Sadie Time

We always joke that Sadie works on her own schedule - "Sadie Time." I have to laugh when people ask me questions like "When does she typically nap?" "What's her schedule?" The girl does what she wants, when she wants. We do our best to have her awake and alert during the day, and keep her sleeping at night - but most of the time, even this proves to be a challenge.

Case in point, we've now had to reschedule her swallow study twice. The first time around, she came down with a cold, so we cancelled and rescheduled for a week later. The second attempt proved beyond a doubt that Sadie is in charge. Despite sleeping relatively well the night before and getting in a good morning nap, she simply refused to wake up for the 1 pm swallow study. We tried taking off her shirt, putting a wet washcloth on her face, turning the lights up high, playing music, etc. The more we tried, the more she slept.

So frustrating when there are three technicians, a speech therapist and doctor in the room all asking why she's not waking up? Isn't she hungry? Did she not get a good nap? I wanted to scream at them and tell them that she does things on her schedule - and four seizure medications doesn't help either. Arrrghhh...

We attempt the swallow study again on Tuesday. I'm fearful because she hasn't taken anything by mouth for the past month, that she's lost some of her swallowing ability. I guess we'll know for sure on Tuesday (if Sadie cooperates.)

Sadie has been having a hard time keeping her oxygen levels up on her own. This week will mark one month on oxygen and the NG feeding tube. We had been slowly weaning her off the O2 when she came down with a slight cold and we had to boost her up again. After speaking with her pulminologist last week, she suspects that Sadie's low O2 levels may be the result of her having a difficult time coughing stuff up. Apparently this is a problem for many kids with low muscle tone. I have an appointment with a respiratory therapist next week to learn how to do chest PT, which will help with this. My nursing repertoire expands.

The pulminologist also suspects that Sadie may have sleep apnea. So, they will conduct a sleep study in the next few weeks where they will observe her overnight. Perhaps this will finally answer our question about her horrible sleep patterns.

If that wasn't enough, this past month her seizure activity has been up and down. She'll go for a few days having very low seizure activity (2-3 is a good day for Sadie.) Then, out of nowhere, she'll have a day where she'll be seizing every 3 minutes. We've had to give diastat (her emergency medication) twice in the past month. The seizures have been looking a little different lately as well. Instead of her typical infantile spasm "crunches," she's been having seizures that look more like your standard seizure (some shaking/trembling, eyes rolling). These look a little more frightening than her old seizures.

I was a little (OK, a lot) disappointed that Sadie had all of her cords attached for her first birthday party. But as you can see in the photo above, she looked adorable and had a wonderful time with friends and family.

We forge ahead, hopeful that we can get her off of oxygen and the feeding tube very very soon. Which, Sadie will do when SHE is good and ready.

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