Last week Amelia had her pulmonology appointment where she was officially discontinued from supplemental oxygen. The pulmonologist said now we should think of getting rid of the g-tube. Duh. I told him we have been working on it for a long time and I began listing the things she has been eating and drinking and he started getting a little nervous. He ordered a swallow study to be performed at the Med Center at 9:00 in the morning. Check in is 8:30 --- which means we had to leave the house at 7:00 because it is rush hour traffic.
The swallow study is where Amelia gets to drink and eat barium. She drank barium water that looked like Elmer's Glue and ate Barium pudding that looked like drywall spackle. First I had to take off her shirt and put on a medical smock on her. I also got to wear a lead apron. I had to lay her down on a table so they could do an x-ray of her chest and she started freaking out. Then they sat her up and I had to put her in a car seat looking thing and seat belted her in. There was a doctor, an imaging technician and a speech language pathologist in the room, but they had me give her the items to ingest.
We started with the water first in a cup with a straw. She was freaking out and crying. Then I tried just handing her the cup and she was swatting my hand and batting it away. Next they gave me a syringe and I put it in her mouth and squirted. She was shaking her head, but she did not spit it out and she did swallow it. The SLP told me it looked great, that even with her squirming it went down perfectly. Next we did the pudding. I did have to force the issue with her, but again she swallowed it perfectly. So now we are free to give her whatever food and drink we want to try with her!
She got a Dora sticker for her efforts and she was very happy. It promptly was peeled off her shirt and stuffed in her mouth.
After retrieving the sticker out of her mouth, we went upstairs and met with Nurse Jacqui and visited for quite a while. It was a nice visit and Amelia munched on Gold Fish in the Ronald McDonald house while I gave her a g-tube feed. Another great milestone day!
2 comments:
I'd say, that was some week she had. Now if you can just get her to eat the types of things that have nutritive value to them, instead of paper and stickers!
Glad to hear Amelia is ready to roll!!!
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