Red Shoes' Sleep Study

Last night we had to go to our local Children's Hospital for Red Shoes to have a sleep study done.  He struggles a lot with his speech and we found out some months ago that his palate moves very little.  He loses a lot of air through his nose.  The surgeon feels that he would benefit from Pharyngeal Flap Surgery.  I'll write another post on that another time. 

Anyway, we needed to get this done to make sure that Red Shoes doesn't have any kind of underlying potential problem such as Sleep Apneia.  The flap along with Sleep Apneia could be a deadly combination. 

We checked into the hospital around 7 and for an hour to an hour and a half they wired him up.  He was a really good sport as always.  A Child Life Specialist came up to play with him and help keep his mind off of what was going on.  He really enjoyed that.  After all the wiring was completed here's what he looked like:

Can you imagine getting a good nights sleep with all of this garb on?  I can't.  I slept horribly and I wasn't wired to the max.  He did pretty good.  He went to sleep within 10 minutes.  He was beat!  I didn't have a clock nearby, so it seemed like the night took 20 hours!  He fell out of bed once and tried to come over to my bed once. Other than that the biggest deal was just wires getting loose.  And it seemed like they got loose a lot!  Everytime the nurse (who was awesome by the way) would have to come in and get him re-wired.  Pretty sure we saw her at least 12 times during the night.  I'm not exaggerating.

Finally the morning came!  I've never been so happy to start my day other than the time Red Shoes got his tonsils out.  It was traumatic for him when the nurse had to get all of the "stickers" off.  There were so many and they stuck so bad.  His skin is really irritated and sticky even after a bath and lots of olive oil. 

The worst part of the entire thing?  I had to take him to the lab so that they could draw his blood. I always hate that!  I'm not a wimp when it comes to these things.  But I always HATE seeing my Red Shoes poked.

The reason for the blood draw? They said because he moved around so much durint the night they wanted to make sure that his iron levels were okay.  Glad they're checking, but I can assure you that my blood would be checked as well! 

Finally, after all of that we got to go get some "num num" as Red Shoes calls it. We ordered lots!

Doesn't he look exhausted?  He was!

We came home and have taken it easy the entire day.  I made him lay down...he didn't want to.  He didn't get a choice today.  He played for a little bit then went to sleep.  He woke up a few hours later.  He checked to see what I was doing and then went back into his room.  This is how I found him:

We are so glad the sleep study is over.  Here's to a new tomorrow!

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