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Home › Diaries › Abigail's › May 31, 2000

Abigail's Diary Entries

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May 31, 2000

Lena and Liberty are just getting over a little bit of a cold. Well, it was a little cold for Lena, a big cold for Liberty. Any time Liberty has a little cold, it sounds like it's The Dreaded Gamboo. Her throat is still irritated from all of the problems she had when she was born, so even if she just clears her throat it sounds like she has bronchitis. Her pediatric surgeon said she'll sound bad until around age 4 or 5! Poor baby.

Anyway, when she gets congested and her airway is a little inflamed, it's a big problem for her. When she was about a month old she had to have her esophagus widened because it was shaped like a funnel and all of the milk she would drink would pool in the middle of her esophagus and lean up against a weak spot in her trachea, which was left there by the very first surgery she had to disconnect a piece of her esophagus from her trachea and reconnect it to the rest of her esophagus. It's a long story. So her trachea is still a little weak and any time she gets a little congested we have to feed her pureed food again until it goes away -- or so they tell me now!

I found out about this little rule because last week when Liberty was eating her little egg chunks -- just like she does every morning -- she had a little trouble breathing. It was just like a year ago when we first brought her home before they widened her esophagus. She was turning color around her lips, but she was still sort of breathing.

I just kept thinking back to any time it would happen while she was in the hospital and the doctor or nurse would always say, "Don't worry, she's still breathing." Yeah, I won't worry even though she's turning blue around her lips and making this awful noise.

She was making that same noise last week. I can't even describe the noise but it's as if she's trying to cry but she can only make this sort of growling sound when she pushes her air out. I always think she's exhaling and not inhaling. I can't even begin to tell you how scared I was. I knew she wasn't choking; I knew it was exactly what had happened to her when she was just a tiny baby and that we just had to ride it out for a couple of minutes and she would be fine, but I still panicked and called 911 while I took her in the bathroom and started suctioning mucus out of her throat. Of course, by the time the ambulance got here she was fine. I was a wreck, but she was fine. Good thing, since they had no pediatric equipment -- AARGH! That's another story...

Anyway, I called her surgeon and her regular doctor and they both told me that it only happened because she has a little cold which probably inflamed her airway a little bit making her more susceptible to those episodes if she eats anything other than pureed food. She's fine now, but that's just a little more excitement than we like to have around here.

Here's the odd part. I live in a very small town where the rumors spread like wildfire. Several days after the ambulance was in front of my house I ran into somebody who said, "Is everything OK? My mother-in-law told me that one of your girls fell off the porch and couldn't breathe!" Fell off the porch? That's just so funny. It's just like that operator game that we used to play in elementary school.

Well, we're hoping this week will just be a regular old boring week. When something like that happens, it gives us a whole new attitude toward monotony. : )



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