New Nose Noodle - Aria MacDonald

New Nose Noodle

11 Oct at 8:06 pm by Hamish MacDonald

Well today was a little full on. Overnight Aria spiked a fever and also her nose noodle (feeding tube that runs to her stomach via her nose) stopped working.

This meant today was spent initially playing phone tag with the hospital and then trying to fix/replace the nose noodle with our home care nurse and then the hospital staff.

In regards to the fever first, it is the current opinion that she has picked up another virus. This is an okay outcome for us as it does mean we can keep her at home. These little virus’ are going to plague Aria a bit because of her immuno suppression. We are trying to be careful with her but I guess sometimes your just going to get these things despite your best efforts.

As for the nose noodle story it goes a little like this. Firstly the noodle finally stopped working for good right on morning medicine time. This meant that Aria was faced with the prospect of getting none of her important medicines. Thankfully Aria was kind enough to drink her main anti-rejection medicine which is the most important one. We then played phone tag with the hospital and our home services company until we got a plan and the home care nurse to replace the tube. Strangely enough this normally straightforward although upsetting procedure ground to a halt when her existing nose noodle steadfastly refused to come out. Not wanting to do any damage the three of us (the nurse, Anita and I) decided not to yank on it and leave it to the hospital staff how had asked to see us because of her fever. Aria sat there saying “Not come out”, I think she thought it was a bit amusing.

So we packed off to hospital to get them to fix it instead. After a fairly long wait we finally got a room in the treatment centre and the nurse practitioner who has been there and done that, more forcibly removed the nose noodle, Yay for her. Now for trying to get one back in. The nurse practitioner got it back in pretty quickly and sent us off to X-ray to confirm its placement. Aria was a star down in X-ray, having 5 pictures taken and her taking all the required positions without complaint. Once we were done, we were back to the treatment centre to have the ok to go home…..

Not so fast, it was looped in the X-ray and we found it wouldn’t flush through. So out it came and it had to be replaced. Now this time she couldn’t get it down no matter what we tried. After several attempts and Aria being most put out by the affair we took a break while a new nurse was coming to try. Just before the new nurse arrived to try, we decided to pray with Aria that it would go in first time. We prayed, the nurse arrived, we positioned Aria a little differently this time, and it went in first time with hardly a drama!!

Its so exciting to see God answer prayers prayed with Aria.