Catheter System

This year, Macayla started struggling from time to time to empty her bladder on her own. We have had to use catheters often and had a system recommended to us that has been great. 

Rusch/MMG makes a self-contained catheter system that can be used by anyone. It is portable and has all that you need. It has Beta-dine swabs for sterilization, a small, fold-out chucks pad, gloves, and a bag with a self-contained catheter and lubricant.

There is a cap on the top of the bag that covers the tip of the catheter. There is lubricant inside the cap. Once it is removed, the catheter extends out of the bag and once it is done, it retracts back into the bag and the cap can be put back on. The bag can be torn open and emptied and

 then thrown away. We have found it to be a quick, simple and convenient system.

Zevex Feeding Pump Trouble Shooting II

The only other time I have had a problem with this feeding system, is when you load the bag full of food and the tubing is primed but every time I push the "Run/Pause" button, it tells me "No Flow Out" immediately. In other words, the pump did not even push any formula and it gave me this reading. I will double check the tubing to make sure it is not crimped. I manually push formula through and it flows fine, but the pump still says there is no flow out. This happened twice a month or so and if I changed bags, it solved the problem. However, that means a whole bag was wasted and our equipment provider is a stickler for only sending the order out when they can bill for it and not a day sooner.Then I discovered the culprit. If you look at the blue set that goes in the pump, you will notice how it is attached to the clear plastic.

Notice the blue nodules that insert up into the clear plastic on both sides. I discovered that if one of those is not fully seated, the pump will not function. It must be pushed up into the clear plastic as far as it can.

This little deviation in the blue tubing stops everything. But it is simple enough to fix and that means less feed bags lost.