Finally!!

On September 23 we were finally able to get Stockton in for a bronchoscopy and an EGD to find out what is wrong with him. He is still on oxygen while he sleeps and nobody has been able to figure out why. The last time I wrote about him we were going to try a new pulmonologist and take him to a cardiologist to have his heart checked. Well his heart checked out fine and that was a relief. The new pulmonologist is Dr. Radford and she is awesome!! She is completely different from the first one we went to and the first 10 minutes she came into the room was already more productive than the last 6 months had been with the first doctor.

Stockton and dad waiting to go into the procedure room. We couldn't feed Stockton for the last few hours so he was pretty cranky and decided chewing on his thumb might help. Poor thing, I hated seeing him cry knowing he was hungry.

When they took him into the room they let Ray and I go in with him. They laid him down on the table and put a mask on him with anesthesia. He fought that really hard and it was so hard to watch but then a few seconds later he was out. They waited to put the IV in until after he was asleep so he wouldn't feel it. I was grateful for that! They had us leave the room and they were in there for about 40 minutes more. The procedures both went really well but he ended up needing oxygen during it (he usually doesn't need it in the valley even when asleep) and they had to give him a breathing treatment in the recovery room. We got to be with him in recovery and I even got to hold him but he was so hard to hold because he was he would cry and kick. After about 30 minutes he was breathing fine and his oxygen level was back up so we were able to leave.

They found that he has tracheomalacia which is just what Dr. Radford suspected the first few minutes she met with us. It is basically a floppy airway. The cartilage around his airway isn't fully developed and so it collapses and it is hard for him to breathe through. This is something he was born with and will hopefully grow out of by age 2. He also has asthma, which they think could possibly have been a result of the RSV he got at 3 weeks old. We now give him breathing treatments every day for that. They are hoping he will grow out of that too.

It is so good to finally know what is going on with him after all of this time! It's also good to know he doesn't need surgery and that he will grow out of it. We are very relieved!

This is Stockton's newest trick. He pulls this face while breathing heavy in and out of his nose. It is so cute! The first time he did this was when we were waiting for him to have his tests done. He does it all of the time now.