Not a good way to start the week. It's 1:10 a.m. on Monday morning and I'm sitting in the doorway of Zachary's nursery listening to the whirl of the ventilator and hum of the oxygen concentrator because our night nurse called out again. We lost our day nurse last week too. So we have no nurse most of the week. We'll get through it though, as usual, just with a little more caffeine and a little less sleep.
I always thought that things like this happened to other people. I didn't even know anyone who had a preemie before Zachary was born. I'm not even sure I could have told you what a preemie was. Now I find it difficult to communicate with people who operate outside this weird little world of ours. How do you explain this? And do others really want to understand what this life is like?
When someone asks how Zachary is doing I almost inevitably respond with an enthusiastic "great!" The alternative is to start vomiting medical information about his condition and complaining about the nursing, like this weekend when the nurse turned the ventilator on but didn't select the settings so he was breathing in the same breaths he had just breathed out. We were home to catch the mistake early on before any damage was done, fortunately. (See, I told you).
He is doing very well, for the record. He's adjusted to home life quite nicely. He loves all the toys many of you have gotten him. He's curious about our cat, Sammy, who has yet to really introduce himself. We've only had a couple of instances in which he started to struggle because the tube in his trachea was getting clogged with secretions. That's why we are awake all night. And only one emergency trip to the hospital. We really couldn't have asked for a much better transition from the hospital to home.
But this life isn't easy.
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