With James having his spinal fusion surgery next month—fingers crossed insurance doesn’t deny us again—we’re not sure if he will be up for travelling this summer, so we decided to take a Spring Break trip to Indianapolis. For longer trips, we normally drive at night because James seems to travel better when he’s sleeping. With Indy only about 4 hours away, we decided to try driving during the day. He did good, except for one minor problem. More on that shortly.
Driving during daytime hours, as opposed to in the middle of the night, allowed us to make some stops along the way. One of those stops on the way to Indianapolis was at the Albanese Candy Factory Store In Merrillville, Indiana where we stocked up on lots of gummy bears and worms…probably too much.
Okay, so back to that problem I mentioned earlier. Shortly before we had gotten to the hotel, Stacy, who was sitting next to James in the back seat, started smelling something. She eventually determined it was poop. That’s not abnormal. We got to the hotel, checked in, and as I was bringing our luggage from the car to the room, Stacy gave James a diaper change. Without getting all gross, let’s just say that he had a loose stool and it had seeped out of his diaper. Fortunately, the hotel had a laundry room so we were able to do a load of laundry there and not have to venture out to find a laundromat.
That was day 1 of our vacation and I wish I could say that was the worst part of the trip, but it wasn’t. That was just the beginning. Something happened every day for the first half of our vacation. It got to the point where we were wondering what was going to happen next.
Day 2: The Old Spaghetti Factory, Circle Center Mall, and I Get Sick
Many years ago—before James was born—Stacy and I discovered The Old Spaghetti Factory on one of our trips to Fan Fair (now called CMA Fest) in Nashville. It quickly became one of our go to restaurants whenever we went to Nashville. When we found that there was one in downtown Indianapolis, we had to go. They have really good pasta and good-sized portions. Something that I ate must not have agreed with me. After we finished our lunch, we went across the street to walk around the Circle Center Mall. Shortly after we got into the mall, I started to feel a bit sick to my stomach and had to quickly find a bathroom. I felt much better after I did my business. No idea what that was about.
Day 3: Children’s Museum and James’ G-Tube Extension Leaked
On day 3 of our vacation we went to check out the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Holy cow that was impressive. It’s a bit pricey, but totally worth it in my opinion. After we got into the museum, we decided to find an area to give James a little bit of tummy time before we started our adventure. As Stacy was about to get James out of his wheelchair, she noticed that one of the ports in his g-tube extension had opened and leaked formula and stomach juices all over his lap. Poor kid! Stacy always keeps a change of clothes in the van for situations like this so I ran back to get them. I held up a blanket to block the view of Stacy changing James’ clothes. After that incident, we all had a good time at the museum. We took well over 100 pictures, so I obviously can’t post them all here. It was tough to narrow it down, but here is just a fraction of the pictures we took.
Day 4: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and Bedbugs
I woke up to find a bedbug crawling on my pillow right next to my head! Not going to lie, I may have screamed. After we frantically search our bodies—James, too—I started ripping apart the beds searching for more bugs while Stacy called the front desk. They were very apologetic and found us another room to move to. I went down to the front desk to grab the key to the new room and did a full search of the room for any sign of bedbugs. I know that they’re very good at hiding, but I didn’t see any traces of dried blood or anything that would indicate that there were or had been bedbugs in the room.
By the time we had moved all of our stuff to our new room, Stacy and I were beyond hungry! James had already had one meal and was getting close to getting his second meal of the day. I guess that’s one of the perks of being tube fed…you don’t have to go searching for food. We found a restaurant close to the Speedway Museum that sounded good…and it was…Charlie Brown’s Pancake and Steak House.
Day 5: Indianapolis Zoo
Up to this point we had something happen every day of the trip. Fortunately, the bedbugs on day 4 were the last of it. No other issues for the remainder of the trip. Thank God!
It’s kind of funny. It seems like whenever we go on vacation, we take James to the zoo. I think we may have gone to our local zoo once when James was a baby. That’s it. We might think about taking him back now that he’s older and can probably process it better.
Anyway, here are a few pics from the Indianapolis Zoo.
Day 6: Outlet Mall
By day six of our trip, we had done everything that we had planned to do. We could either go home early, relax in the room and do nothing, or find something to do. We decided to do something so we drove down to the Indiana Premium Outlets in Edinburgh. I don’t really have anything to say (good or bad) about the mall. We just did some browsing at some of the stores and grabbed a bite to eat. One of the stores that we stopped into was Rocket Fizz. We had heard they had a bunch of crazy soda pop flavors, and since we collect bottles to display in our kitchen, we thought we would pick up a couple. This is what we chose:
Peanut Butter and Jelly for Stacy, and Sweet Corn for me. Stacy didn’t care too much for the PB and J, but that Sweet Corn was damn good! I will definitely have to get that again.
Day 7: Time to Go Home
After a week away from home—and several mishaps—we were ready to get back home. We stopped at Fair Oaks Farms for lunch on the way home. We didn’t do any of the “adventure” stuff. Maybe another time. We just wanted to eat, get back on the road, and get home.
Overall, I thought it was a good trip. Yes, we had some issues in the first half of the trip that made us wonder if we were cursed for some reason. For the most part, it was enjoyable. Stacy doesn’t think we’ll ever go back. We’ll see.
James seemed to enjoy himself. He didn’t have any of his respiratory episodes the entire time we were gone, which was a relief. That is one of the things we worry about when travelling. If James has respiratory issues when we’re out of town, where to we take him? Will he receive good care? Do they know how to handle kids like James?
He was perfectly fine on this trip, though. But for whatever reason, the night we got home, he was up at 3 am having one of his episodes. Low sats and high heartrate. We’re still trying to figure this out. Stacy thought maybe a little bit of oxygen at night might help. He hadn’t used oxygen at all on our trip—nighttime included—so why does he need it at home? Maybe there’s something in our house. I don’t even know where to begin trying to figure that out.
