In the Hospital.

I don't like getting out of bed in the morning before the sun comes up. I like it even less when I have to get up that early to take Liam to the hospital operating room for some tests. Liam needed to have a bronch which is a routine (about every 6 months) test for kids on vents as well as an ABR which is a hearing test that is done under anesthesia. Neither test is really that risky but let's face it, being put under anesthesia always has its risks. I'm not a fan of Liam going to the O.R.

The bronch results were normal. We weren't expecting anything different. It's something that we'll do a couple of times a year and the changes we are looking for usually take years and years to happen so no big thing there. We did get Liam sized for a new trach which doesn't fit quite the same as his old one. He's got a leak now. A bit of air passes by the cuff of his trach and he can now use his vocal chords, mouth and nose in ways that he hasn't used them in almost a year. As I type this post both Liam and his Mom are snoring on the couch across the room from me. With Liam the snoring is new and adorable, with Karin its never happened and if you ask I'll tell you that she never snores. (wink, wink)

The hearing test was normal. He fell in the normal range for all categories for his age group and we no longer have to worry about hearing tests or hearing aides. The interference noise from Liam's ventilator makes most screening equipment useless for Liam and observational tests are tenuous even for healthy infants so having hard numbers on the subject is a good thing.

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I posted a few pictures of the morning's events on my Posterous page. You can even see his annoyed, "why did you get me out of my crib at 5:30am" face

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Liam is kind of a rock star at the local children's hospital. It was nice to see a few of the people who had helped us so much when we were there for 109 days. Not nice enough to want to stay even a second longer in recovery than we had to, but nice all the same.

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More than one person commented on how pleasant the alarm chime was on his pulse-oxymeter, and it is pleasant, the first 3 or 4 million times you hear it.