Update

I feel like I left a lot of people hanging. My phone broke and the new one isn't coming until next week and our computer broke so the last most people heard was that "Something isn't right with Little Man". Our computer is back and it's about time I do a little update on the past week, because it sure has been interesting. When we left the hospital last week we were both optimistic, but not too hopeful that dilation would work. The couple days after were miserable for Carter. He just felt so nasty and was still bleeding quite a bit out of his trach.  He also was not able to breathe with his Speaking valve on which was something he could do before surgery with only a little struggle. When he has his speaking valve on he breathes in through his trach and out through his mouth and nose. We were pretty concerned about this especially since he was supposed to be "just fine" breathing with his trach capped off meaning in and out his mouth/nose. Another concern was that when he would cry with his speaking valve on he would make no noise. Before he wasn't able to produce much noise with his valve on, but always when he cried. My mind was all over the place and the thought that what if the doc messed something up wouldn't go away. Thankfully after another day or two he was able to start using his speaking valve more and more. On Friday the day my phone broke ;( we went in to the docs and he was shocked that Carter was having so much trouble. He capped him off and he was able to breathe, but boy howdy was it a lot of work and involved a lot of wheezing. The doc told us that his airway is about 50% open which for most kids is plenty for them to breathe normally. He also said that he got rid of everything he could and opened it as much as he could so it wasn't going to get any better. For some reason 50% isn't enough for Carter. I am sure it is a combo of having 25 weeker lungs and a paralyzed vocal chord. With that said we go back in on Wednesday to check him out again. He said that any swelling (which was probably the reason he wasn't making any noise when he cried by the way)  he had from the dilation procedure would be gone by then so if he isn't able to breathe normally by then we will schedule Reconstruction surgery. We are almost positive that is what we will be doing since he is still having some issues with his speaking valve and we would need perfection when it came to being capped off. The tricky part now will be trying to squeeze a 6 hour procedure into Dr. McClay's completely booked schedule. He doesn't have a problem coming in to do a surgery early, but finding 7 other people he would need on his team can be hard when it isn't an emergency. 

The more time we have had to think about it and let our emotions settle down, because we all know they have been crazy we feel that for whatever reason we just weren't supposed to have surgery last Monday. We will probably never know why. Although we are bummed about the timing of it all we feel good that we at least gave it a try and that we did what we felt we were supposed to do.  Besides 100% is a whole lot better than 50% especially when it comes to our little mans airway.