What A Night!

Oh my goodness, I'm so tired. For various reasons we didn't get to bed until midnight. My alarm was to go off at 4 am to feed Abby, but her monitor sounded off at 3:30. No problem. I went in to check on it, expecting it to either correct itself or that I'd need to reposition her cannula. However, the monitor's readout said PRB. I thought it meant problem. It really meant probe, but when I tried to turn off the machine and start it back up that didn't get rid of the problem. Neither did removing the cable and then reinserting it. So the thing is now going to keep alarming and not show me what her saturation level is. I turn it off then I get on the phone to Praxair, the supply company, to get ahold of their on call guy. 15 minutes go by without a call, so I call them back. They say that he's replied to them saying that he got the page. So we wait some more for him to call. I'm hoping he can just tell me how to reset the machine myself. In the mean time, I go down stairs to use the bathroom so I won't disturb everyone upstairs should the phone ring. Well, the dog must have had an upset stomach because she's left some presents down on the family room floor. Great! I go back upstairs and the bathroom light is on. Mark's up. So we go down and clean up the carpet. Thankfully we have a steamer. A must with dogs and young children. Then back upstairs to wait. We're assuming that the guy has decided to head out to the house. The company is about 12 miles north, so he probably lives north of us too. Now Abby's waking up and is ready to eat, so I feed her while Mark waits up for the guy. By this time I try turning the machine back on and it's working again. I'm thinking the guy is probably on his way and should be here anytime now so I don't want to call and tell them everything's okay, never mind. Plus, this machine has been acting up every now and then and I'd rather just replace it with a new one. Too much time has gone by now, and I'd really like to get back to bed, so I call the company again. They transfer me to someone else who apologizes that the service guy hasn't called me back yet. They'll call him and have him give me a call. Finally he calls. Sounds like he just woke up. Guess he didn't think it was a big deal that our monitor doesn't work. By this time it's about 5:30. Mark's going to stay up because it almost time for him to get up anyways. The monitor is working now, so I tell the guy that he can come out later in the day to replace it. Then I crawl back into bed for another hour or so.

The thing that people don't seem to get is that when we're sleeping we really depend upon the monitor. Most of the time her saturation is just fine, but she has a tendency to rub her face a lot, and it's very easy for the cannula to come out and sometimes it will end up on top of her nose. Without the cannula in she desaturates very quickly. Without the monitor to let us know what's happening she could be in very serious trouble in just a matter of minutes. Needless to say it was very frustrating and I should probably follow up with the company with a complaint or something.

Now it's almost noon and everything is okay. I'm tired and I'm sure Mark is dragging. He also has a very long day today. Poor guy. Hopefully he can get some good sleep tonight.