Ethan had a series of regular follow up appointments at Children's yesterday (8/6/12).
We got the results from his sleep study and the results
were shockingly good! I almost asked if they had accidentally switched the
results with another child - they were so unexpectedly good. Normally, Ethan's
results from sleep studies are not that good - but the doctors always throw in
the caveat - but for *him* this is normal, so they generally are not very
concerned. Today - his results were actually *really* normal. Not just "normal
for him". "Normal" is about 4-5 apnea episodes per hour for children. Ethan
had approximately 1 per hour.
He was scheduled for a(nother) hearing screen
but his ENT examined him first and found he had fluid in his ears - a left over
from the cold he just got over last week - so she scrubbed the hearing screen
and will reschedule it for 3 months from now.
He was also tested at
Children's by a speech pathologist. She was also amazed at his progress since
she last tested him (back in about January). He is not quite ready to be
discharged from speech therapy as he still has trouble with the k sounds and
hard g sounds but she did remark on just how much more she understood of what he said and how far he as progressed.
His main craniofacial pediatrician saw him and also was so pleased with his progress. He examined his spine and saw no indications that there might be problems (craniofacial microsomia can also affect the spine however any diagnosis of any problems can't be made until the child is older and bones calcify more). He will have his spine X-rayed the next time we are in to get a definitive look. We are still tracking for jaw surgery
possibly at age 7-8 and early jaw surgery is now off the table again. So it was
a very good day at Children's. (As an aside, we were also informed that Ethan is getting to the age where we will start to see the dentists/oral surgeons at Children's as we begin charting the course towards his eventual jaw surgery - we might start seeing them at our next appointments in early 2013).
From the 'other news' department desk:
Ethan is registered for preschool this coming September. He will be attending the same school as Jonathan but in his age group, he will only be going 2 days a week for 2.5 hours/day. Ethan will be starting school one year earlier than Jonathan. We hemmed and hawed on this idea for quite a while - but he seemed so ready for school that we felt we didn't want to hold him back. We actually asked Ethan if he wanted to go to school like his big brother and he seemed to be very enthusiastic about it and was very happy when we told him that he was indeed going to be going to school later in the year.
In other sports news...
Jonathan passed Basic Level 1 in ice
skating. So if he wants to continue (and he said he does), it's on to the next
level.
I also saw Jonathan's swimming class. This has been the first
time in about a month or two that I've seen his swim class. He's made a *lot*
of progress since I last saw him. He's putting his face/head in the water and
he's starting to learn the basic front crawl.
Also - Jonathan earned
his 2nd black stripe on his white belt in Karate class just this last Saturday.
- bob
