Adenoids

Last Friday Jack had an appointment at Children Hospital to be looked at for some breathing issues he has had.  He breaths loudly through his mouth and doesn’t sleep the way he should.

At the hospital they ran a few tests and got an x-ray of his head to check the size of his adenoids which they thought might be the problem.  I guess enlarged adenoids can make it hard to breath through your nose.  The scan showed that the adenoids were indeed the problem and Jack will have surgery to remove them in a few weeks time.

If I understood correctly, the part that I circled in red below is Jack’s adenoid.  And the darker part that I scribbled in blue is his airflow.  If you look back at the top scan you can see how the airflow is “pinched” below the adenoids.

Right now I feel glad that there is something we can do about Jacks breathing.  When he gets a cold he has an even harder time breathing and it can be really scary.  The adenoids swell making nose breathing even harder than usual.  Several times Jack has been completely unable to breath when he was vomiting since he couldn’t breath through his nose and the vomiting cut off his flow through his mouth.  It is terrifying – to both of us.   Also, the adenoids can cut off the drainage tube thingys to his ears which is probably the reason that all of his colds this winter turned into ear infections.

While I feel relieved right now, I don’t know how I will feel when it comes down to the actual surgery time.  That might be a little scary. 

Jack liked visiting the hospital.  All of the staff spoke to him first asking him for his last name (which I had to translate: “your big name”) and his birthdate.  He was wearing a superman shirt with a cape and several times the staff asked, “Superman, have you seen Jack?”  Jack got to play games and read books and they even gave him a popsicle when he was getting a little antsy near the end.  For a two hour appointment – things went pretty well.

The nurse printed the head x-ray for Jack to take home.  When we picked up Owen from school, Jack was very excited to show him, but had left the printout at home.  “Owen, you need to see it.  The doctor took a picture of my head, and guess what?! I am a skeleton!”