with her as soon as nursing becomes available. How am I supposed to be learning and really focusing on all of this when I will be gone for days at a time. I don't know how I am going to handle going back at such an important time. I guess I'll find out soon enough though.

Caydence loves her Daddy!!