the word on the street is....

pulmonology!

yup, we had our first pulmonologist appointment today and everything went great.  the dude still wasn't sounding great, so we were happy the doctor got to see him in action.  the first thing they did when we got there was listen to his chest, give him a duo neb (mixture of two medicines, but i forgot which two!) and then come back and listen to him again.  the medicine definitely helped, but it didn't clear much up.  he still sounded pretty snarfely in there.  

after the neb we sat and talked with the doctor for awhile to give her the history of our dude and his breathing trials and tribulations (i won't go into that again since it's all documented in this here blog!).  what was strange to think about though, was the fact that this has been going on since he was about 5 months old.  that's EIGHT MONTHS we've been dealing with this!!!  the sad part, it's kind of become a normal for us now.  i remember being so worried about doing nebulizers, will he stop breathing at night, etc.  and now we're pros at this!  i honestly think if we've gotten through all of this so far, i'm not sure what we can't get through!

  i think everyone was in agreement though that the alubuterol (fast acting attack medicine) wasn't really helping, that maybe we need to try something new.  we should still keep giving him the pulmacort (inhaled steroid) though since it does prevent the episodes from being horrible.  soooooooooooo....we are now going to start giving the dude singulair which helps treat allergies and asthma.  we're all crossing our fingers that this new medicine will help!

finally, in order to rule things out so we can figure out what's causing all the dude's breathing troubles, the doctor has asked us to get two tests done.

1 - an upper gi series: a radiological test used to visualize the structures of the upper digestive system (the esophagus, stomach and duodenum).  for the dude, they'll actually be looking at the trachea and seeing if anything is pressing up against or blocking it.  which could be causing him to not breath as he should be.

2 - sweat test: this test measures the amount of salt chemicals (sodium and chloride) in sweat and is used to diagnose cystic fibrosis (CF).  during my pregnancy the CF test came back negative, but again, just to rule everything out we're going to have this test done.  the doctor reassured us that she really doesn't think the dude has CF because most patients diagnosed don't gain weight as well as....ahem...well, as well as the dude seems to be gaining weight!!  25 1/2 pounds currently!!!  

so those are the updates.  we're going to try and schedule the tests as soon as we can, so that i don't have to stress myself out about waiting for the results.  we'll also be going back to the doctors office next wednesday for a follow-up.  until then!