Winter routine after the removal of the tracheostomy tube – recipe Ingredients:
• An inhaler that vaporizes Salvus water into the size of 2.2 micrometer
• Cough machine, which can be operated with sigh and vibration function
• Cordless suction machine
• Vitamins, salted nose spray, alcoholic disinfectant drops for the throat/pharynx
• Dry salt grinding machine for a homemade salt room
• (For an emergency: always have an ambu bag with you)
Usage: Use the above ingredients several times a day to help maintain your health or recover quickly from an illness.
It is 10 o’clock in the morning. I have filled the second floor boys’ bathroom with my respiratory therapy equipment. I have 20 minutes between classes to help Vince with his inhaler, to help him drink, cough, to suction mucus and to assist him in going to the bathroom. It has been the same setup every day for the past three months now. It’s complex, yet it is routinely simple. Vince’s classmates don’t even ask anymore why I am at the school in the mornings. Sometimes we play hide-and-seek during the break, and sometimes they are enthusiastic helpers with Vince’s respiratory tools. Today, for example, while we were using the inhaler, everyone snuck into the boys’ bathroom for a few minutes, and we had a good laugh together.
I am so thankful for my husband who has searched for these special equipment. God provides him with immense wisdom in obtaining the devices we need. And he supports me greatly, because he notices in Vince’s reactions what equipment he needs and in what way. It’s always so wonderful to marvel at God’s immeasurably great, subtle and precise teachings.
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11
Every once in a while pieces of my old life come back to me. I see pictures of getting ready for a presentation or talking to suppliers at my multinational company. In fact, both lives can be accomplished as a program plan and with a lot of stress. Because there is plenty to do in my current life as well. Sometimes, with the morning coughing- inhalation routine I need to add half an hour to stand Vince if I know I won’t have time for it in the evening. On days like these I get up at 4:30 in the morning, so I can finish everything and get to school by 8:20. So I am not surprised at all that by 10 o’clock I am having something for lunch. My current life has a lot of teachings in it, but one of the most important ones is to think like a long-distance runner. I could have left my previous life any time, but I can’t do that with the present one. The working female heart becomes nothing in a second, but the mother’s heart lives in me forever. So it needs to be cared for!
Setting my life up as a long-distance runner has been defined by one of my friends as making lemonade all the time. And I have realized how right she is! There are a lot of sour facts in the circumstances of my life, but I always add a little honey, grate a little ginger and crush some fresh mint leaves into it. Honey can be a family outing. Ginger can be the reliving of long-forgotten ice skating. It can have a minty effect if I finally get to play ping-pong with other moms from Vince’s school or sing karaoke with my childhood friends. But the most important ingredient of my lemonade is water, which is the Word of God in my life. I love to experience that cooling, vitalizing force over and over again when I drink from the water of Life! It can happen by listening to a preaching on YouTube or by checking the congregation’s noon devotion on Facebook. But sometimes I read the Bible and I understand the Word in a slightly different light, or I talk to somebody and the Holy Spirit reminds me of a Chapter or a Verse. The important part is the relationship! God always holds my hand and feeds me with His Word, and this gives me great peace!
“When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty!” Jeremiah 15:16
