Another Kya Update...

Well the Dale clan has had it's fair share of excitement today and we are all ready for a LONG vacation!.

Over the course of 11 years, raising a child with severe disabilities who also happens to be medically fragile, you occasionally have to take off the rose colored glasses and look at your life with reality lenses instead. Today we had to face our reality and make some choices regarding Kya's long term care at home. In preparation for wanting to go home sometime in the next year and with all the crazy stuff Kya has been doing (i.e. requiring CPR multiple times) we made the decision to approve a surgery for a Trach to be placed. For those of you unfamiliar with a Trach it is basically a small tube placed in the windpipe that gives us access to her lungs. This choice we felt would be the best option for us to have a successful return home and the best chance of keeping her healthy and alive!

As things with Kya always are we talked to the Docs to ask for the Trach at around 2:00pm and by 2:35 she was being rolled into the OR! It just happened to work out that the ENT was already down in surgery and had an opening avaliable. I am told that in about a week we will be able to have a different one placed that she can breathe in thru the trach and breathe out thru her nose/mouth thus allowing her to vocalize still. It is incredibly scary only due to our inexperience with this particular implant but at the same time I have a sense of relief knowing that our chances of helping her in a crisis are increased.

So as might be expected going home has been delayed but hopefully within the next 10 days.