Life as a Leach

Your nurse that you love sees that you are on Facebook late at night, so you come down for a cup of coffee. You tell your nurse that you don't need a doctor's order to have a well-deserved moment with your child. You have been marked as the parent who hovers...aka, the parent who holds her baby and loves her! You finally get the most amazing team of nurses...and then one of them gets pregnant and the other one gets an amazing hospital job--and you are truly happy for them. You can identify the tiredness that comes over everyone at 4 a.m. and understand their Red Bulls and candy they bring nightly--as well as occasionally finding them with their eyes closed, holding your baby's hand. The nurse has to remind the doctor and other nurses that you are the  mother , and not their  daughter. You are told, "Oh, no, it's just allergies!" and lo and behold, two days later, you, your child, and your husband now have the so-called  allergies  and that nurse h...

You take another adult to every doctors' appointment your child has and are frequently asked if said adult is your husband's mother because you look nothing alike. You've ever been asked if the other adult with you at a doctor's appointment is your child's "Other Mom" because she's not wearing a nursing uniform. You no longer have a parking spot in your own driveway and have to play musical cars with someone you have told 100 times where to park so that you can leave for the job you're not allowed to be ten minutes late to everyday! You spend your so called free time watching nanny cams making sure the well-paid adult is sleeping or doing something that you don't approve of. You had to get it written in the plan of care for the night nurse NOT to wake your child up to change her diaper. You make a checklist of things to be done and have the RN sign off on it like a reward chart for a 2 year old. You hide your favorite sodas because...

When you end a phone conversation at 3 p.m., 11 p.m., or 7 a.m. so that a nurse can sign out. You have given your husband a dress code so that he d oesn't walk around the house in his underwear. Your non-trached kid thinks he has a playmate who comes to visit every day. You have to tell the nurse you want to be the one to calm down your crying child. You have an urge to walk around your house naked, just because you can't. Your typical four year old tells you she wishes you had an office she could call when you are not nice! You have ever had someone try to tell you how to bathe your baby. You wonder if other professions allow you to be 20 minutes late on a regular basis without penalty. Your five year old blames messes and lost items on the nurse. Your nurse makes more of a mess than your two children. You groan when the caller ID says it is your nursing agency. Your kid uses the oximeter as a "Pavlovian" call, bending her toe to make it go off...

For those of you who have never experience home nursing, it is...interesting.  It could be wonderful....or horrific, depending on the nursing staff.  I've personally had both experiences, and am now (thankfully!!) experiencing the wonderful side of home care.  When you have nurses you can trust, they can be a lot of help and you can reduce your stress a bit.  But it is definitely interesting. I wanted to give my readers a glimpse into the lives of families with home nursing.  I polled my online trach group, hoping to get a few funny comments about life with home nursing.  I was figuring I'd have about 15 or 20.  The result was so much more than I hoped for!!  Just 2 hours after I posted, I had 27 comments, and it grew to 77 just in the first night--many of them writing multiple ideas.  They have just kept on coming from there, and some of them cracked me up! Because of the overwhelming response, I've separated this into a couple of differ...