Keep forgetting to logon to this forum. Anyway, I've just read the posts about holidays and wondered if this would be a good topic for the December newsletter. Members could provide suggestions/ recommendations on places to holiday with a child with a trachy. We had quite an unstable first 18 months with Dominic and chose to wait until he was oxygen and CPAP free before risking a holiday - which we did for the first time last month.
So, to start the ball rolling.....
We went to Centre Parc's Sherwood Forest, we chose this as it is quite near a good teaching hospital in Nottingham. Centre Parc's were very helpful and have a special booking line for people with disabilities. As we were unable to take the cancellation insurance due pre-existing medical conditions Centre Parc's also stated that if we needed to cancel we would be able to rebook. This was tested when Dominic decided to get RSV (in April!) meaning we had to rearrange our original week to June. We were charged to move the week (£30 I think), and had to pay a bit more as lodges in June are more expensive than April, but at least we did not lose all our money either. In hindsight, I maybe should have taken out holiday insurance, but it is not really something I thought about when holidaying in the UK!
There was lots to keep a very active 2 year old busy, but a couple of play areas were in or near sand. But, other than that, and obviously not being able to use one of the main attractions, the pool, there is lots to do. There is also a nurse on site, we never visited, and I'm not sure if they would know how to deal with a child with a trachy, but I found this reassuring all the same.
Looking forward to hearing everyone elses holiday ideas. We could maybe give an award for the most ambitious holiday with a child with a tracheostomy (obviously, I would lose!!!!).
1 comment:
We've just returned from 2 weeks in not-so-sunny Cornwall. sam is finally oxygen free during waking hours so that made things a lot less stressful. We booked a holiday cottage so were free to do our own thing. Our community children's nurse spoke to the nearest hospital advising us that we were holidaying in the area and what Sam's condition was and she gave us a copy of the letter to take with us if we needed to attend hospital (which we didn't!). Sam had lots of fun on the beach - he's not really interested in digging in the sand, he prefers to just run around (freedom, now he's off the oxygen. Of course, one of us is always 'on duty' running round after him ;)
The only incident we had was on one beach there was a stream running down the beach to the sea, it was only shallow so I happily let Sam run in and out of it following closely behind. Then he tripped and fell in, face first! He came up spluttering, but was absolutely fine, thankfully.
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