Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Snoring

Everyone in this family snores (except me, and Dave has verified it!). There's often a veritable snoring chorus in the back of our house at night, and while my Mom has mentioned once or twice that she doesn't know how I actually sleep with all of it going on, I've grown accustomed to it to some degree. I am, however, awake now because Ryan had awakened me then gone back to sleep himself, snoring loudly in my face, and sometimes it's just impossible to tune it out. :-) But Ryan's snoring in particular is what I've been getting at. (Bad grammar, yes, I know, although I've actually read that there's some debate about that, and rules aside, sometimes it just works, so I leave my preposition where it is!) As I've said, Dave and all the kids snore, so it's nothing out of the ordinary here, but for some reason - whether it was from reading about the results of Henry's Jedi Sleep Test, or because things have grown noticeably worse suddenly - I've paid more attention to Ryan's snoring at night lately and have observed with some alarm that he really struggles with his breathing and definitely has apnea. He slept in our bed for the first couple years of his life, and more often than not still climbs in at some point in the night or early morning, and I never knew his snoring to be quite so laborious and disruptive, so I feel pretty sure it must have grown worse in recent weeks. Also, while never our best sleeper by far, he's been much more...let's say, intensely emotional lately. He wakes up tired and cranky in the mornings and leaves me wanting to run and hide even earlier in the day than usual. :-) Yesterday morning was so rough, and his snoring the night before so definitely disturbing, that I was prompted to call his new pediatrician for an appointment. There was an opening that morning, so we went and the ped said Ryan certainly has large tonsils and especially given the apnea we've heard, probably needs to have a sleep study, which is now being scheduled. I looked back at Jenny's posts about Henry, and it seems that there are possibly big time gaps between the study and diagnosis, and then the diagnosis and the final treatment. If Ryan's sleep, and subsequently his mood, is being affected as dramatically as it appears by this, how in the world could we go months before improvement? The doctor said that if if were going to be a couple months before we could get a sleep study scheduled, he would prescribe Flonase as a temporary fix - but it seems to me we might need to do that even sooner if it takes a long to get the results and then embark on the appropriate course of treatment. So, Jenny, I'm interested in knowing what you guys are doing for Henry in the meantime. I feel sorry for Ryan, who must feel miserable for so much of the day, and at the same time, everyone else is sharing in the suffering, which sometimes wears down some of our empathetic feelings for the little guy!

1 comment:

Jenny said...

First off, I am sorry to hear that Ryan is having apnea issues. As to the time delay, most of that is MY fault! It does take a few weeks to get the sleep study analyzed, but the whole process could have taken under a month if I had been more diligent about scheduling follow-up appointments as soon as possible, etc. Also, it being summertime, the surgery was harder to schedule due to vacations (both the doctor's and ours).

In the meantime, encourage Ryan to sleep on his side, as that lessens the obstruction of the tonsils to the airway.

Sorry he's going through this! (((hugs)))