May 20th, 2009

The new car seats arrived today!  They take up the whole second row of seats in our Yukon XL.  I don't know how people fit these things in cars.  Of course, ours are rear facing and reclined, so that probably makes a difference.

Today, we met the ENT that is going to remove Carver's Tonsils and Adenoids.  He's going to check the schedule and get Carver's surgery scheduled as soon as possible.  He said that we should expect to be in the Hospital for at least one night, but it could likely be longer - I'm bummed about being in the hospital for even an hour.  He said that the Sleep Study results indicated that 50% of Carver's Apnea is due to obstructive Sleep Apnea and the other 50% is due to Central Sleep Apnea.  When I asked what Central Sleep Apnea was, he told me that the brain forgets to tell the lungs that he needs to breath.  He said this is common in Spastic CP kids.  He said that sometimes removing the T&A's will cause the Central Sleep Apnea to improve or go away.  They believe that some of the Central Sleep Apnea is triggered by the obstruction.  Obviously, the hope is that all of the Sleep Apnea will go away or a least improve.  I asked why it has gotten worse lately.  He said that he really doesn't have an answer, but suggested that even a sore throat could cause enough swelling to push him over the edge based on the size of his Tonsils.  Carver has had a slight cold the last few weeks/month, so this seems to make sense.  I asked why they needed to remove both the T&A's and he said that many times when they remove large Tonsils and leave the Adenoids, the Adenoids grow down causing add'l obstruction.  When they remove the Adenoids and not the Tonsils, the Tonsils will grow causing add'l obstruction.  In addition, he said that typically both are causing the obstruction and that if the Tonsils are large that normally the Adenoids are equally large.  Since Carver's Tonsils are 3+ (scale is 1-4 with 4 being the largest possible), he believes by removing both the T&A's we should see improvement.  I sure hope they're right, because this Sleep Apnea thing is really scary stuff.

Our Pulmanologist said that we will have to wait 4-6 weeks between surgeries, so Carver will have to wait a while to get his second ear.  Another bummer, but obviously the Sleep Apnea issue takes precedence over the ear.