The joy of cooking (and eating) after tracheomalacia

For most little kids, a trip to the supermarket is an annoying chore, made tolerable only by the opportunity to request sugary snacks as a reward. But when Charlotte McQueen accompanies her mother, Erin, to the store, it’s a journey marked by imagination and delight. “Mom, can we get that?” she asks, pointing to a can of pureed pumpkin. “Oh, and we’ll need marshmallows and we can make chocolate frosting. It will be a great cake!” At nearly 5 years old, Charlotte is an avid baker — a talent she picked up not at culinary school, but at the Yawkey Family Inn. There, a volunteer taught her and other chronically ill kids how to bake while they waited to undergo treatment at Boston Children’s Hospital. Today, it’s not only impressive that she can bake a cake, but also that she can eat it. For the first several years of her life, Charlotte couldn’t eat by mouth. In fact, she couldn’t even breathe on her own. A scary turn of events “We wanted a home birth,” remembers Erin. “It went smoothly, but then things started going downhill fast.” Charlotte stopped breathing and had to be rushed to a hospital near their home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Once there, she continued to have episodes of apnea and was transported to another local hospital for care. When a clinician there tried to insert a nasogastric (NG) tube, which typically runs through the nose and down the throat into the stomach, Erin and her husband, Mike, knew the problem was even greater than they had ...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Diseases & Conditions Our Patients’ Stories Dori Gallagher Dr. Michael Manfredi Dr. Russell Jennings Esophageal and Airway Treatment Center esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula posterior tracheopexy tracheomalacia Yawkey Fa Source Type: news