On March 18th, BellaMei had more procedures done to investigate her birth defect a little more. We were thankful the pulmonologist, gastroenterologist, and ENT dr were all able to coordinate their schedules to do everything at once. It was an
early morning, but she's the sweetest and made it easy.
What the tests showed... Her bronchioles are "abnormally shaped but getting the job done." We knew she had tracheomalacia but she also has laryngomalacia, which explains some of her noisy breathing. Her vocal cords are swollen, likely related to acid reflux (a common issue in TEF/EA kids that she takes medicine for). They also found a hiatal hernia (a result of her esophageal reconstruction). Really none of this was surprising but still sad to hear. Unfortunately, they didn't find a definite cause for her aspiration issues but they injected some "filler" to see if that helps the flaps close better. Now we wait for all of the biopsies and cultures to come back. She'll get another swallow study in the next month or two to see if the aspirating has decreased. She continues to go to feeding therapy so hopefully we will see improvements there too.
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| The anesthesia made her sleepy (and grumpy). |
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| I put the "no-no's" on her at bedtime to keep her from pulling the pH probe out, but they didn't last long. This baby needed to be able to suck her thumb! So I just prayed she didn't bother the tube or tape and she did great! |
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| She did so well with the probe and monitor the next day! |
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| I convinced the nurse to let me pull it at home vs driving all the way back to Indy for a 2 min appointment. (Then we took all of the equipment back when we went to State Finals.) |
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| She has perfected her #2...just in time for a very special day coming up!! |
