Elisabeth Sleep Apnea Update

Alright - so I told you about the sleep study ordeal we had done back in May. We got back from our trip and started calling around to get the results. Actually before we left we had gotten "partial results" with the nurse telling us she would "most likely" need her tonsils and adenoids out. But, the rest had to wait until after vacation.

So.

The nurse from the pediatricians office called me to give me the results. She told me she had obstructive sleep apnea (which can be caused by enlarged tonsils) as well as some central sleep apnea (which is when the brain isn't sending correct signals to breathe). And she said to call and schedule a consultation with an ENT and get her tonsils and adenoids removed and then they would want to repeat the sleep study and make sure the problem was taken care of.


We also got the bill for the sleep study to the tune of $2700. Uh-huh.


So I called our regular ENT (who has seen Samuel and Abigail) and they told me they couldn't get her in until Aug for the surgery. But I went ahead and scheduled it.


Then later on, the nurse from the ENT office called back and left a message saying, actually because Elisabeth's apnea was so severe they would really recommend getting in to someone else who could do the surgery earlier. Ok.

So I played phone tag with the ENT nurse all day on Fri. trying to figure out how concerned I should be about all of this, as I really didn't want to go through the hassle of finding another Dr., starting over with paperwork etc.

And I talked to a different pediatrician nurse on Mon and she said she didn't see the central sleep apnea on the report. So that was confusing. I still need to figure out what the report actually says and get a copy for myself. That is another ordeal since they need release signatures and all this other junk. And I'm not sure if anyone besides the sleep Dr. at the hospital can give it to me. I don't know yet. Having all of the communication on the issue split between 3 different Dr offices and several nurses at each location just makes all of this somewhat confusing and difficult.

Anyway - I finally talked to the ENT nurse again and she let me talk to the actual ENT Dr. who then quoted a bunch of studies emphasizing the importance of fixing severe sleep apnea as soon as possible (along with some scary possible complications of not fixingf it) and when I asked her if I should find a different Dr. to do it sooner, she got us scheduled for July 13th for surgery. ;) hahaha.

So they squeezed us in today for her Pre-Op appointment. We signed consent forms and paid a bunch of money and she is all set, I guess. It should be outpatient same-day surgery, but it is more common with severe apnea to have post-op complications so she may have to stay longer than usual for observation (possibly overnight).

So there's that saga. The ENT sort of laughed at me, though, when she looked at the chart and saw that we had been talking about Elisabeth's suspected apnea and possibly doing a sleep study 2 yrs ago. I told her it took awhile for us to get around to it - haha. I feel bad that it took me so long to make this issue a priority - but you know, I have a lot of things I can feel bad about. I can only do one thing at a time. And we seem to have a lot of issues muggling their way to the forefront, don't we. Oh well.