Sleep Study - Times Two

Our family camp-out at the sleep center is over, and I am glad it is behind us. We arrived at 8:30 pm and started the hook-up. Matthew was completely freaked out by the entire idea, so we hooked Nolan up first.

Sleep Studies - not much fun

Almost all hooked up.

Matt finally agreed to get hooked up, once he saw that the "stickers" really didn't hurt.

Watching TV during the hook-up.

We got Nolan settled into bed and let him play the tablet while Matt was getting hooked up.

Look, Mom, I'm a UNICORN!

This is the first time we've gone to one of the sleep center's satellite sites, and I wasn't impressed. They don't do CO2 monitoring and never notified us of that fact. This isn't a big deal for Matt, but Nolan has known severe apnea and should have his carbon dioxide levels monitored (particularly since they've increased over time). We'll see what our ENT says about this, in any case. They also had no pediatric pulse-oximeters, so nothing really fit Nolan's small fingers. I told the respiratory tech to put it on his toe (the respiratory tech has obviously not dealt with many pediatric patients and had never heard of this before). This solution worked, thank goodness.

Wired and Tired.

Nolan was quite uncomfortable in the night, and had his leg pains. These are not really "growing pains," as he occasionally gets them during the day and cannot walk. They also only affect one leg. I have to see if I recorded which leg was affected last time, but his right leg was killing him last night. He would arch out of the bed and become extremely tensed. I asked him if it hurt, and he would scream, "my leg, my leg!" He wanted me to pull on his leg, and when I did he wanted me to pull harder. I was afraid to hurt him, so eventually stopped.

I did catch it on video, as the pain would wake him from his sleep and he would cry out. I am going to show it to our ENT to see what she thinks. The pain isn't frequent, but is very severe and happens during the day as well as the night. I'm not sure if it is more of a cramp or a "pins and needles" sensation.



Fortunately he finally fell asleep, but woke frequently to pull at his C-Pap mask and at his leg. It was a really, really long night - I was relieved when the lights came on at 5:00 am and we could go home. We stopped by Tim Horton's for coffee and doughnuts. Both kids fell asleep the second we got home. The sleep study results should be available in 2 weeks.