Marno’s grommet replacement successful, but tracheal tube is to remain
Marno will have to continue living with a tracheal tube until he has grown a bit more.
Baby Marno Greyvenstein’s hospital visit on 4 March yielded bittersweet results for the family as he had a grommet replaced but the tracheal tube had to stay.
Marno was born on 23 August 2016, and has spent just about as many days of his short life in a hospital bed as in the comfort of his home in Radiokop. He was born with a host of complications, including not having a corpus callosum, having severe micrognathia, plus a hole in the septum of his heart, as well as being unable to hear.
The first two attempts at a cochlear implant to gift the opportunity to hear came in February and April last year, with the final and successful attempt in June 2018. Prior to his third cochlear implant operation, Marno was taken off the oxygen which was a huge step forward, as it finally meant he was strong enough to breathe on his own.
Read more:
https://roodepoortnorthsider.co.za/288858/baby-marno-remains-strong-during-his-fight-print-rough-start-to-the-year-for-baby-marno-web/
Once Marno had recovered from the cochlear implant operation, the device was switched on to determine whether it actually helped his hearing, which showed positive results. However, despite a good end to 2018, he had a rocky start to 2019 when he was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit at Life Fourways Hospital on 14 January. Marno stayed strong however and returned home eight days later.
The next step for Marno came last week as he needed to have the grommet replaced as well as undergo a laryngoscopy to see if the tracheal tube could be removed. According to a post on the Baby Marno Greyvenstein Facebook page, the grommet was replaced successfully but the laryngoscopy didn’t yield such favourable results.
“It showed that he might have a cleft in his voice box and that will prevent us from removing the trachea successfully,” the post read. The post further explained that if they were to remove the tracheal tube they would have to wait until Marno has grown some more.
