It appears Carter has mild sleep apnea, right on the cutoff between normal and mild. So the good news is, he barely has it. He had a handful of episodes--though most appear to have been a brain processing issue rather than an obstruction, so I'm not sure what that means for him. I assume it's just the maturing of the synapses in his brain--similar to why it took Jacob so long to be dry at night. We are following up with an ear, nose, and throat doctor to see what their thoughts are on his breathing, as it's clear he snores and has some difficulty breathing through his nose. No matter how congested, it seems his body can't transition over to his mouth, which makes for very difficult listening on my end when he's sick.
But what did concern them more is that he roused himself a lot. Over the course of nine hours, he had a decent number of wakeups, but they weren't significantly long and I honestly think one of those was when he had to pee right before it was time to wake up and he was awake for the 10 minutes or so before we hit 6am and had to leave. But he had over 100 "arousals", which are not wake-ups but rather enough brain activity to stimulate movement in his extremities, primarily his legs. In essence it amounts to one every five minutes or so, which is crazy. Clearly he's not getting truly restful sleep that way, even though his unlimited energy might make you think otherwise.
We had to go get bloodwork done to look at a couple levels, primarily his ferritin, which is the iron stored in the body (as opposed to in the blood). From what I can tell, if he's not getting enough iron on a daily basis, the body steals iron from that storage to keep the main iron level normal, but then clearly the ferritin level will be lower. Lower ferritin levels can cause restless leg syndrome, which could be his problem. And, based on his results, that's probably what's happening. His iron clocked in around 34. The low end of the "normal" range is in the 20s, and the high is 250, so yeah, he's low. I chalk that up to him not loving veggies and not eating a ton of meat. Between dinners at home and lunches at daycare he probably gets a decent amount of each, but he eats a four-year-old portion and maybe not even that sometimes, so it's hard to know for sure how much he gets from nutrition. So, we have to supplement.
The PA that I met with explained the options, a liquid vs. a pill. The liquid can stain teeth and doesn't taste very good, and honestly the option she presented for disguising it was rather elaborate and not particularly Carter-friendly. I was definitely leaning toward the pill, even though he's never swallowed a pill in his life. She suggested using M&M's for practice, and I figured Jacob picked it up pretty quickly, so why not? Well, when we picked up the prescription, they had filled it as a liquid. Ugh. We tried it straight one morning because it said it was cherry flavored, and that was not fun. I think we almost had a flashback to the time they didn't flavor Carter's reflux medication when he was a baby and he puked it all up because it tasted so bad. He was nauseous after this one, for quite a while. I decided to wait a couple more days until I could grab some orange juice or something, as it's best to take it with vitamin C. Of course, you're also supposed to take it on an empty stomach and an hour before you eat, so pretty much there's never a good time in our schedule for that. His absorption probably won't be maximized, but it's all we can do. We'll see how mixing it with juice goes, though. Oh, and we'll have to monitor the lower half, as constipation can be a problem. Yay. Good thing I already have to keep an eye on Jacob for that anyway.
We'll see if it makes a difference. We go back for more bloodwork (oh joy) in three months. The ENT appointment is Monday, so hopefully we'll get some quicker answers there on the rest of it. They may just want to give him a nose spray, or if they really don't like what they see, I suppose it could go to tonsils and adenoids...but I doubt it, at least at this stage. He does have a giant tonsil stone, which is gross but harmless, so I wonder if he's prone to those, will they consider his tonsils a higher risk for picking up germs and breeding infections? We'll see.
Ultimately, he's a pretty happy kid and seems well-rested enough most of the time. I wasn't sure a few months back when the bad reports came daily at daycare, but recently he's been good so who knows? I really just want him to breathe comfortably, sleep well, and minimize the sicknesses as much as we can. Speaking of which, his cough is still hanging in there post-antibiotics, so even though it's better, I'm still watching that to make sure it doesn't get worse again. I have something similar now too--just sick enough with a cough to be annoying, but not sick enough to disrupt normal life--and it's a little discouraging to know Carter's has been hanging in there for almost a month. Poor kid.
But he's still so cute, and how could you not want to make him the happiest possible? So we keep trying...
No comments:
Post a Comment