Seriously... what is with Fridays lately?

Three weeks ago... on Friday... was the start of "Potty Drama." This past Friday brought some drama, too. I am glad May is ending and hope that my Friday dramas end with it! Farewell May... bring on June!

I will preface this post by saying that Gracie is just fine... but what happened on Friday morning was quite alarming and for a few, brief moments (that didn't feel so brief) quite unnerving.

Fridays are not Gracie's typical school day, but since there was an event on Wednesday in which she couldn't have actively participated, we planned to swap Wednesday for Friday. (Next week she starts Monday thru Thursday!)

Fridays are also Preston's TOTnastics day... he loves this! He gets to see his little friends, jump, run, somersault, sing and play for an hour straight. No interruptions for anything - - it's all about him.

So, Friday rolls around and it's business as usual in the morning... waking up both kids, getting them dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed, load the car with equipment, backpacks, snacks, sippy cup and, of course, kids. We make our way out of our neighborhood and head toward Gracie's school, which is about 8 miles from our house - - and takes about 30 minutes if you hit the lights wrong... and I almost always do! Anyway, through the whole car ride, Preston and I are discussing what we are doing after we drop off "Neener." (Don't ask... she's got a million nicknames... many courtesy of Daddy. Preston doesn't miss a beat, so he now calls her all of the names that both John and I do! Maybe that's a silver lining to the fact that she can't hear us... she'd never learn her name if she could hear all the different terms of endearment she has!)

As we approach the street her school is on, Gracie coughed... very typical. I looked in my rear view mirror at her just as about a tablespoon of thick, blood-tinged secretions poured out her trach. At that point I wasn't too alarmed. People with trachs can get an irritated airway which can easily cause bleeding. This has happened to Gracie several times over the years... especially when really sick, or dry (like in the winter from the heater running without enough humidification), or when in the hospital because the air is so dry. She had been fairly dry the day before and she'd had surgery last week (the ENT removed some granulation tissue as well) so I thought perhaps her airway was irritated due to the surgery and the dryness the day before.

I pulled into the drop-off area and she coughed again... and it was worse. It wasn't blood-tinged secretions... it was just blood... a lot of it. I jumped out of the car and let her health aid and the school nurse (who were waiting curbside for her) that I didn't think she'd be getting out of the car. For the next five minutes or so, I just kept suctioning blood from her trach while trying to remain calm. The nurse, Cathy, and I were talking about the fact that this has happened before, but as every second was passing and I kept suctioning, I also told her that this looked different.

Gracie was none the wiser to what was happening... she was signing "up" and starting to get really upset that we hadn't gotten her out of the car. Preston was talking about "nastics" and getting a little impatient. That's when I noticed a tiny speck of blood in the right corner of her mouth... and as I wiped it I could see her teeth were now blood-tinged. At first we thought she was coughing so hard that the blood was coming up into her mouth. I suctioned her mouth and got an enormous amount of thick blood and that's when I told Cathy that it might actually be coming from her mouth.

It was hard to see because Gracie won't just open her mouth for you. I pried the Yankauer (an oral suctioning attachment, very similar to the one a dentist uses) into the back of her right cheek and could see blood pooling back there. I was relieved on the one hand (because with the amount of blood, I knew we were headed to the ER if it was coming from her airway) but, then again, not so relieved because I couldn't tell why she was bleeding. More prying into her mouth revealed that her gums in the center of the bottom-right 6-year molar she's been cutting (she's been working on all four of these teeth for almost a year) was the source. But why, you ask? Well, because my little girl, who is also cutting the top-right 6-year molar, was grinding her teeth so hard during the drive, that she sliced the daylights out of the bottom gum with the very sharp edge of the top molar. (She often grinds - - for so many reasons - - in fact her other molars are ground even to her gum line.)

I didn't actually confirm what had happened until I was able to get in there and look when we returned home... which was pretty much the exact moment the bleeding finally stopped... doesn't it figure? The ride home included two pull-overs for suctioning. And, sadly, the shirt she was wearing doesn't appear to have survived the drama.

I had called our dentist in route, but he is off until the 15th of June. Should this happen again, I will be calling the on-call dentist to see if there is anything we can do to stop the bleeding or help with removing the excess gum tissue. The big concern here is the fact that she can't swallow at all, so even though she has the trach for suctioning access, some of that blood was certainly aspirated into her lungs. Hopefully, with all the extra breathing treatments I did (and am doing), we will avoid any big issues. It's taking her so long to cut these teeth because she's not an oral eater. Those molars have a lot of tissue to break through without the help of constant stimulation from chewing.

So, she missed school, Preston missed his class, we waited for our Friday nurse to arrive, then took Gracie to her (previously scheduled) post-op ENT appointment, raced back home for the nursing company to do their monthly supervisory visit and then took the kids on a WELL DESERVED two hour park outing. I needed that mindless running-around, sliding, swinging, fresh-air time just as much as they did!

Oh... and Preston... well he handled the disappointment of not having his "planned day" so very well. He knows that blood equals an owie, so he was concerned about Gracie and quietly accepted that we were going straight back to the house without going to his TOTnastics class. I, on the other hand, felt so disappointed for both of them. Gracie was so sad to be sitting at the school and not able to go in - - and not understanding why. It was heartbreaking. She handled it well though and was no longer upset once she realized we turned into our neighborhood.

And although Preston handled it all so well (and completely forgot about it, I think, by the time we headed out the door for the doctor's appointment), I often wonder what effect all of the extra waiting and changed plans will have on him. I constantly feel like I am telling him, "Wait a second, Bubba... I need to suction Gracie first." Or, "I need to help sissy, first." It's a delicate balance and I really do try to even it out, but the bottom line is that she requires so much more immediate, hands-on care. It's just one more reason that her successful transition to school is so important... it's good for Preston to have more frequent individual attention - - no matter how tolerant he is and no matter how much he loves his sister - - he needs to be "first fiddle" a little more often.