There Will Be a Day

There is a really great song called "There Will Be a Day" by Jeremy Camp. If you are not familiar with the song, please click on the link below and listen. The song (or a particular lyric from the song) is integral to this story.

Even if you are familiar with the song, I highly recommend you click on the link anyway and watch the video in fullscreen mode.  Someone took the song and added some very beautiful images to it.  It will really get you in the right mood for this Easter weekend!  :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ccS7r8pMU

Now for the story:

Marissa hates to be suctioned. We have to use this awful contraption my friend Hope has lovingly dubbed "evil thing".


We have to squirt saline down her trach to break up the junk and then stick this tube down her trach to suck the saline and the junk out.

I understand suctioning her trach has got to be uncomfortable.

We have to lay her down and sometimes restrain her just to do this.

I apologize for the poor quality of the video. It was too dark for the camera to focus correctly.

She used to not mind the process so much. She started throwing fits around the time she got pneumonia in February. I think it really bothers her to be suctioned when she is sick. It hurts to cough and we have to suction so much more often. I think she has just developed a habit of fighting every time we have to do this.

Every time.

Thankfully now that she is wearing her PMV all day, we only have to do this when we take the PMV off which is only a couple of times a day.

This morning I needed to suction her and, as with any unpleasant experience Marissa has to go through, it is made better by playing music or a video. Jeremy Camp's "There Will Be a Day" came on, but Marissa still fought me. She fought me so much (what you see in the video above is mild) that I had to put my leg over her body and contort my own body just to get the job done. As I was doing so and as I was thinking about how I hate what I have to do to her and to myself just to suction her, the lyric "there will be a place with no more suffering" came on.

Now, please don't think that I am trying to make light of the song or its beautiful meaningful lyrics, but when he sang that line, I heard "there will be a place with no more suctioning". Seriously. And I had to laugh to myself. And then I laughed out loud.

Sometimes my doom and gloom attitude and my pessimism gets to me and I think we might never get rid of the trach. Marissa's trach brings with it so much extra stuff, so many extra tasks, so much extra unpleasantness. When I heard that line and converted it in my head, it reminded me that all of this is temporary. I know of kiddos who will never get rid of their trachs. But this song reminds me that there will come a time when we will all be whole, a place where trachs and suctioning will be no more.

There will be a day.