Thursday, August 27, 2009

After some mind clearing..



I'm sorry that I never updated yesterday. I needed a little attitude adjustment before speaking to the entire world. I am better now and have had some time to accept some things that are not a huge deal.

At the swallow test.... Henry did wonderful. I felt like he was latching on and not loosing too much liquid out of his mouth. The doctor had me holding the bottle and feed him different consistencies of liquid while they took an X-ray video of his swallowing skills. The doctor kept saying, "Oh, not good! We had penetration..", and "Oops, there he has done it again." By the looks to me, he was doing great. But hearing all of this from the doctor, and not knowing what it was saying- gave me a slight panic attack. I started to sweat, then my hand started shaking, and soon I was totally blacking out. I had to tell the doctor that I needed to get out of the room.

After the study was done, she explained to me that Henry is not 100% coordinated at his eating skills. That he almost got the liquid into his airwaves. That can cause silent aspiration, and that can get fluid into your lungs. SO- they recommended leaving in the feeding tube and doing every other feeding by bottle using a thickener called "thick it" to make it easier for Henry to direct the fluid down his throat. Then doing the other feedings through the feeding tube.

So- after hearing this news, to be honest I was PISSED. In my mind this was an entire new problem that has been addressed outside of the true reason that we are here in the first place. And not that I'm trying to rush Henry's progress, but this could prolong our stay here. This was my thought process yesterday.

BUT- as the evening went on, Henry did great at all of his feedings. At 9:00 this morning, the doctor met us in our room to observe Henry's feeding. He did great. Her instruction to us today is to feed every feeding by bottle and see how he handles that. She will be back for his noon feeding to see how he follows up with 2 bottles in a row. If all goes well, we will have this horrible feeding tube out in no time.
Keep your fingers crossed at noon today!