Hi.

Welcome to my blog. I write about life as a Christian wife, mother of eight children, and grandmother.

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If This Were an Actual Emergency...

If This Were an Actual Emergency...

Want to take a stab at which of my blog posts is the most popular?

Most of my readers would probably guess it to be a post about Nathaniel. He does have loyal readers. The post introducing him on adoption day had seven hundred views the first week. His airway emergency in May had over a thousand views within ten hours. Posts about his hospital stay later that same month were equally visited.

But the most frequented page on my blog is not about Nathaniel.

It is...

Drum roll....

 A packing list for college.

Yep. The blog post I wrote when preparing to take Peter to college has been pinned on Pinterest over a thousand times and consistently brings traffic to my website. Month after month, for three years, it has ranked in the top three most visited pages. It is usually the number one most visited page during the months of May, June, July and August.

I had no idea this would be the case when I created the page. It reminds me that readers come to my website for a variety of reasons. Some to keep current on our family. Some to be encouraged in their faith. Some for very practical resources. Like packing lists.

I am going create a few posts this week that lean towards the practical resource side of life. We are preparing for vacation. I have one thought on the Tuesday before we leave for vacation on Friday: a kid with a tracheostomy takes a lot of stuff on vacation. I hope to share Nathaniel's packing list of supplies needed for a vacation later this week. I doubt it will be as popular on Pinterest as the college packing list, but perhaps it will help another trach momma someday. It will help me when I prepare for our next vacation.

Today I want to share a practical resource I put together for my extended family: a four page Tracheostomy Equipment, Vocabulary and Useful Information Handout. Click on that bold title for a PDF download of the handout. Here's a photo of page one to spark your interest or  to pin on Pinterest if you happen to have a board about tracheostomies. Truth: I just made that.

We will be sharing vacation week with our older children, son-in-law, my mom, my brothers, a sister-in-law, and our nieces. Our extended family does not live daily in tracheostomy world like we do. It is new to them. New can be unknown. Unknown can be frightening. I have learned that information and communication reduces fear. Perhaps that is why the emergency broadcast announcements promises "If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions." Information, news, and instructions help in an emergency. This handout explains the supplies we carry with us at all times for an airway emergency. It provides medical vocabulary for those supplies. It offers suggestions on how to help a primary caregiver during a tracheostomy emergency. It is our test broadcast sent out to help those within range to be ready for the real emergency sirens.

This post and document are probably not extremely interesting to those who visit my blog for the stories or encouragement. Hang on. Vacation week is coming. There will be heartwarming stories. Promise. But then again, perhaps a very real post like this one tells its own story of our life with Nathaniel. At the very least, it can help anyone who spends time with Nathaniel and our family to be more prepared for his next tracheostomy emergency.

Don't panic. That was only a test.

 

Emergency Information Inside

Emergency Information Inside

Two Years of Knowing Nathaniel

Two Years of Knowing Nathaniel