We have got to stop “meeting” this way. I’d really rather this didn’t become a pattern, but I am once again sitting in an ER room writing out a Meal Train post. Needing to abruptly leave church this time was pretty comical, though. Adriana was giving a talk today in sacrament meeting, but right before we left for church she came to me saying that her feeding tube was leaking (badly), and formula was dripping out all over. We managed to temporarily “band aid” things with medical tape and off we went.
Except as she was sitting up there on the stand for the opening song she suddenly got an alarmed look on her face. Catching my eye, she mouthed to me that things were leaking again because the medical tape had not held up when the system had just done a flush. She made it through the sacrament (luckily she had a few paper towels in her bag to tide her over for a bit), and then, with formula dripped all over her skirt by this point and clutching the feeding tube connection in one hand trying to keep it together, she got up to give her talk. And give the talk she did! She stood up holding that leaking feeding tube connection, grabbed a handful of Kleenex that she wrapped around it to soak up the formula, and then gave a very “Adriana-esque” talk about truth. Well done her! I sure love all the character that girl has. (Although I don’t know how reverent it was that I kept wanting to laugh about the whole thing. Because only the Sawyers would have something like this happen!)
As soon as her talk was over she rushed down from the stand, the two of us went to the bathroom to triage things and determined we really needed to get her to the hospital, and here we still are a few hours later. I haven’t talked about details concerning this on Meal Train, but we have had SO many problems with this feeding tube because of some hospital errors concerning the specific equipment that was used when the tube was originally placed. Errors that mean we cannot fix this leak now and will need to put in a completely new feeding tube. (Not to mention have made many things much, much more complicated and inconvenient than they needed to be, and likely contributed to some of our hospital/ER visits from the past two months.)
Considering how traumatic the first placement was Adriana really is being a champ about all of this, but I think we’re both a bit apprehensive about how things will go. Especially since for various reasons she will not be sedated (or even have laughing gas) for the procedure. Even so, as far as ER visits go, it’s been infinitely better coming when my family member was NOT in excruciating pain or we potentially had a life threatening condition on our hands. (No, this time was only not being able to have my child get the nutrition she needed – you know, something “small.”) Mostly this is just boring. With it being Sunday they have to assemble and call in a whole team to do the procedure (which is going to be a little complicated for a few reasons), so we’ve been told it will probably be a few hours yet.
UPDATE: We are now home, and despite being sore and tired Adriana is doing great. The placement this time was MUCH less painful (for her) or traumatizing (for the both of us) than the last one was. I’m actually rather proud of how I handled everything today, and how I was able to see the humor in all that happened.
So, not exactly the way we had intended to spend our Sunday, but it’s a relief to finally now have the correct equipment in her! It’s going to make SO many things SO much easier. Silver linings, right?
(Oh, and at her doctor’s appointment a week ago we learned that Adriana has gained another seven pounds. Now just 15 more pounds to go, as well as getting to a place where she can tolerate eating enough food orally to maintain that weight. But we are definitely moving in the right direction!)
