The short story: Me and the CADD pump are no longer friends, and it’s definitely not invited to my next 25^th birthday party. 

The long story: First the great news- Kai turned 8 on Saturday! Initially, he didn’t want to turn 8. His best friend isn’t 8 yet, and Kai wanted to wait.  (I’m okay with waiting!).Even so, I had this grand cake plan in my head, and I took a sleepy Kaitlyn to the store to see if they had stuff to make the grand police cake happen. Backing up.. before the store, Kaitlyn vomited all her meds, so we repeated them 2 hours later, and waited to see what would happen. More vomit happened, but thankfully didn’t look like meds, so we carried on. Normal people make cakes on birthdays, and I wanted that accomplishment, but I overcomplicated it. 

The store had something called fondant, which seemed genius. I really don’t know much about it, except that when I had cable, I used to watch this cake show, and that guy made it seem pretty fun. The cakes  looked all organized, clean, and pretty. The store had every color, and it said it was rolled. It was not rolled. Unless rolled fondant means it’s a giant block of ick. Pushing through anyway,  I “made” uneven sirens, crime scene tape, a shield (that never resembled anything remotely close to a shield), an oval (not sure why, I think I read something about an oval that would make something police-like on google), and then I decided I would roll the 'rolled' white fondant for the background. That super cake guy makes those. Awful idea for me to try. I saw the “fondant roller” and all those tools, but I figured those were just marketing ploys to make this fondant plan cost a million dollars. Turns out maybe they might possibly have a role, as I did not have the fondant 'roll and cut' thing down, at all. Sticky, gooy fondant, and being the impatient cake stacker that I was= disaster. The cake looked awful. Kai was very sweet- he said “it looks like cake. You’re still a good baker.”  I also gave him a few spoons of frosting, so he was probably in a sugar daze. Luckily, I had a backup plan, a cake that was already made by the bakers at Safeway that comes all perfectly round and pretty. I put my fondant shapes (skip that background fondant plan!), and as many police shield toys, handcuffs and candles as I could find and would fit. We were going to have a normal night, complete with handcuffs (technically they were plastic leg shackles) on a cake..

But then… Kaitlyn had seizures. I blamed me. There was too much excitement; I created too big a day. My cake was too busy.. I didn’t pay attention to her enough before a seizure to prevent it (cause I surely have thaaat power). Guilt in this never goes away, no matter how rational I try to be. But then magically, even in my feeling guilty and deflated- when I practically lit the cake on fire (I used ‘re-light candles’, they spark, they make sounds like fireworks, they are very-very smokey), Kaitlyn opened her eyes and smiled for Kai’s birthday. As soon as he blew out his candles (and all smoke detectors were letting us know they work), he went and laid down next to Kaitlyn on the couch and they were so happy together. That moment made every goofy detail before then, completely worth it. So much preparation goes into one moment that makes the entire day better.

Fast forward (in an over-worded novel like way) to 3 hours after that, and I was late on getting her TPN started. 3 hours late...which is super late. After I had everything prepared (late), I put the saline syringe on her TPN line, and it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t get it to flush. That’s never happened on that line. I thought maybe it was position, and moved her sleepy arm in every direction. I talked to the CADD pump in case it had anything to do with it, watered the houseplant.. I changed the cap, used a different syringe, cleaned everything with alcohol pads.. I couldn’t get it to flush at all. I left the room, came back, left again. I had no idea what to do. So, I called the Kaiser advice line.. after letting them know I had not moved in the last 24 hours since we were last seen and confirming I’m her mother for reals, have the same phone number, I have not left the country, and that Kaitlyn was breathing, their doctor said we should go to the emergency room and have her PICC line looked at. I tried one more time to get that TPN line to cooperate. Still a fail. Then I picked up a sleeping Kaitlyn and put her in the car. Kai, all cozy- packed his NY taxi car, and cooperated 19 bazillion times better than the TPN line. Long story a wee bit shorter, the Kaiser nurse was able to get Kaitlyn’s TPN line flushed. The Xray was good. Her line showed some “resistance”  in flushing; but her changing position, or luck, or something magical, made things better. I thought we were clear, so off to home we went near 2am on Easter morning. 

We got home, I got Kai in bed- then he climbed into mine. I got Kaitlyn all set up for the TPN feeding again. Line flushed (although definitely harder to flush than the previous day). CADD pump on. I thought we could now have some sleep visit us before the Easter Bunny did.  The CADD started beeping louder than the smoke detector from my cake-on-fire earlier.  The pump wouldn’t work, saying the line had an occlusion upstream. Upstream?! No idea what that meant, but the beeping was not fun. The nurse earlier had said to change Kaitlyn’s position if that happened, even having her cough might help, turn her head, put her arm down, to the side, up. In all ways except taking it off and completely turning her upside down.. I changed her position. We were stuck in beep city no matter what I did. I turned the bleeping, beeping CADD off, and we had a few moments of sleep. Easter happened. Hippedty Hoppedty.

We ended up back at Kaiser, and Kaitlyn’s CADD pump was figured out and re programmed (by a super helpful and awesome nurse!). The pump was a spazz, all on its own, and separately from Kaitlyn’s line having resistance (which is not the end of the world, and can happen). Tomorrow she’ll go in and have her line looked at and flushed better (they had better terms, but I already forgot them).  Kaitlyn felt pretty miserable the majority of today. She slept most of the day; and when she was up, she wasn’t feeling good at all. Tomorrow is a new day, and for that I am so so thankful. And while today was hard, we had some amazing moments too. Kai + police gear+ sticker mustaches=  a lot of fun. The CADD pump is working tonight, and tomorrow I’m ordering a new one. This one and I are breaking up.