A Little, Tiny, Scratchy Laugh

Eden's voice is what I've been longing to hear for 22 months now. It's very quietly, and slowly starting to come! Let me start from the beginning which is when the stint came out of her airway two weeks ago tomorrow.

We started doing speaker valve trials once the stint came out, and we were hoping to hear her voice loud and clear. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case, but as we have continued on with the trials the past couple weeks, we are starting to hear more and more of a little voice coming through. It's hard to explain exactly how she sounds, but it's basically just a really hoarse, scratchy breathing with an occasional quiet sound of her voice. We try to get her to make sounds, like "ma ma" or "da da" or "ahhh" but she has been so used to just breathing loudly through her trach, that she mostly just exhales loudly in the rhythm of the things we say to her.

As my sister and I were talking about this the other day, she said she thought maybe if she laughed it would force the vocal cords to vibrate and we might hear some sound. So we put on the speaker valve and started tickling her, and sure enough, there it was through the scratchiness..... a little, tiny sweet laugh. Of course, as I knew it would, it made me all emotional and I just felt so much happiness! I have never had the opportunity to hear her voice, and have missed the "experience" of hearing my child babble, cry, squeal, and most especially, laugh. I really just had to marvel in the moment and I was flooded with thoughts like, "wow, this awful surgery a few weeks ago really is fixing her" and "the nightmare is behind us and we have such amazing, positive things to come." I feel so blessed and happy with where we are today.

She had a bronch here in Denver last Thursday and her doctor is happy with what he saw which also makes me happy. He said it looked like the front of the graft was sinking in a little so he tried to dilate it and it sunk right back in. He thinks it may be some swelling and that as that heals he will be able to tell what the graft is doing. He also cut out some granulation tissue to clear her airway out a bit too. Overall, he thought it was looking great which led to the next big step which was down sizing Eden's trach. She went in with a Ped 4.0 and came out with a Ped 3.5 which has a smaller diameter so she is breathing a little more through her new airway. It is a huge step and testament to the fact that everything is going well with her airway. I just can't believe it and am so excited.

So because her bronch was on Thursday, we planned to come home on Saturday, but the doctor said he wanted to see Eden again this Friday the 15th so we just decided to stay. Though I long to be home, it's just way to hard to travel back and forth so for only a week it was way more worth it to just chill out here for the time being. I'm just so very grateful for my sister and her family and their willingness to let me stay here, eat their food, use their car, and everything else they are doing for us! Thank you Asay family.

So we will continue to do our speaker valve trials. It seems like every time we try she can tolerate it a little longer each time. I'm so excited too that as time passes, hopefully her vocal cords will continue to heal and we will hear more and more of her sweet little voice.