Results!

We went back to the sleep clinic this morning.  It was a very successful visit!  I was very pleasantly surprised.  Last year, Justin averaged 6.1 apnea episodes/hour, which put him in the mild apnea range.  Justin averaged nearly 12 apnea episodes/hour of sleep last week, which puts him in the moderate range.  So he has doubled his apnea episodes/hour in the past year.  And the more telling statistic is that during REM sleep, the average of apnea episodes goes up to 19/hour.  So Miss Terry said he's not getting good quality sleep.  That's what we've been saying, so it's good that we have someone acknowledging the problem and now we can make progress to fix it.

The next step is a visit to the ENT to rule out tonsils and adenoids.  That's of course where we started last year, but things can change so I am on the phone on hold attempting to make as appointment as I type this.  The ENT said that he wasn't a surgical candidate last year, but we will see if anything has changed since then.  If that is ruled out, then we move on to the CPAP machine.   It's a machine with a mask he will need to wear during sleep that pushes air into his nose to make it less difficult to breathe.  Sleep apnea is very common in DS because of the low muscle tone.  When everything relaxes during sleep, the tongue tends to fall back and block the airway.  The CPAP should correct this, but it is very uncomfortable and there will be a huge learning curve to get his used to wearing it.  Miss Terry ordered the sleep study needed to calibrate the CPAP machine since they are scheduling appointments for February already.  Once we visit the ENT then we can decided the next step.  So we're making progress!

And I'll end with a totally random picture of Justin.  This Fourth of July we went to a friend's birthday party and the kids all got to make stick horses.  This is Justin's.  Both boys are gaga over their horses, but I couldn't get a good picture of Travis, so Justin will have to suffice.  They are true cowboys!