Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Validation and Praying for Sleep

This is a picture of Jack napping when he was very little and long before his sleep apnea became the nightmare it now is.
We had our first follow up appointment in the sleep clinic today. Dr. Lazano was out of town due to a death in his family so we saw Dr. Makris instead. He told us that the CPAP machine showed that Jack was having apneic or hypopnic events on an average of 30 times per hour. Remember that's while wearing the CPAP! (YIKES!) No wonder it seems like the sat alarm is going off all night long and I am constantly working to get him to breathe. Now we have a new plan. We are going to try auto-titrating Bipap. Bipap differs from CPAP because CPAP which stands for continuous positive airway pressure delivers one constant level of pressure. Bipap delivers pressure on inhalation and lets up on the pressure with exhalation. When Jack begins a breath the Bipap will help him to take a deep breath through any obstruction and also prevent him from taking those little tiny shallow breaths that he tends
to.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Its good to hear that the doctors are going to change treatment for Jack. I hope and pray this will work for him and you. You guys are going to be in my prayers tonight for some much needed rest. Just a thought, but when I was in the hospital at Brookwood they but me on the sleep apnea machine and it caused me to panic and feel as if i could not take a deep breath. Speaking from experience its pretty scary. Anyway hope you guys have a good night.