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juillet 26, 2005
We're home!
Hi everyone,
We're home now! Maddie had lots feeding tests today, which we able to do while we were in the hospital, so that was nice. What prompted this last bronchoscopy was a coughing/choking episode that both Mike and I heard coming from her crib on Fri. night. At the time I didn't really think too much of it because it was coming from her crib, and I thought that maybe she had just been sucking on her blankie and gotten it a little too far in. She's been coughing so easily lately. She was coughing more than normal on Sat. and had a huge coughing episode eating Jell-O, so I investigated her crib further on Sat. night and found a chunk missing from a brand new board book... So, decided to watch her a bit more closely on her b-day (Sun.) and see if there was any improvement, but she was still coughing a lot when eating. So, Mon. I called the ped. to tell them what was up and see what they wanted us to do, which of course, with her history, was to take her to the hospital to do another bronchoscopy to look to see if there was anything in there. (If you leave a foreign body in the lungs it can cause a lot of serious problems later). The ER doc. said her breath sounds were abnormal so I felt pretty good consenting to surgery. Well, they didn't find anything in there this time. So I guess that's good but sad that Maddie had to go thru surgery again. We did however get several consultations from different doctors on these problems we've been having. The general surgeon doesn't believe doing a dilation on her esophagus is going to help at all and when he put the scope down her esophagus it slide in nicely, so that goes against the scar tissue theory. So, at this time, probably not going to do the esophagus surgery, though I think if she truly aspirates again I will push for a resection where they remove a small portion of her esophagus (the portion that may be giving her trouble). Her feeding studies looked completely normal, so no answers there. The biggest issue we're having right now is her coughing episodes while she's eating because they are always going to want to do a bronchoscopy if the episode is severe enough. The reason she's coughing so much is that dang apple probably did a little damage to her lungs that has caused them to be more "reactive." So, we saw two pulmonologists today and they are going to up her steroid inhaler dose and if there's no improvement in the coughing, they will put her on a course of oral steroids; we've got to get this part solved so we don't have to do unnecessary bronchoscopies. About what caused her to aspirate the apple (and chicken), still don't know. The surgeon did say that her heart defect could have damaged the peristalsis of her esophagus (this is the muscular movement controlled by nerves that moves food down the GI tract). We can't do anything to fix the nerves. So, we just are doing what we've been doing. We may start her on some bigger chunks of food soon, we'll see. She passed the feeding studies with flying colors, but of course she didn't cough once for them...Murphy’s Law. Not too concerned with that though because she didn't cough while she ate before she aspirated the apple anyway, and we know she's coughing now because of lung irritation from the surgery and apple. So, I'll let you all know if anything changes!
Posted by carriec at juillet 26, 2005 06:50 PM
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Comments
Keep updating us. We haven't forgotten the little girl (or y'all)!
Posted by: lynnp at juillet 26, 2005 09:57 PM
Whew! We're praying.
Posted by: katiek at juillet 28, 2005 04:19 PM