Gideon's first plugged trach

In December, just a week before Christmas, Gideon got a plug in his trach. This was so terrifying for all of us. Everyone was home, enjoying our typical Friday night when all of a sudden Gideon became unresponsive. He glazed over, drool coming out of his mouth and shook just a little bit. We almost thought he was having a seizure (he was not and that has been ruled out numerous times). Daniel and I have both been so used to the acute desaturations we experienced his first several months home, troubleshooting the broken ventilator last year, and those sort of things we almost forgot how to respond to this situation. Also we had NOT experienced it before!

So we ran him back to his room and started using the ambubag to push air into his lungs while Daniel got the vent set up. Of course Gideon has not been on the vent and therefore NOTHING was set up. While this was happening, I had noticed that it was difficult to push air through the ambubag but didn't realize that until later. We started doing a trach change and got the vent hooked up. We inflated the cuff on his trach to seal it off, thinking something else was happening, and then changed his trach again back to the 3.5 size (he has been on the 2.5). Not remembering that the cuff was inflated, we did cause some bleeding. Once we got the first trach pulled out, you could hear Gideon exhale and air was finally moving in and out of his lungs. He was still pretty unresponsive and paramedics had arrived at this point as well. Our big kiddos responded so well to the event. When I was running Gideon back to our room, Evelyn called 911 and started helping triage that. They helped direct them when they got there and got the animals put away. Talk about responsible kids. Back to Gideon's plug. We went to the ER. Gideon was assessed. We were told multiple times that night that we know more than the professionals, which is a compliment but also not very reassuring at times ha! By the time we got to the hospital and in the trauma room, they thought Gideon had a fever, but he was under the heat lamp and once we got moved to another room, his temp eventually came down. He just wanted to sleep at that point and be left alone, which is expected because it was about 10pm and well past his bedtime. We had had him on oxygen sine he turned blue and was unresponsive. After the excitement settled in the ER, we stopped the oxygen flow.

They kept us overnight for observation in the ER, and I stayed with him. Daniel went home and stress cleaned everything. While cleaning the original trach, it had hard packed mucous in there, which solidified the fact that this was a plugged trach and NOT Gideon's body failing him. Talk about a relief. Which led us to start saying, at this point the trach is causing more problems than helping haha.

By the next morning, my amazing husband brought me the best breakfast burrito and coffee and I already had taken Gideon off the vent. He was wide awake and happy. We waited around long enough to talk to pulmonology and for them to sign off on discharge papers. Home we went for a normal afternoon.

The steps when troubleshooting anything trach are crucial here and next time we will change the trach out first.

For all the trach friends out there:

1. Suction

2. CHANGE THE TRACH

3. Oxygen

4. call 911

If you ever suspect that there may be a clogged trach, I can not stress changing it out enough.

Day after his clogged trach. Happy as can be eating all the things.