The rest of the day was basically pictureless, but fun nonetheless. We stopped and got Samuel new size 11 shoes at the Sketchers outlet at Castle Rock. Geez.... And of course while we were there we just had to visit the Gymboree outlet. Amazingly, I did not find anything for the girls there that I just had to have...(Very unusual!) Ha Ha! But I did find some cute stuff for the little boys.
When we finally got to Denver, we headed to Golden (my son Jordan attends Colorado School of Mines) and had a great visit with him all evening. Then in the morning we got up, did some more shopping at Park Meadows Mall, and headed over to Children's for Madalyn's swallow study.
Good thing we left early, and that I kind of know Denver a little, cause we kind of got lost on the way. I'm glad those big mountains are always in the west, so I can usually figure out which direction I need to go. After a slight detour we made it to the hospital...
Madalyn waiting for her turn.
Holding the little pager thingy that tells you when its your turn.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the swallow study. I wish I did! She had to sit in this big blue padded car seat type thing and look straight forward while I fed her the food items laced with Barium.
The study went well I guess... We have never done one of these before. The people were very nice (as usual for this hospital) and were very thorough. We found out that Madalyn has "silent aspiration" and that was actually a bit of a surprise. I had considered it at one time, but did not really see any signs or think she was aspirating anything. Apparently this is common and that why it is called silent aspiration, cause you don't see any signs. Ha! She doesn't cough either, and this is a sign that this has been going on awhile. Bummer!! Now we have to start thickening her milk, juice, etc..
I guess that isn't so bad. It definitely could've been worse. Although, I did not find out all the information I really wanted from this study. Madalyn was born with Duodenal Atresia and had surgery at birth for this. She had kind of a double whammy as she also had a TEF. She has a floppy airway and has always been a noisy eater. Now that she eats solid food, I am concerned about choking, as she seems to have trouble swallowing sometimes. It just seems certain foods don't always go down as smoothly as they should. I would've liked to have had more answers, but they weren't really able to see the parts of her esophagus and windpipe to give me much info about that. Maybe an esophagram or something like that at some point will be necessary. So we go back again in 6 months for another study. She is supposed to outgrow this, but I have no idea how long that will take.
After the study, I went and got Samuel, who had been hanging out in the waiting room playing his DS for the last couple hours. We decided to take a quick stroll out front of the hospital just because....
So fun!!!
Stay tuned to hear about Madalyn's sleep study.
