Session 2
After having Mayah home from the NICU for just a short while, the barrage of outpatient clinic appointments began. We were about to get very acquainted with traveling with our trachie. First off, she hated car travel. We could always count on a vomiting encounter (thankfully that has resolved). The local Children’s Hospital was just over an hour drive, so we were logging some serious miles and endless hours at the hospital for appointments.
After one exhausting and very full day of doctor visits, I was loading Mayah up in the car seat and noticed her battery level. “Oh, my gosh, I forgot to plug in the ventilator during the appointments!”Mayah’s vent has an internal battery life of three hours and external/detachable battery of an additional three hours. The vent was on the last bar of internal battery, which was likely only 30 minutes of life left. I knew we couldn’t make it home.
We were on the interstate when suddenly I heard the ventilator low-battery alarm. My heart began to rush with panic. The ventilator had mere minutes of power remaining. We were going to have to stop somewhere and plug in the machine or manually give her breaths with the Ambu bag when the ventilator battery died. I was so frustrated with myself; the guilt was heavy. The ventilator is life for Mayah, I couldn’t afford to be so careless.
I pulled into the only rest area we would pass on our route and left Mayah and the private-duty nurse in the vehicle while I sprinted up to the building to scout the area for an outlet. (Thank the Lord that I had remembered to bring the power cord.) Seeing nothing in the lobby, I realized that I was going to have to take my trached, ventilator-dependent baby into a rest stop bathroom. Ugh, my body cringed with the thought of all the germs. There was a family/handicap bathroom with a single stall that was separate from the larger bathroom, and it had an electric outlet. I ran back out to the vehicle and helped the nurse gather all Mayah’s equipment and we hurried through the cold into the building.
Of course, in those few short minutes someone had commandeered the family restroom.
So, there we were, in a public restroom with Mayah’s medical equipment laying on the floor. It was a sweet relief to plug in the ventilator and hear that “beep,” signaling its renewed life. We propped the door open to keep air moving in the small room, which of course encouraged onlookers to stare relentlessly at our situation. As we waited for a family member to bring us the detachable battery from the home vent, I looked around at the grime on the floor, thinking how I was going to be doing some heavy-duty sterilizing when we got home.
We were eventually rescued and back on our way. Who knows how long we would have had to stay plugged into the bathroom outlet to get enough charge to make the remaining 45-minute trip home. Thankfully, we didn’t have to find out.
It took my husband less than 24-hours to have our mechanic called with an appointment booked to hardwire a 2,000-watt inverter in my vehicle. (We have a Solar brand, triple outlet model.) That inverter has been well worth the price for the piece of mind it offers this trach mommy. (And seven years later, it is still going strong and provided many uneventful travels with our trachie.)
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