Thursday, December 11, 2008

Swallow study

We are having a swallow study today at the hospital. This is probably the 6th one that he has had done. After having 3 months of Vital Stim therapy he had one done in may of this year that cleared him for all liquids. We were soo happy and excited that Andrew could finally drink without it being thickend to honey or nectar consistency. He finally got to taste ice cream and he did like it, except it took him longer to eat. Vital Stim is where the speech pathologist put electrodes on his throat muscles and they vibrated or stimulated the muscles. It was really cool and we can say it definitely made the difference in therapy for him. He has had no problems until a month ago when he started coughing again at meal times. This time I think he might be having a problem with solids. I know with Rett Syndrome many of the girls end up of a G-tube put in due to dysphagia (swallowing disorder). I want to stay as far away from that as possible. This week he hasn't had any problems with swallowing so we havn't had to do any breathing treatments but I know we need to get it checked out. I think I still owe money to the hospital from the last visit. Yikes! I will update later when we get back.

2 comments:

Karlie Grace said...

I hope it went well....patiently waitning for an update! Karlie did almost five months of VS but i'm wondering if we'll have to have some follow up visits from time to time? Is that a possibility for Andrew?

Anonymous said...

If you eliminate casein and gluten from his diet, that should help with chewing and swallowing. It certainly did with my Rett daughter.