Sleep Study

Back in June, I decided it was time that Xander graduated from the bedside bassinet to his crib in his own room. I was out of school and felt like I could spend all night coaxing him back to sleep if he didn't like where he was. But on the second night when his mom compulsively went in to check on him, she found that, in his sleep, Xander had pulled his oxygen cannula down from his nose and it was now twisted around his neck. (If you've read my first installment of A Star is Born, you'll recall that my wife's compulsions are often right on the money and are therefore essential to our lives.)

You might also recall that this is how Xander looked with an oxygen cannula up his nose.

Xander was okay--no actual throat constriction was evident--but he ended up sleeping back in his parents' room for the next month or so. Momma called the doctor and the doctor said this is natural and expected. As children on oxygen get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the cannula on, day or night. The doctor suggested that if we were worried that he might strangle in the night, let's just leave the oxygen off and see how he does. These were the doctor's orders: Let's just see how he does.

You might could guess that this didn't sit well with my wife.

Originally, the plan was to wean the boy off the oxygen during the day, only using it at night until we could get a sleep study done. This is where the medicos come in to read his oxygen levels at night, while he sleeps without any oxygenated support. We had been waiting for the doc to give her okay for the sleep study. During our last appointment, she intimated that we would get the sleep study scheduled after the next appointment. But during this phone call where she claimed that Xander will probably be okay without the oxygen, perhaps she sensed my wife's distress, because the doctor asked if we would still like to have the sleep study done.

My wife said, "Yes." She might as well have said, "Duh."

The call to the sleep study clinic yielded these results: They could fit us in for an overnight study in October. Not exactly helpful to our current needs. We scheduled the appointment anyway and asked to be put on the waiting list in case there were cancellations or openings sooner than that.

A week or so after the cannula around the neck incident, we took Xander to Vail for a few days for a family reunion. We knew the altitude would necessitate extra oxygen for the boy, so we kept his cannula on as well as we could while he slept. But since that trip to the mountains, he's been off the oxygen altogether. He was still sleeping in the bedside bassinet (until this week, but that's another issue altogether now), but he sleeps without oxygen support. The sticky pads bonded to his face for the first eight months of his life even came off. They just peeled off one day, like dead skin after a sunburn.

The poofy hair is not a result of less oxygen to the brain.
But notice the clean cheeks.

I fully expected to ride out the next few months without any worry about oxygen, that at our next doctor appointment we would get the go-ahead to quit the oxygen business altogether. But yesterday, the sleep clinic called and said they had an opening this Sunday night. Coolio.

Now I fully expect to be done with oxygen for good as of Monday morning.