I needed to pick Anthony up early for therapy.
He was in p.e., and was he loving it!!!
I just need to make sure they are not having him too layered when he exercises.
It works his heart too much, but the exercise is so excellent for him!
On Super Bowl Sunday, we headed over to Seattle for Anthony to have a sleep study.
With his lung not working, we have to do everything we can to make things easier and healthier for his good lung.
One thing that can help is, if he needs it, having tonsils and adenoids removed.
Another thing would be giving him supplemental oxygen at night to saturate his lungs with oxygen, if he has sleep apnea.
Typically with apnea, a c-pap machine is used. But, Anthony wouldn't tolerate that on his face.
When he is fighting a cold or flu, Anthony's oxygen saturations do plummet and he tolerates a well-ventilated, lightweight mask on his face, for oxygen.
So, if he has apnea, we'd do oxygen at night even when he's well.
Before the Super Bowl...
Watching the half-time show with his cape half off.
Dancing along. ;)
He would lose interest and play with the blankets and toys in the ottoman, then look back every once in a while to see the action.
No, he's not praying, he's clapping.
Anthony LOVES hugging Gran-Nana!
Lilly had black marks under eyes to watch the game with.
Taking pictures of me taking pictures of them. :)
We left Lilly and Maggie at Nana's and went to the sleep study.
Starting to get sensors put everywhere.
Soft gauze wrapped the sensors to keep them in place.
There were sensors on Anthony's legs to measure movement if he kicked in the night.
There was a sensor under his nose to measure temperature to see if he was having too much CO2.
He had a sensor for the oximeter, which measures how much oxygen saturation is in his system and his heart rate.
I think there were heart sensors and there were the ones on his head.
Keeping the cords together in one place.
This sleep study was a big adventure.
Anthony had been sick with a cold for a couple weeks before, needing oxygen at night for that time.
The 4-5 days before, Anthony did not need oxygen and was doing great, health-wise!
When we drove over the mountain pass, with a high elevation for him, Anthony's oxygen was 97% at the lowest, which is excellent!
During the sleep study was a different story.
We'll get an official report on Tuesday, but I got a preliminary one that night.
Anthony had basic apnea for the first 4 hours. He would stop breathing, his oxygen sats would go down, but then he'd do fine, oxygen-wise, as soon as he took a breath again.
At some point, his sats were low enough to do some blow-by oxygen, but he still recovered his percentage of oxygen saturation each time.
At 3AM, I woke up to Anthony climbing on top of me in his sleep.
He was chilly, but acting like he had a fever. No fever (I checked), but he was making the pneumonia-coughing sound, trying to work some phlegm out and couldn't.
It was a wet, scary sound that we've heard before when he's been really, really sick, sick enough to be in the hospital.
He kept sleeping, but when I woke up just before 5AM to that same cough sound, he was so hot and moaning from misery. His temp was 102.9.
With the fever and the cough, the tech and I decided it would be best for me to bring him over Lake Washington to Children's ER, where they are familiar with Anthony.
She gave me statistics for the night, which is not normally done until a follow-up visit with Pulmonary.
After those first 4 hours, Anthony had an oxygen flow of 6 liters, and was still not saturating above 88%. Not good.
Rather than going to a 24-hour pharmacy on the way for Tylenol, we went straight across the huge bridge to the ER.
This is huge for me since I've always had nightmares about drowning and have extreme anxiety on big bridges and especially when there are several lanes of traffic.
But, traffic was really light because of the early hour, and I did great!!!!!!!!!
That right there was a miracle.
By the time we got to the ER, Anthony's fever was down, but not gone.
Because of his history, we did a chest x-ray and a nose swab to check for the flu.
If it was the onset of flu, they could give him tamiflu.
The swab was negative, thankfully.
Chest x-ray was better than December's.
Anthony recognized the x-ray room because of the Buzz and Woody decals on the wall.
The ER doctor wasn't familiar with us and wanted us to be admitted for 24 hours.
But, when he consulted with Pulmonary, they sang our praises (which they don't often do, I guess) and said we'd be fine at home since we know how to take care of the oxygen need, have the equipment, and we go to the hospital when he warrants it.
Coming back home, Anthony's saturations got as low as 91%, but he was in the mid-90's most of the way and we didn't need to turn the oxygen on.
That night, he didn't need oxygen, but just as we were about to wake him up for school the next morning, Anthony's oximeter started alarming and he did need oxygen.
We kept him home that day and let him sleep.
The next day, Anthony had goop in his eyes.
Big, NASTY green goop.
And he had a cough.
So we went back to our own pediatrician and he was put back on antibiotics.
Anthony finally got to go back to school, with the doctor's approval, on Friday.
He missed 4 days just from this kind of stuff.
Poor boy has missed so much school this year.
On the mountain pass, it wasn't snowing too much at the top of the mountain, but at our closer rest stop, it was dumping!!!
I'm grateful that we had to spend so much money for our studded tires.
Back at home, Anthony started getting really wild each day, and doing crazier than normal things.
He was in the kitchen and I came in to check on him.
This is what I found.
Cat food in the pans and Kitchenaid bowl.
He also had hand towels all over the floor since he had been playing with the dirty dishes in the sinks and there was a lot of water on the floor from that.
It only took him about 3 minutes to be this busy.
I figured he couldn't do much more damage and let him continue with the cat food for a few more minutes while I was out of the room.
When I came back in, the cat food was back in the bucket and the pans were in the cupboard....they all got washed later though!
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