raising hunter: another doctor visit

Today we went to see the pulmonary specialist for Hunter. They just wanted to check him over since he's been sick twice in the last two months. We saw Dr. Davies and I think I liked her.... She was straight to the point but still very friendly. She checked his lungs, they were great and she prescribed him some albuteral treatments in case he starts to show signs of labored breathing again. She said he basically has viral induced asthma, which doesn't mean he has asthma by itself but when he gets sick it makes his breathing labored and wheezy a bit. So now instead of waiting and deciding if we should go to the doctor, we can just give him the albuteral treatments ourselves and help alleviate his breathing right away. She also just explained that with his trach, like most trach kids, they just get sick easier. Which makes sense as they have a direct route to their lungs unlike us "mouth breathers".

We also discussed his possibility of getting a speech valve with the speech therapist. Because his airway is so narrow right now it's not the safest to try out now. She wants to wait a few more months and see what his airway looks like then and go from there. I got a bit excited of the possibility of hear Hunter's voice again but I know that it's just not safe right now so I will be patient. They also did a pressure test which tells how much air Hunter is breathing in while taking a breath. I don't remember what the numbers they were talking about meant exactly but they said he did REALLY GOOD. Not something they would expect from a baby with that much narrowing in his airway. Jeremy and I thought it must have been all the hard work he had to do to breath before he got the trach. We also told her that he has been vomiting his food lately, not all the time but noticeably more than before. We also noticed his secretions are a bit milky right after he takes a bottle. She said it sounds like he may be aspirating some of the milk and that he has a bit of reflux. Adults with reflux can have bad heartburn but with babies they just puke it up (which, he does like a champ...haha). So we got some medicine for that and hopefully that should help him with that. She wasn't worried but it's definitely something we want to get better as it's not comfortable for Hunter and we don't want it to get worse.

The good news is they don't need to see him until the winter so as far as his lungs working fine, he just unfortunately caught this nasty bug twice...and it's just another reminder to us to keep his trach clean and wash our hands often. I really don't want him to get sick again...it's no fun at all!

This Dr. appointment lasted quite a while and so needless to say Hunter started out great, then slowly got not so excited about being there....as you can see below: