scary

Today Caelan brought the terrible twos to a whole new level and scared the daylights out of me.  It's not a day I want to repeat EVER again.

This morning Caelan was sitting on the floor enjoying a cartoon while I talked on the phone with Damian's mom, directly behind him.  We were home alone.  He coughed and seemed to have difficulty and as I reached around to check him my hand brushed against his trach... that he was HOLDING IT IN HIS HAND!

I promptly hung up on Gramma and did my best to get the trach back in.  It wasn't easy and I certainly felt like it was taking too much time.  My mind was spinning out of control on me and I could start to feel the panic rising as time passed and I was still unsuccessful.  As Caelan colour faded more and more I realized I was running out of time, I grabbed a smaller sized trach and got it in.  He was unconscious and not a colour you ever want to see grace your child's face.  I took a big breath and waited for Caelan to do the same.  It was horrible, and that's the understatement of the century.  He was taking too long for me and I grabbed the ambu bag to help him out.  Once he was breathing, I took another big breath and started to shake as I realized just how scary this had been... and how much scarier it could have been.  A lot of 'what if's" started to overwhelm me and I still had to get the ties to hold his trach in place.  We use velcro ties and it was pretty tricky one handed.  By the time his ties were in place I was a mess.

Ask me how long this all took and I'd say it felt like hours, years, a lifetime.  (I'm sure it took years off my life and added a handful of grey hairs!)  My heart still aches and I feel a little like jello, it was quite the adrenaline rush.  In reality, I think it was more like minutes, but they were the longest minutes of my life.

I've said before that I don't know how I could trust our boy to anyone else's care.  How could I ever forgive them if something went wrong?  Today made me think that I don't think I could ever forgive myself either.  How do people do this?  I thought I was so prepared for an emergency like this.  I now know that regularly scheduled monthly trach changes are no comparison for an emergency situation.

Life is precious. 

I've been holding on extra tight to my boy today.

I've never been more thankful.