Micah's Swallow Study

Today (per the paramedic visit a couple weeks ago) Micah had a swallow study at Vanderbilt. Because of his traumatic hospital/doctor experiences in the past, Micah wasn't, how shall I say.... cooperative. It wasn't terrible by any means. But the thing is, Micah likes to exercise his willpower in anyway he can. And today he tried to let me know how distraught we has to be there by rejecting food, which is sort of the most important part of the study.

But after many dramatic tears, thrashing, yelling "no," clinging to me and not letting go...  I had to switch from the loving "Micah, buddy, its okay, mommy's here. I'm not leaving. They're not going to hurt you. We're just gonna eat. Take a bite Buddy," to a deep, stern, "Micah. That's enough. You eat this right now and then we're going home." Which actually had a better effect.

So once they got the pictures they needed, the long and short of it is exactly what I expected: Micah doesn't chew is food. And he's aspirating on water when he drinks it from his sippy cup. So we are going to check out the speech and language learning center here in town. And we're gonna ditch the sippy's.

We've known since Micah came home that he doesn't really chew. But its understandable considering he never had solid food until he was four. Once he did try solids, he couldn't use his teeth to chew because his molars were all rotted down the nerve. But once we got caps on all of them (and had extensive nerve treatment), he'd already learned that chewing is painful and to avoid it if at all possible. And got quite good at eating without chewing.

He also learned from that lovely eastern European orphanage how to eat his food as quickly as possible so it wasn't taken away by peers or by the big Russian women in white coats. SOOO Micah inhales his food.

Lastly, they asked me again if he has some sort of respiratory infection. Just like everyone who's ever heard Micah breathe at any point in the last 2 1/2 years. To which I gave the answer that I could recite in my sleep. "Micah has sounded like that since we got him but the doctors say he's not sick. He's just really gurgly and its worse after he eats or drinks." Is he aspirating? I don't know. Does he have pneumonia? Don't think so but it does sound like it after he eats. Are they ever going to get to the bottom of that? Hopefully today is a step in that direction.

So.

I'm glad we did the study.

I love Vandy Childrens.

I really loved the speech pathologist.

But I'm tired now and its taking everything in me to write this post. And I won't have time to write this later today because I procrastinated on making two little Native American costumes for "Colonial Day" at Ashley and Emily's school tomorrow. So now I'm gonna put my littles down for a nap and hopefully take one myself. Consider yourself updated. ;)