We attended a cleft palate clinic with Ezra last spring. The team noted that they wanted to have a pharyngeal scope performed. Ezra still has a lot of air escaping through his nose when he speaks and we suspected that things were not working the way they should with his palate. A scope would give us a clear picture of things.
With our summer happenings, the scope got put on the back burner. Our speech therapist asked about it a few weeks ago and I told her I would follow up with the speech department at Texas Tech. We went last Wednesday for the scope.
I had Asa and Ezra with me. We had to travel to Lubbock, about one and a half hours away. The boys slept most of the way. The biggest hassle of traveling alone with small children is when you have to go to the bathroom and they are sound asleep in the car. You don't want to risk pulling over and waking them, and you don't really want to unstrap multiple toddlers and haul them into a nasty gas station bathroom. And, technically, you are not supposed to leave your kids in the car. It is quite the dilemma.
But I had to stop. I could not wait any longer. I found a small, all by itself gas station and pulled in. It was cool outside, so I cracked the windows, locked the car and ran inside. Customers Only. Cool, I'll buy a drink. I go potty, pick a drink, pay and get back out to the car in less than 4 minutes. And they are both awake at this point. And they both see my drink. And they both want a drink also. Okay, okay, okay. I run back inside and buy them some watered down high fructose corn syrup and then we were back on the road.
We arrived at Texas Tech at 2:30 for our 3 pm appointment. They called us back to the exam room a little before 3 pm.
One Speech Language Pathologist asked, "Haven't I seen you, don't you have a bunch of other foster kids?"
"No, and these are not foster kids. They are my sons." And I don't know now many Asian kids are actually in foster care in West Texas anyway???
They asked, "What do you know of his birth history?"
"Nothing really, he was left when he was a newborn."
"Really?!"
At this point I thought I should point out what is obvious to most people, "He is from China."
A collective, "OOOhhh." from the two SLP and two interns who are observing.
"And where is he from?"
"He is from Kyrgyzstan." Blank stare as they frantically try to recall ever hearing of such a place.
Finally they turned their attention to Ezra and start asking him questions to get an idea of his speech. She asked what his name was, hold old he was and who Asa was. She asked how old Asa was and Ezra said, "Ny no know!"
I said, "He is four Ezra. You are three, and Asa is four."
"He not four. I four. He three."
The lady explained to Ezra that they were going to make a movie in his nose. He looked as perplexed as one could imagine. They positioned us and inserted the scope. Ezra screamed. And screamed. And screamed and refused to talk. My thoughts turned to Asa. Okay, this could be bad. I hope he does not freak out too. Thankfully he could not fully see what was happening and sat quietly, probably thanking his stars that he was not the one with the high powered booger picker up his nose.
At long last, Ezra spoke! He said, "NY NO NIKE IT!" He said it a good three or four times and the SLPs were able to get a good idea of what is (not) happening in his throat and nasal passages as he tries to talk.
We have an appointment with the ENT next week to follow up and hopefully get a game plan. Most likely they will want to do a p-flap surgery when he turns 4 next spring.
The ride home was very eventful as we hit a huge thunderstorm and driving rain forced us to drive no faster than 25 miles an hour for miles at a time. It was crazy. That was the beginning of the weekend that we got 5 inches of rain.
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