ChloeWatts.com

Friday, July 16, 2010

July 16th, 2010 Posted in Daily News Post

My apologies to those of you who want more. Chloe has been doing so well that I have been lax on getting the blogs out. However, Dana tells me that many of you are getting in touch with her and asking for a blog two to three times a week. That will be my new goal.

BTW… if you are trying to get in touch with Dana over the next few days, good luck. Her phone AND her internet are down until Tuesday sometime. She had Qwest there all morning and still doesn’t have a working system. She has emergency phone service only. You can always get in touch with her through my phone, email or the contact page on this blog.

Chloe continues to rock the medical world. We are going to be changing the trach on the 17th, to a smaller size and Cuffless Trach. Steve and Dr. C. both believe she is swallowing secretions overnight and some during the day. That means she is on her way to getting rid of the trach altogether. She will still need her suction machine and the O2 is still on the orders, but she is closer to her goal.

Our last speech therapy she kept the e-stim machine on for a half hour. This is a shocking device that helps the swallowing mechanism. It isn’t having results yet but she is tolerating it much better than in the beginning. The opening that needs to relax in order to swallow is still contracted shut…. most of the time. Steve gave her an exercise to do to help relax that. It’s not easy. When you go to swallow, your Adams apple goes up. He wants her to hold it there for a three count before trying to swallow.

There isn’t a person reading this blog right now that didn’t just try that… right! It’s something you just don’t think about when swallowing. The theory is that by holding in the up part of the swallow that the muscle will relax around the opening and she will have a better chance of getting something to actually go to her stomach. She HAS had success in this area, but we need much more.

Today was a fun day. We spent a lot of the day getting ready for a garage sale. During our family meeting we decided to shoot for the 23rd through the 25th of this month. It means we all need to be available to help gather, sort and price everything. I also have to gather materials to make some tables to hold the smaller things.

Earlier Dana went to get some food and I went to get her brakes fixed… again. They squeak, even with another set of the best pads Meinekie has available. We’ll give it a thousand miles to see if it gets better.

Later in the day we went to Albertsons so the kids could dump the bottles and cans, go inside the store to pick out popcorn and candy and then go pick out a movie at redbox. We chose a comedy to continue our up moods. Old Dogs was just the right movie for this.

Every day now, Chloe continues to do, at least, three hours of tasting. This gets her tongue moving and is greatly helping with the speech. She can actually make a good effort at sticking her tongue out at me now. Fun stuff!

Of all that is going on I’d still have to say Dana is in the biggest mess of anyone. She is taking on the whole ball of wax with care for Chloe. Colin and I are there for support, but she is really working full time, even when the night nurses are there, and it shows. It shows in Chloe’s progress but it also shows in Dana’s complete fatigue, stress, shortness, and, what I’d classify as sorrow. She knows we will get to where we want to be but she has been in this battle way too long. I don’t know what she would do without the community and certain family support. Bless you all!

Thanks for your patience with the blog. I’ll do my best to keep it going on a regular basis.

Be well,
Ron