Catching up

We are still in the hospital. He is healing well and all the incisions look good. We were moved off the PICU floor and are now residing on the Neuro floor. It's a little more laid back up here, we can eat and drink in the room and the TV is much bigger. We are released as far as neurosurgery is concerned. Unfortunately, the pediatrician here is concerned with the results of his swallow study. The study showed that he does well with thickened liquids, but on a thin liquid he was showing some penetration - meaning the liquid went towards his airway. This concerns them because breast milk is a thin liquid and he could be at risk for aspirating it into his lungs. Chronic aspirating can lead to serious respitory issues later in life and cause pnemonia now. To ensure he is not aspirating breast milk, we have to do a FEES, which basically means they put that camera tube back up his nose and watch through it while I feed him to see where the liquid goes. If he is aspirating, we need to change how we feed him. Most likely we would do a feeding tube while we give his vocal cords time to heal and hopefully he regains the ability to use his vocal cords, which would then protect his airway and keep him from aspirating and we could lose the feeding tube. When we first heard 'feeding tube' it was quite daunting to think of and I was not liking it, but then I remembered thinking the same thing about cathing him and now that is second nature. So if it gets us home safely, bring it on. We are still waiting to see when they can schedule the FEES. Will update when I can.