Maple Leaf Mission

A few weeks ago a wonderful lady with a group called the Maple Leaf Mission came out to do a photo shoot with Junior. The Maple Leaf Mission does photo shoots for those with chronic/life threatening medical conditions. Be sure to check out their website to learn more about this great group.
The photographer did a fabulous job and I love all the pictures(Just a couple of the many pictures).

Fall Crafts

Things have been crazy around here so I haven't been posting much even on Junior's regular blog. He has been dealing with a lot of asthma issues, add in plenty of appointments and we haven't had time for anything.

I plan to get back at it as soon as possible. In the mean time here are a few pics of Juniors fall crafts this year.
He made a fall magnet using an egg spinner to paint with.
The Egg spinner with a piece of paper in the bottom
Drop in a couple balls
Put the top on and push the spinner
Let your painted circles dry(the slits in the middle are because there is a plastic piece in the middle of the egg spinner)
Then add some stickers(I laminated it before adding stickers so it would hold up better as a fridge magnet), we added a large leaf sticker in the middle to cover the slits.
Lots of stickers. After Junior finished with the stickers we glued a magnet to the back and it was all ready to hang on the fridge.

With all the craziness in life we have only done 2 fall crafts so far this year.
Our second one is a mural using different beans. Junior loved the murals at the grape festival so we decided to do one of our own. I actually did a post about it awhile back and you can check it out here. I never added finished pics though so here are some pics of the finished product.
The finished pumpkin before painting. I thought it looked cool like this but Junior thought it had to be orange.
Junior's finished pumpkin
I hope to have time for more fall crafts this season. Tomorrow if Junior's asthma doesn't get too bad we will be going to get pumpkins. This year I am pulling out the glitter, paints, and other craft supplies and letting him decide how he wants to decorate/carve his pumpkin.


Over on Junior's regular blog we recently posted our 1000th post so Junior is doing a giveaway. He is giving away a copy of one of his favorite dvd sets so if you are a Family Matters fan click on over and leave a comment(this is for Season one of Family Matters). He will draw a name later this week.

The J Tube, Blended Diet, and Food Safety

I posted this a few days ago on Junior's regular blog and thought I would also post it here.
Answering the most common question/concern I get when I talk about the blended diet being given through the J tube.

Quite a few people do the blended diet through the G tube and this way it can be given bolus. Very few do the diet through the J tube so I get a lot of questions about how we are accomplishing this. One thing I am asked about most frequently is food safety so I thought I would do a post about it. Giving feeds through the J tube means food must be given slowly through a feeding pump over a long amount of time. Junior is on his feeding all night so it would certainly not be safe for many foods to be out of the fridge for that amount of time. I also don't want to be getting up every hour during the night to rinse out and refill his feeding bag. Here is how we handle that problem.
I took a regular size back pack(would love to find a full size insulated back pack so if you spot one let me know) added a velcro loop, inside near the top, to hold the feeding bag.
I add a small slit to the bottom to thread the tube so it can attach to the pump.
Junior has one of his medications shipped to us and it is packed in these re-freezable ice bricks.
They are prefect and will stay frozen for up to 12 hours if you use several. I put each one in a zip lock bag. I then place 2 behind the feeding bag, one on either side, and one in the front pocket of the back pack.
This makes for a fairly heavy back pack to hang on the IV pole but we have had no problems with it. The food stays plenty cold and is just the right temp by the time it goes from the pump to Junior(and it stays cold all night). All that ice sweats quite a bit so I keep a cloth over the top of the feeding pump and also tape a piece of split gauze over the "in" tube on the pump. Don't want water getting into the pump and causing issues.
I keep two back packs available because they do get damp from the ice and need to be washed every few days.
During the 2-3 hours Junior is on the pump during the day we are able to use the mini back pack that came with the pump. It can only hold one ice pack so can not keep things cold over night.
Another thing we do if Junior is going to be off the pump more then a half hour during the night is back flush the line. I flush the line going into Junior's tube and then clamp the feeding line. I then take the tubing out of the pump pinch it so fluid can go up into the pump bag and then push about an ounce or so of water backwards through the line. This means food is not sitting in the line with the risk of it going bad. Junior at times needs treatments during the night and it would be dangerous for any food to sit in the line for the hour or more it takes for his treatments.
So now you know more then you ever wanted to know about how we deal with that tricky food safety and the J tube question.

Shower Chair

I thought I would share a few of our "can't live without" pieces of equipment.
Near the top of that list would be Junior's lift system which I posted about awhile back. Click here to check out that post.

Another piece of equipment that is very helpful and makes life easier is Junior's bath chair. We have the Columbia Elite Omni bath transfer chair. It is on wheels so I can move it to where Junior is and use his lift to put him on the chair.
He can then be rolled into the bathroom.
Our bathroom is tiny as you can see in the pics. The chair slides up next to the frame which straddles the side of the bath tub.

It then locks into place
press the lever on the chair and it slides across into the tub and locks onto the frame.
Unlock and move the wheeled base and you are all set.
This chair also comes with a toilet seat which is what we had for several years. As Junior got bigger it became a safety risk because it sat him too high and made the chair top heavy. We got the new full mesh, seat seen in the picture,s put on today.

I will be sharing a few more of our "can't live without" equipment items and also medical machines. I know these aren't adaptions but it lets others know what is available to them.
Do you have items you "can't live without" which you would like to share? We would love to hear about them, just drop me an email hjoythom@yahoo.com.