Tommy Vermiglio
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This is my 10 month old son Tommy. Born September 14, 1998, at 28 and 1/2 weeks gestation. He weighed 1 pound 10.5 ounces. His lungs were extremely premature. He was intubated, on the ventilator for 3 and 1/2 weeks. There was also a hole in his right lung, so he had to have a chest tube for about a month. He also needed many blood transfusions because his white blood cell count was very low. At 3 and 1/2 weeks he was taken off the ventilator (actually he pulled the tube out on his own when he moved his head to the side). So instead of putting him back on the ventilator, the doctors tried him on c-pap. He did great! The doctors said they didn't think he would. Soon after that he was put on just oxygen. He gained weight very slowly. Two months after he was born he weighed only 3 pounds.
Things seemed to be going good, he was gaining weight slowly , but at least he was gaining. The problem is that the ventilator saved his life, but it also scarred up both of his lungs completely. He has extremely bad bronchial pulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Some of his doctors said he has the worst BPD that they have ever seen. Tommy wasn't getting worse, but he wasn't getting better either. His oxygen saturations started getting lower than usual.
At 8 months old he weighed 9 pounds. His blood gases were getting worse. He was retaining to much carbon dioxide. He would breathe faster and have bad retractions. He was put back on c-pap, and decided that he would need c-pap for a long time, and the best way would be through a trach. It was a very hard decision to make, I love Tommy so much! He means very thing to me. I agreed to the trach.
He has had the trach for 3 months. He has been happy and smiling and breathing much easier. Although recently he started breathing faster, and a doctors found that a small lump of skin had been damaged inside his trachea and was blocking the trach opening making it harder for him to breathe. They put a trach in that won't come into contact with the damaged skin, they want the area to heal on its own. Since then he has been breathing better, he is still in the hospital, he has been there since he was born. But, as long as he is getting better, that is all that matters!!!!!!
He is now 10 months old and weighs 11 pounds. He is very happy and smiles all the time he has just started eating solid foods, rice, cereal, and bananas. He drinks a bottle, but sometimes he won't drink the whole thing, so he had a g-tube put in. Whatever he doesn't finish goes through the g-tube.
Tommy is my miracle. He is everything to me. I am SO, SO, VERY PROUD OF HIM, ALWAYS. I WILL ALWAYS LOVE HIM AND BE PROUD OF HIM NO MATTER WHAT!
Thank everyone for all the information on children with trachs. When I was faced with the decision to let the doctors give him the surgery, I hardly new anything about tracheostomies. Good luck to everyone!!!!!!!!
