will we get answers?
can magic lasers help out?
gonna find out soon

Next Tuesday, the 14th, at 6:30am, Ike-a-saurus is going in for another bronchoscopy. They'll have to put him under general anesthesia for the procedure, and we'll have to stay in the hospital until he wakes up, eats well, breathes well, and all that stuff, then we can go home. No one anticipates an overnight stay, so fingers crossed about that.

Our fingers are crossed about a lot of things.

Hopefully, we'll learn just how critical his airway still is. And from there we'll know how much of the subglottic stenosis is congenital versus aquired. This should give us some treatment options so we can get that trach the hell out of there. It will also give us more of an idea whether or not our ENT has what he needs to fix things, or if we'll need to take Ike to Cincinnati to the super fancy airway specialists.

There's a lot riding on Tuesday.

And there are a lot of things that can mess it up – if the reflux is still not under control enough, there could still be significant inflammation that makes it impossible to tell what's going on. If he gets sick between now and then, the bronch will have to be rescheduled until he is completely 100% better. His airway needs to be edema free for us to learn anything new.

If things go perfectly, there will be no inflammation, his airway will be considerably less constricted than when the tracheostomy was performed, we'll get the go ahead to use some magic lasers to fix things and the trach will come out sooner rather than later.

If things go not so perfectly, the doc will see no inflammation, say "Sure I can fix it! Come on back when he weighs 20 pounds." This will be soooo not cool, because 20 pounds? The wee-er one is almost 3 and she weighs 25 pounds. If this is what we hear, we're going to Cincinnati.

The doctor could also tell us it's out of his league and we need to take Ike to the specialists. Especially if he thinks there will have to be some reconstruction.

And, of course, there's also the chance that the little dude's airway is just as critical as it was before. That makes the procedure more dangerous than anyone wants, because it means they can't give him air and look at his airway at the same time. So the doctor has to look in bursts with his scope while Ike doesn't breathe during those bursts. The not breathing on purpose during general anesthesia is not my favorite. Really, really not my favorite. That's what they had to just before they did the tracheostomy last time. Very touch and go, very not cool.

Obviously, we're looking forward to finally getting some answers, but also obviously, we are pretty worried about everything going OK. He's still so tiny for these kinds things, and with that itty bitty airway… yikes.

So. Next Tuesday. Bronch. Eeek.