Scheduled for Surgery

So, if you’re following the Breanna saga you might remember that the last post detailed the visit to the ENT who said we’d be scheduled for a few procedures in the next couple of weeks. Well, the night of that visit as I was writing the blog post, I was sitting in Breanna’s room, listening to her breathe and making the sounds that she had been making when we were sent to the ER when she was a week old – kind of a sighing sound as she exhaled. Those continued on and off all night long as I sat & dozed on and off in the recliner in her room. The next day was filled with different sounds as she breathed, a high pitched gasping sound as she inhaled. Again, it wasn’t constant but came and went throughout the day and I basically stayed with her as much as I could as the other kiddos got some quality tv time 😉

We’ve been seeing so many doctor’s that I wasn’t sure who to call or if anything could be done.  But early in the afternoon I was just about to start making calls when the ENT’s office called to talk to me about scheduling surgery.  They gave me a date of November 6th . . . another 2 week+ wait for a procedure.  I told them about the breathing issues we’d been having and they transferred me to a nurse who told me to get her to our pediatrician that day and if they couldn’t see her to get to an urgent care or ER. The pediatrician was able to see us and I showed her a video that had Breanna making that gasping noise a couple of times, but not nearly as much as she had been doing before I got smart enough to start recording.  She said the noise was coming from her throat, not her lungs and her best guess was that Breanna’s throat had some inflammation from the scope they had used the previous day at a the ENT.  We were sent home and told to watch her and get her to the ER if it got worse during the night.

Luckily, we had already been through the worst and she continued to improve, but this new development got the ENT’s office getting persistent with our insurance company to get approvals taken care of to speed things up. And they really did speed things up!  We got a call today that she is scheduled for surgery and an overnight hospital stay THIS Thursday. This is good news and we are hopeful that some things can be resolved during the bronchoscopy, endoscopy, and possible clipping of her floppy voice box if they find it is causing a problem. So, wish us luck!

Can you imagine sleeping like this? Oxygen strapped to her face, arms swaddled so she doesn’t pull out the tubes, and strapped into a chair that keeps her on an incline . . . crazy!  And yes, it’s a blue chair even though she’s a girl – it’s called hand-me-downs 🙂