The Whisler Life

Let me explain… I took Owen to see the Ear Nose and Throat specialist this afternoon. Here’s how I wish the appointment had gone:

Me explaining Owen’s history of croup including being hospitalized… doctor checks him over… says it’s just a minor problem that doesn’t require his special expertise… that Owen will grow out of it… everything will be fine… nice to meet you… have a nice day.

Not so.

Instead, the doc determined that our pediatrician’s guess of subglottic stenonis could likely be correct. There are a couple of other very rare conditions that could cause the same/similar symptoms (which I won’t go into here) though they are not likely. What to do now? Well, Owen has to be scheduled into a surgery room at Emanuel Children’s Hospital sometime in the coming two weeks in order for his throat to be scoped (endoscopy). He has to be put under general anesthetic because the problem occurs below the vocal chords… not something you can reasonably reach while he’s awake. Plus, if the docs determine that the condition mentioned above is in fact the problem, they will take advantage of him already being under and do the procedure right then and there (after discussing it all with us first, of course). And if they do the procedure, it involves making an incision into his throat from the outside and placing a stint (tube) which will then be allowed to heal for approximately a week while he hangs out in intensive care, essentially allowing scar tissue to form in the larger, more desirable size of a trach… then the tube gets removed and he’s allowed to fully heal, hopefully fixing the problem permanently. Oy vey.

I definitely did my share of playing skeptic and devil’s advocate during our appointment, questioning and second guessing everything he said. The doc had reasonable and logical explanations for everything I threw at him, and I actually had a really good gut reaction to the man. At the end of our session, I told him, no offense, but I hope you’re wrong! He understood my concerns and reservations about all this but basically said that there really aren’t any other acceptable alternatives (besides continued cases of severe croup, risking serious secondary infections that would not only hospitalize Owen, but could take him entirely… or keeping him on low-dose steroids for the foreseeable future, potentially stunting his growth and/or all the other known side effects that result from prolonged steroid use). Soooooo… where does that leave us? We’ll be getting a call after the weekend with our choice of surgery slots to schedule… and we’ll go from there. The severity of this problem has really blindsided us… I had no idea that this was escalating to this kind of problem and/or fix. So, here’s hoping the almighty they is wrong… though I fear that they are not.