Ira performed wonderfully today. They went in to take another look at his airway and sure enough, the granula started growing again. They scraped it out but the doc said it would keep growing back as long as the trach was a factor. (You see, the body doesn’t really like foreign objects invading its space which leaves a whole host of questions about Ira’s Goretex diaphragm.) So the doc said, we need to fast-track this weaning process.

During the surgery they put in a smaller sized trach. The idea is that Ira would still be able to use his trach to breathe but a lot of air would get by the smaller trach; therefore, Ira would breathe quite a bit from his mouth and nose. We went from a 5.0 to a 3.0. That’s a pretty big difference. And now we are charged with plugging up the trach (capping it) until Ira can tolerate being capped 12 waking hours. When he can tolerate that, we will go in and have the trach removed and the hole sewed up.

As I type, Ira’s going on 2 hours of being capped. Yep, he just had the surgery today. Incredible. For the first time since he was six months old, Ira is only using his mouth and nose to breathe. That’s a big. freakin. deal.