Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Mama Called the Doctor and the Doctor Said...

Will totally gives these poor doctors and nurses a run for their money. He is forever teasing them or pushing their buttons to get a reaction. Most handle it fine, but it is interesting the number of nurses who have no idea what to do. They are so accustomed to ensuring that patients don't fall, that when he pretends to trip, they totally whig. Or, if they want to take his temperature, he will either refuse to open his mouth or say, "If you take it I won't have one." And this week Will had ample opportunity to torture, tease, and in general aggravate plenty of medical professionals.

Yesterday, Will had an MRI of his head and an xray of his neck. We have no clue how the xray looks since Dr. Crawford is out of town. However, we saw Dr. Crone this morning and he is pleased with the appearance of fluid around the brain stem. In other words, there is sufficient room around the brain stem that it should start to fill out and hopefully recover from the compression. How long that takes is anyone's guess, but we should start to see improvement in another month or so...definitely by mid February. I have noticed that Will struggles more frequently with trying to find the "right word" when talking, so I did ask if that was caused by the surgery. Dr. C said it was possible, so we will just watch that and see how it goes.

The ENT was hilarious. He handled Will fabulously and had us all laughing. The stoma (the hole where the trach was.) is healing nicely. Dr. W did request an xray of the neck to check for scar tissue in the airway, but as long as that is clear we don't have to return to see him. He did request a hearing test which was within normal limits, so apparently Will is suffering from "male selective hearing loss" according to Dr. Willging. :)

The last doctor was Dr. B, the plastic surgeon. He walked in, took a look in Will's mouth at the incision site, and asked how speech sounded. He wants to recheck Will in April just to ensure that the tonal quality of Will's speech remains stable.

That pretty much concludes our appointment schedule here in Cinci. Will is exhausted and does not seem to be tolerating the trip all that well. He had fluids Sunday evening and again Tuesday evening. He has another IV on Friday. I am just hoping to avoid one tomorrow (Thursday). He actually fell asleep in the car (which never happens) this afternoon and was snoring (which regularly happens. This child can saw some serious logs!)

It snowed all day here but there was little to no accumulation. The snow was so much more beautiful than the inches rain of yesterday. They are calling for the first accumulation of snow over the weekend, so maybe it is a good thing that we fly out on Saturday? However, it is insanely cold here. The temps are in the 30's for highs and the brisk wind of today just made being outside (like pumping gas into my very fun Charger) insanely miserable. I do not like the cold, Sam-I-Am. I do not like it anywhere.

We are now safely ensconced in the hotel where we have heat and pillows and no intention of getting back in the car before noon tomorrow. We have experienced Cincinnati rush hour three times in the last two days which really is not all that bad, but the weather the last two days made rush hour more challenging than normal. Will is not the only one exhausted.

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