Let's get this ball rolling!

After much frustration with the doctors not deciding which tests to run and what to run first, they finally had a meeting last Friday with the ENT, anesthetist and orthopedic doctors to decide the best way to proceed. They agreed to do a CT scan on Maddy's neck and use that to examine both the airways and also Maddy's cervical spine. The main benefit of the CT scan is that they don't need to hyperextend Maddy's neck as they would for a bronchoscopy, so they can get a "virtual bronchoscopy" with minimal risk. 

Today they went to schedule the CT scan and asked for an appointment within two weeks. The doctor told us that we should expect it to be right around two weeks but instead, she was able to get an appointment for tomorrow! So tomorrow at 10am she's having the scan. It is the safest option for right now but it's not entirely without risk. She will need to be sedated and will also need to be given some contrast intravenously before the scan, and she will need to fast for four hours before the procedure too. Please pray that it all goes smoothly!! If there are any complications they will cancel the appointment and reschedule.

The best result for the CT scan would be that both the ENT and the orthopedic doctors will be satisfied with the stability of both the cervical spine and also the airways, and obviously that's what we're hoping for. If that happens, most probably they will start trying to feed Maddy orally and she should be able to come home fairly soon. If the doctors are not satisfied with the results of the CT scan, we'll probably need to go ahead with other tests - most likely the bronchoscopy, in spite of the risks. I don't think that it should be necessary though given that Maddy is breathing quite well on her own - although she still does have a bit of the Stridor (the squeaky noises when she breaths).

I'm pretty happy that things are actually happening now. So much was depending on this one test that I was pretty frustrated that we were just in limbo waiting for it, and Maddy wasn't able to come home or start feeding orally or anything until we had the results of this test. We'll know the tentative results in the next couple of days and will be able to move on from there :)