Twilight Zone

Update: Like they say.... "This to shall pass." And it did. Yuck.

There are a few people in this world that I hope to meet some day, one such person being Ivey's GI doctor's nurse. She and I speak on the phone often, but think of the volume of patients she must have (ugh). I am hesitant to admit that there have been times when I called her and did not get her voicemail and she knew it was me before I said my name. Is that a good or bad sign? If this were two years ago, or even one year ago for that matter, I would say that we were walking around leaving our stamp on the world of all of these sweet medical people. But who are we kidding? Back in the day, Nurse GI and I would talk about reflux, feeding schedules, residual, formula volumes, medications, g-tubes, j-tubes, ng tubes and don't forget – poop. As of lately though our phone conversations seem to have taken a slight turn to the bizarre. At the end of the day she either thinks that Ivey is one little girl determined to keep everyone on their tiptoes or she thinks that I am paddling around in a boat with a few holes. However, you all know our sweet Ivey is anything but boring.

So anyway, a few months ago I had to call Nurse GI and tell her that our darling little Ivey took her hairclip out of her few wisps of hair that I was/am overly resolute to put bows. Seriously??? What was/am I thinking? Imagine – Ivey put the bow in her mouth and swallowed it – (for the record, she is fast as lightning)- where it managed to lodge itself against her trach (thank the Lord) for two days…that's right two days…where more than one adult never put it together that the disappearance of the hair bow and an unusual sudden cough were connected. You all know that bows fall out and get lost all the time, so when her bow came up missing while at Moe's, Matt and I assumed it fell out of her hair. The bow was retrieved during her speech session; and imagine, her cough cleared up. I can only dream of the thoughts running through Ivey's sweet GI nurse's mind on that one, let alone what our GI doc really said.

And for all of you Dr. Rogers people, you can only imagine the look I got from him on that one. I had to take her into his office following that little incident…..

That's just one bizarre conversation as of lately…………….

So imagine today when I had to call her again, but not about bows. This time our little Houdini, we think, took a small dressing of gauze and tape from the opening of her stoma where the trach once was …. and swallowed it. Notice I said we 'think'. We 'think' because the dressing was missing, she had some scary respiratory distress for a moment and…. we still can't find the dressing. So this morning as I left a message for the GI nurse, I did my best to sound like a responsible adult and explain the situation because we were concerned about gauze and tape passing through her little system that also has a g-tube and j-tube floating, not to mention the fact that Ivey is not so great about pooping regularly. But this is where I have to hand it to our GI nurse, she takes it all in stride and manages not to make me feel like a complete nut, which she probably has plenty of ammo to do at this point. When she called back, she was more concerned the dressing might be lodged silently somewhere in Ivey's esophagus. I can't tell you how much I appreciate her ability to be calm (not laugh) and be understanding of the strange, yet entertaining, little events that pop up around here. (We want to make sure that office has fine-tuned skills in rare GI occurances.) One day I do hope to meet and introduce her to our little fireball. In the meantime, I hope we are keeping her entertained- at our own expense, literally.

Ivey did go to Floyd where she got to drink a nice syringe of barium. I do want to thank the nurses and physician for being so sweet to her and for being so prompt and quick with the procedure.

Luckily, Ivey does not have gauze and tape lodged in her esophagus and hopefully I can report to you in a few days that all is clear…..