Andrew has an artificial opening in his stomach where his Dialysis tube exits his body :

 We go out of our way to keep it protected, we have to.  Our nurses call it his “life line”, which sounds so dramatic, but essentially it’s what it is. So as you can imagine we have “RULES”  to follow as far as keeping it clean and sterile.  Like, we change the dressing everyday. First we clean the area using betadine swab sticks, apply some gentamicin cream, two 2×2 gauze pads and then cover it all with tegaderm.  He wears an elastic mesh belt thing around his waist to keep his “tube” close to his body so that it doesn’t get tugged or dirty and he’s NOT allowed to be submerged in water.  Like he can’t take a bath ( he showers !) or go in a pool, lake or ocean.

We had a freakishly HOT weekend. Like 96 degrees and we don’t have air conditioning  … most homes in our area don’t because we live near the coast. It’s not suppose to be that HOT.  So we were forced really to bust out the slip n slide.  And Andrew LOVED it !

I totally justified this.  He was in moving water, his tube was covered and it was only for like 10 minutes at most.  And I obviously changed his bandage the minute he was done.  He had the BEST time ! He was laughing and smiling and splashing …   for those short 10 minutes he wasn’t a baby with kidney disease on dialysis.  He was just a boy enjoying his day

And for THAT, I’d break the “rules” again!