Swallow Study, Softball, and Sweet Corn

On Thursday, Mom, Whitney, Drew, and I headed to St. Louis Children's Hospital where Drew was scheduled for a swallow study. He has continued to have problems with getting choked when he eats and drinks; not as bad as he use to, but still enough to worry us. So Drew's speech therapist recommended that we have a swallow study done just to make sure things were working like they were suppose to.


We had to make sure he was hungry so the speech therapist, Jeanne, could observe him chewing, so he had a late breakfast at around 9:15 and the appointment was set for 1:30. Upon arriving at the hospital, I had Mom and Whitney go to the cafeteria to get food. I had them "hide" from Drew when they got back with the food b/c I figured he was getting hungry!

Drew and I headed into Jeanne's office and I had Mom follow us. Little did I know that she would bring back a whole tray full of food! I don't even know what all was on there, but when Drew saw it, he went straight for the grilled cheese.

Jeanne was still in the process of taking his history, so we had to ask mom to leave and take the food with her and you can imagine what Drew thought about that...he threw a huge fit! Through the screaming and crying, I did my best to explain the problems we had been having and even shared with her some video footage of Drew eating. After that, we brought the food back in and she watched him eat his grilled cheese. Her initial observations were that he doesn't do a lot of chewing before swallowing and that his chewing motion is more of an up-and-down motion versus any side-to-side grinding. We cut Drew off after he ate 1/2 of the grilled cheese b/c she wanted to proceed with the second part of the test -- the barium swallow test -- so we headed down to the imaging center. We had never been there before and it was really neat. Joe Buck (a sports announcer from St. Louis) must have donated the money to have it redesigned b/c it is called the Joe Buck Imaging Center and it's done in a sports theme.

After getting everything set up, we headed back for the x-ray portion of the test. Drew was strapped into a little red chair and Jeanne took his grilled cheese (which was about 2 hours old at this point) and smeared the creamy white barium all over it. She also mixed it in with Drew's water. She said it was kind of chalky/minty tasting (good combination!) so I wasn't sure how Drew would do, but I guess he was starving b/c it didn't slow him down!

What the barium does is allows them to see the food and water via an x-ray, which they video tape. After it was over, Jeanne reviewed it with me. It was pretty neat seeing how the food goes down! The good news is that she saw nothing structurally wrong that would cause Drew to choke. The bad news is that she thinks his choking is somewhat related to his lack of speech -- he just isn't using his mouth to its fullest extent and she thinks that as he learns to make more sounds, he will also become better with his chewing and stuff. So no "quick fix." I actually didn't get to talk to her about it as much as I would have liked b/c Drew was ready to get out of there, but she will write a report up and then Drew has his team visit on the 31st so I'm sure I can get my questions answered then.

After the test was done, we went to the cafeteria where I treated Drew to chocolate milk and macaroni and cheese! I never give him chocolate milk, but after eating and drinking that nasty barium, I thought he deserved it :o)

And of course we had to take a trip to the mall where Drew got two new pairs of shoes. (Thanks Grandma!) One pair he ended up wearing and when we got back in the car, he refused to take them off so he wore them the whole 2.5 hours home -- guess he liked them!!

Friday night, we went to Whitney's softball game. Drew even has his own shirt!

Tonight for dinner, Drew had a treat--fresh sweet corn from a local farm. And he loved it! Guess it's a good thing we bought a whole crate of it!

Finally, thanks to everyone who has voted on Drew's pic! If you haven't voted yet or if you just voted in the comment section, please take a minute to cast your vote via the poll in the side bar...