A Day Early and a Swallow Short

I'm stress eating right now. Since I can't eat anything with gluten, eggs, dairy or peanuts, I'm downing a bag of apple chips. At the very least, my waistline will be happy with my stress eating.

My in-laws are notorious schedule changers. They were supposed to arrive Thursday afternoon. They just called, and now they're arriving tomorrow afternoon. Ugh! A day early. They are traveling by car and didn't plan any hotel reservations ahead of time. They can't get a room for tomorrow night, so they decided to come early. I know, it's only a day. But we hadn't really cleaned the house yet. So tonight we are frenetic cleaning machines.

Today was Julia's swallow study. I had reminded the toddler teacher yesterday and today that Julia was going in for a medical procedure and couldn't eat after lunch. When S picked her up, they were giving her a snack. Ugh! I told her 2 different days, and I WROTE IT DOWN. The toddler teacher had already left, but apparently she hadn't passed on the (relevant) info to the person who took over. This is why I can't wait until Julia moves on to the next room.

So we go to the swallow study. A convict was also getting a procedure done. I'm assuming it was a convict because she was wearing an orange jumpsuit and had a police officer escort. If you can't already tell, the procedure wasn't at the children's hospital. I really like the children's hospital better, convicts aside.

I know my darling dear is a high maintenance, difficult child. I must say that I don't think even I could have done that swallow study. 1) They tie you to a chair. 2) You have to sit perfectly still and look straight ahead. 3) The x-ray machine makes a rumbly noise whenever they start video-ing. 4) They give you barium to drink out of a bottle and a cup. Not your normal milk mixed with barium - nope - straight barium with strawberry flavoring. 5) For solids, they put a honkin' wad of barium on all your food. 6) 3 strangers are staring at you as you drink barium or eat barium coated saltines.

Let's just say it didn't go well. For all six of the above reasons. Julia needs to feel comfortable in order to eat, she must eat familiar foods, and she must not think she's being forced to eat. Let's not call it a swallow study, more like Scream Fest.

We were told to not even think of redoing it for another 5 months. Thanks, we kind of figured it out. That's why we were hesitant to do it in the first place.

She did take a few swallows while she was there. While it wasn't enough to form a "valid conclusion," the speech therapist said it looked like she had laryngeal penetration. Sounds kind of kinky, doesn't it??? :) There's a flap in the esophagus, and it's supposed to open when you swallow. Her swallow isn't all that coordinated, so liquids start to go in her larynx as she swallows. There's not really any way for it to get fixed other than feeding therapy & working with her.

And we got another person who said she doesn't use her tongue or chew well.

I have an appointment tomorrow with early intervention, and then Julia's intake is the 28th. I hope we can start therapy soon after and then start to work on all her issues.

Finished my apple chips.