Almost every day something happens that might be ordinary in other houses... but in ours it feels extraordinary :) For example, preparing for an emergency... I'm not talking mandatory evacuation hurricane stuff (please, not this year!), I'm talking things like a power outage. Seems pretty simple, right? Ha ha! This week we got to practice our power outage plan - fun. No exclamation point on purpose. But now that we've had to practice, we do feel much better :)
Actually it wasn't too bad, and it gave us a good chance to practice what we should do. It happened at 6:05am on Tuesday... I was sleeping, but I'm sure that's when it happened because a few of Samuel's alarms started going off and woke me up :) The two machines that have to have power in order to stay on are the oxygen concentrator (which provides Samuel the extra oxygen he needs) and the heater on the ventilator (which makes the air Samuel breaths warm and moist - not terrible if it's off for a little bit, but if off for long periods of time Samuel runs the risk of developing a mucus plug which could entirely cut off his airway). The oxygen concentrator is the machine that alarms anytime it loses power - and it puts the fire alarm to shame. It's on 24/7 when Samuel is at home. Up we jumped! But we did pretty well... attached him to an oxygen tank in place of the concentrator and put an inline humidifier on the vent in place of the heater.
We were incredibly lucky this happened at 6am instead of 6pm, for a couple reasons. First, we were lucky because everything else charges overnight... so everything else was charged. Talk about a wake up call though - were this to happen at 6pm instead of 6am, things wouldn't have been charged so we wouldn't have had that much time to wait for the power to come back on before having to pack up and head out either to Omi's house or the local hospital, depending on the extent the power outage. Second, we have to be very careful about Samuel getting overheated. His little body gets really hot, really quickly. I think it may be partially due to his diuretic, but whatever the reason, our house has to be at 72 degrees with the ceiling fans on in order to keep that boy cool. At 6am it's much cooler than at 6pm!
Fun, fun, for everyone! George, Olivia, and Samuel had no idea anything ever happened. We were lucky and power was back on before 7am. Too funny, we had two more power "blips" today... at least we feel ready! As ready as you can be :)
Actually it wasn't too bad, and it gave us a good chance to practice what we should do. It happened at 6:05am on Tuesday... I was sleeping, but I'm sure that's when it happened because a few of Samuel's alarms started going off and woke me up :) The two machines that have to have power in order to stay on are the oxygen concentrator (which provides Samuel the extra oxygen he needs) and the heater on the ventilator (which makes the air Samuel breaths warm and moist - not terrible if it's off for a little bit, but if off for long periods of time Samuel runs the risk of developing a mucus plug which could entirely cut off his airway). The oxygen concentrator is the machine that alarms anytime it loses power - and it puts the fire alarm to shame. It's on 24/7 when Samuel is at home. Up we jumped! But we did pretty well... attached him to an oxygen tank in place of the concentrator and put an inline humidifier on the vent in place of the heater.
We were incredibly lucky this happened at 6am instead of 6pm, for a couple reasons. First, we were lucky because everything else charges overnight... so everything else was charged. Talk about a wake up call though - were this to happen at 6pm instead of 6am, things wouldn't have been charged so we wouldn't have had that much time to wait for the power to come back on before having to pack up and head out either to Omi's house or the local hospital, depending on the extent the power outage. Second, we have to be very careful about Samuel getting overheated. His little body gets really hot, really quickly. I think it may be partially due to his diuretic, but whatever the reason, our house has to be at 72 degrees with the ceiling fans on in order to keep that boy cool. At 6am it's much cooler than at 6pm!
Fun, fun, for everyone! George, Olivia, and Samuel had no idea anything ever happened. We were lucky and power was back on before 7am. Too funny, we had two more power "blips" today... at least we feel ready! As ready as you can be :)
Hello? Local power company? I would like to talk to your president about preventing power outages at my house...A few moments of normalcy... more and more of them every day :)
Toe!
Tell George to smile and you get this hysterical fake smile...but ask him to show you his teeth, and you get the cutest smile you ever did see!
Hey dad, check it out - this kid is even more handsome up close!
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