At Home Medical

This requires some explanation because, unless you also took a preemie home with you, it’s hard to understand that you don’t just take the baby home.  You also take an apnea monitor to make sure that she’s breathing, and an oximeter, to make sure that she’s well oxygenated, and an oxygen converter which takes room air and delivers it through a cannula, and travel oxygen tanks for when you travel to doctor’s appointments (you’re really not allowed to go anywhere else for quite a while), and a large emergency oxygen tank in case the power goes out.

The hospital doesn’t provide the equipment or the training on how to use the equipment-for that, there are companies like At Home Medical.  As I mentioned before, we had a couple of ‘coming home dates’ that never happened.  During one of these almost coming home moments, we scheduled our appointment with At Home Medical (AHM).  About an hour before AHM got there, our doctor informed us that Lily wouldn’t be coming home, so I was an emotional mess.  Then the AHM trainer came, completely oblivious to our situation, and every time we went over the different wires, or how to attach them, or what to do when the alarms went off, I had to swallow down tears.  I could barely stay in the room as my hubby explained that no, we were not taking the baby home.

I went back to the NICU and tried to calm Lily-she wasn’t coming home because her sleep study showed that her acid reflux was so bad that the acid coming up her throat overnight had a ph balance between 2 and 3-that’s somewhere between lemon juice and vinegar on a ph scale.  No wonder she threw up all over her doctor that morning and she wouldn’t stop screaming and she was beating her tiny fists against my chest, her neck wrenching back in agony.  And then the AHM trainer wanted me to practice attaching the equipment to my tiny child.  No thank you.

The company delivered the oxygen converter and other equipment to my parents’ house to await the day we could finally come home.  The AHM trainer told us that the converter was the size of a small box…it was the size of a large, carry-on rolling suitcase and it was loud-we couldn’t sleep in the same room as the heat producing, vibrating, constant sound machine.

Thank goodness we don’t have a dog, because he would’ve been cowering under the bed every time the apnea monitor went off.  And there was no volume button, so we couldn’t lower the evil sound.  Plus, all the alarms were false alarms-when we had an actual emergency, it never went off.  The oximeter went off all the time because it was attached to Lily’s foot, and Lily likes to move her feet.  So anytime the connection wasn’t 100% secured, it went off.  It was a constant world of beeping and screeching and us going crazy because we weren’t sure if it was real or fake.  The monitors had about a 7 or 8 hour battery life for when you needed to go to the doctor, so you had 2 monitors strapped to your shoulder, and a travel oxygen tank, and a small baby in a car seat, and inevitably, the monitor went off while you were driving so, panicked, you had to pull over on the side of the road to find out that your baby was totally fine but you could’ve caused an accident by pulling to the side as quickly and haphazardly as you did.

Some of the stupider comments from AHM:

-When I asked how we were supposed to keep the cannula on Lily’s face (did they provide the same sticky tabs as the hospital did?), they answered: Oh, there’s a slide tab on the back so just tighten it across her face and use her ears.

-Um, won’t she just pull it off? No, they do that. (My child was capable of pulling it off even with the sticky tabs.)

-When asked to hook up the long, 50 foot oxygen tube: Why would she need that, she can’t go anywhere.

-When I explained it was so that I wouldn’t be trapped in one room: So, just leave the baby in the room with the machines and go wherever you need to go.

There were many, many more…but I can’t remember them all.  The company also seemed very confused as to why our cell phone exchanges were different from where we actually lived (mine is NYC, the hubby’s is South Jersey). So when the hubby called to request more supplies, they automatically routed his call to a South Jersey supply station-and then were angry at US, like we had put them out when we explained that the delivery was to New York.

And then the power went out…