Healthcare Handler
Mommy and Sayla finally got a night away together this past weekend, even if it was just for a sleep study! Sayla thoroughly enjoyed having me all to herself on our getaway. She has been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, and her pulmonologist wanted to do this particular sleep study to see if her apnea improved with oxygen titration and/or CPAP.
Her sleep apnea is caused by tongue obstruction and low muscle tone in her neck when she is asleep, which closes off her airway. For the study, they place a ton of electrodes on her head and body to monitor brain activity, eye movements, heartbeat, muscle movement, and breathing. They use very sticky glue and cover each electrode with a square piece of gauze. They also put two wide elastic straps with a monitor attached to measure chest and belly breathing. She had an airflow monitor, which is similar to a nasal cannula, that has a tiny hook shaped tube hanging off of the nose piece, that goes into her mouth and measures carbon dioxide (they had to cut the tube shorter because she wouldn’t stop biting it!).
It is obviously hard to sleep with all of the medical equipment on, people in and out of the room, and in a strange environment, so they encouraged us to bring anything that would help soothe Sayla for sleep. We brought her favorite blanket and her sound machine that she sleeps to every night, set to “ocean” sounds. The first half of the night they administered oxygen via nasal cannula while she slept to assess her results and to compare to her previous sleep study with no oxygen. They then woke her up at 3:30am to put on the CPAP nasal mask, and she was NOT happy. It took over an hour for her to calm down with that contraption on her head. She finally slept for approximately 2 hours, so hopefully they were able to obtain the data they needed while she was asleep to see if the mask was beneficial.
We needed this study to be done before her spinal surgery to best know how to support her respiratory status after she is extubated post-surgery. We also need to know just for everyday life in battling her sleep apnea and should have the final results back in a few weeks. Her spinal surgery has been cancelled for now since the surgeon can only perform at 50% capacity in the OR right now, and he is having to prioritize his emergent patients whose surgeries were cancelled over the last 3 months due to COVID-19.
Sayla kept the smiles coming the whole trip, except for those first few hours wearing the CPAP mask. We put a hat on her sticky tangled hair to come home in, and she thought she was so fancy. She laughs really hard when you say the word “fancy.” The sleep tech recommended using Dawn dish soap before using normal shampoo in her hair to remove the electrode adhesive, and it worked like a charm! She loved our getaway, but was very happy to be back in her own bed… as was I! Have you or a loved one ever had a sleep study?
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