Marcus Gower
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My son Marcus was born on December 29 2000. He was born by elective Caesarian at 38 weeks. After he was born he was quickly taken to the Special Baby Unit. He was kept there for 8 days as he was having feeding problems and while he was there we noticed that he had a horrible noise associated with his breathing. We asked about this as we were a bit concerned and we were assured not to worry as it was a
stridor and this isn’t a problem to worry about. Being first time parents my husband and I thought nothing more of it.
We got him home and a month later things started going down hill for us. Marcus had caught
broncholitis which caused his stridor to get worse and he was finding it a struggle to breath. The hospital put him on
oxygen, which helped with his breathing. While he was in hospital they ran a few tests on him but after being there for 3 weeks they thought it would be best for him to been assessed by the ENT team.
He was sent over to our children's hospital and underwent an brochoscopy and
laryngoscopy. The ENT surgeon informed us that Marcus had
very narrow airways and it was very hard for him to even get the tube down to have a look. He said that if he continued to loose weight and not grow then he thought that it would be best for Marcus to have a
tracheostomy, but the decision was for us to make.
We decided to leave him and see how he went for awhile, so with the support of the ENT team and our home care nurse we eventually got to take our son home but still on oxygen.
Things were going along OK….he was gaining weight and growing but very slowly. We had a few times where he turned blue on us, but we always overcame these episodes. One day in August of 2001 Marcus turned blue on me (his mother) and I performed mouth to mouth. He became right again but 45 minutes later he went blue again, I did some more mouth to mouth while my husband rang the ambulance. The ambulance took him straight away to the Resuss team at our local hospital and because his airways were so narrow it was very difficult for them to intubate him. They shipped him onto the
children's hospital so he could go to the Intensive Care Unit. The following morning he was taken to theatre by ENT to have another L & B. The surgeon came out and told us that he needed a
tracheostomy, so we agreed this time.
Since having his Trach, he has grown really well. He is such a happy little man.
May 2002: We went to the hospital to see if we could get Marcus decannulated, but unfortunately it wasn’t successful. The good thing about our trip to the hospital was that he has come home with no oxygen requirement during the day now which he has had attached to himself for over 16 months.
We are really proud of our little man.
