If you follow my twitter feed (@pressuresupport) then you know that we had a weird day yesterday. Weird in a good way, but weird nonetheless. It’s not everyday you get to see yourself on a big screen, in a short film, shown in front of an audience. Weird.

You may remember that back in March a film crew came to the house to interview and film us for a short film about families that have children at home on medical technology. Vent families. The film will be used in different training uses for staff of the hospital and with families facing the prospect of going home with medical equipment. Yesterday was our first chance to see the movie.  Along with the two other movies showcasing two other families it was screened for the Pediatric Nursing Grand Rounds. By my count there were about 40 people in attendance from two hospitals,  along with representatives from at least one nursing company and the biggest local medical equipment company.

The three short films (Which will ultimately be edited together into one bigger film) were interspersed with presentations from hospital staff on this month’s topic which was the importance of standardizing the training and educating of parents and caregivers for children going home with medical equipment. The films being just a small part in a very large and worthwhile project that involves countless staff across many different institutions. Having gone through this training ourselves before this effort to standardize the training Karin and I know first hand how important this project is. We feel humbled and honored in being asked to be a part of it. I’d like to thank Jerilyn Devin, the coordinator for the Ventilator Integration Program for thinking of us when looking for participating families.

After the meeting Karin and I were approached by a few hospital administrators and department managers letting us know that they would also be showing the films at their staff meetings. Reminding their own staff of the day-to-day home life that families like ours encounter. That’s pretty cool too. The movies were definitely well received. I even got a few laughs.

All of the videography and production of the movie was done by Sean Devin and Jose Cota Jr. This is their film, and I thank them for being gracious enough to get me a copy of the file and the permission to post it here. They did an amazing job. They took hours and hours of footage and managed to whittle them down to seven and a half minutes that I feel accurately represent the day-to-day life of our home with Liam’s medical technology. The little details that they chose to include made me so happy to see, including the footage of Karin wiping Liam’s face. Anyone who has met us in person can tell you that to spend time with Liam is to spend time wiping his face. Drooly kid, that boy.

I would have loved it if the footage of us outside our house was shot during a beautiful summer day with the lush blooms of all of my yard work but that isn’t something that anybody had any control over. The amount of work and planning and forethought that went into making these movies humbles me greatly about my meager late night typing here. It also would have been cool to not tie Liam into a knot with his circuit while nervously changing his trach in front of a lighting set-up and two cameras but overall I think we did a pretty good job fooling people into thinking that we know what we are talking about.

Besides, I think we can all agree, the show was essentially stolen by our cat Calvin anyway.

*****Because I am ridiculously proud of the discipline, and hard work she has done to accomplish this, and also because I am fairly certain (since she told me) that she wants anyone who hasn’t seen her lately to know, I’m just going to mention here that Karin has lost 35 pounds since this filming. You’re amazing H.B.