Day 576 - Mom's 1st Time Driving James Solo
Friday, July 29th, 2022
Today was the first time Mom drove James alone. We needed to get to a pre-admission covid testing at the hospital so that we could stay on schedule for the GJ replacement on Tuesday. Fairly simple drive-thru at the Children's Hospital. James did not like the covid test. Did you know that he has been tested 10 times since he has been born? Absolutely ridiculous. It burned his little nose and he went from all smiles at the nurse to silent crying. 😢 The nurse felt really bad so she came back with a toy for him.
The trickiest part about loading up the car with all of James's equipment is lifting his car seat into the car while avoiding smashing the circuit. If the circuit is underneath the car seat when you are going to lock it in the base it will smash and James will be disconnected from the ventilator. Everything has to be put in in a certain order, and taken it out in the opposite order. So the solution is lifting the car seat with only your left hand and lifting the circuit up with your right hand. James is 20+lbs and the car seat is another 10lbs. It's not bad, he just can't gain any more weight. 😂
It was about a 2-hour ordeal from the start of packing up his equipment all the way into unpacking his equipment when we got home. Packing up the car takes about 20 minutes, and unpacking also takes just as much time, so in order to make the trip worth it we did a drive-thru Starbucks too.
Why is driving James solo not ideal? With no one in the back seat if James needed suctioning, his trach put back in, or the ventilator reconnected, you would need to either pull over or stop the car to get to the backseat. James has been more stable but he is also getting stronger and more active. It's always a risk, but we also feel like we could handle whatever situation comes up.
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| Every time we open the car door he smiles so big! |
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