05/06/10 Training Day

Eli has another good night on the nasal pillows. We're looking forward to getting the sleep study out of the way tonight so we can move on with our plan to get Eli home. Patricia has been pushing them to release Eli before Mother's day. She deserves that. She is a good mother and she deserves to have her baby home for this special day.

Today we have training on all the home equipment scheduled for 1:00pm. I barely have enough time to wolf down a couple burgers from McDonalds on the way to the hospital. I'm really looking forward to getting Eli home so I don't have to bounce back and forth between home, work, and the hospital.

The training is pretty mundane. There's nothing really special to it but boy are there a lot of machines and supplies. They want us to have a portable oxygen unit which you can throw over your shoulder or hook onto the stroller. This will refill from the "mother" unit we'll be getting at home. Using the portable oxygen is a breeze.

Next up we have an end tidal CO2 monitor. It looks like a nasal cannula but it sucks air into the device and somehow analyzes Eli's CO2 level. We hook it up and give it a whirl and its reading 60 to 63ish. It bounces around a little and we're told it's kind of open to interpretation so we'd call that low 60's. Eli has been on nasal cannula for most of the day at this point so it seems reasonable. The machine needs to be calibrated and hooked up but it isn't too bad to figure out. By the end of the day we'll come to realize this is the most complicated of the devices which isn't saying much, they all appear fairly easy to use.

The next device is the pulse oximeter. Turn it on, hook it to the patient, and wait for the reading. There are some upper and lower limits to set on the device so it will only alarm when it reads a significant variance but I think this device is cake.

We get a home monitoring device with leads that will hook up to Eli much like the monitors in the hospital that measure heart rate, respiratory rate, etc... This machine is pretty loud making it the standby device to use when Eli is sleeping or when he is out of our line of sight. There are a couple bells and whistles on this machine but again it's not rocket science.

Next up is the actual BiPAP machine which is actually called a VPAP. I think the "V" stands for variable and I think the machine can do several different types of respiratory support. Ours is preprogrammed for Eli and it is already set up with the doctors instructions so all we need to do it turn it on and off and clean it. How easy is that?!?

Lastly, they set us up with a car battery. Yes, I'm not kidding. We have a portable car battery, charging device, and a device that converts the battery into 2 outlets. Just in case we have a power outage or something happens and we need power we have a backup. Seems like sound logical thinking and the toys are kind of cool.

I think that about covers the training. It took a total of 3.5 hours to go over everything and another 30 minutes to sign all the paperwork. Now all we need to do it cart all this stuff home. I think I'll have to recruit some Grandparents to do some moving for us when the time comes to bring Eli home!

Eli is all set to have the sleep study done tonight and Patricia is going to be on-hand to make sure it goes without a hitch. Tomorrow will be the telling day. We'll get the results of the sleep study and tomorrow we'll have 100% of Eli's care turned over to us for a trial run to make sure we can "handle" it. Good luck Patricia, I'm going to go have a beer! All joking aside we'll figure out a way to get it done. We have a lot of support at home thanks in large part to all of you guys reading this blog.

Wish us luck tonight and tomorrow!