Argh - No New News

So we went over to Duke today for what we thought was going to be the ABR but unfortunately they did the same hearing test that they did last week at the ENT in Raleigh. I am getting a close up glimpse of how screwed up healthcare is...electronic medical records would have certainly helped Duke more fully understand Dustin's case and perhaps we wouldn't have needed to do another hearing test like last week.

We did get to meet with the Duke ENT vs the Raleigh ENT and she recommended the following sequence:
1. Spray steriods (Flonase) for snoring and any potential obstruction for breathing during sleeping; this may also address (although not fully) any issues related to apnea or adnoids (see #3)
2. Prescription drops to clear additional obstruction in one of the ear canals; kids with Down sometimes have smaller ear canals increasing the incidence of obstruction (definitely the case with Dustin)
3. Come back for another Duke ENT eval regarding obstruction and evaluate whether an ABR will be needed; if so, we can schedule BOTH the sleep study to evaluate whether there are any adnoid or apnea issues (finally!) AND perform an ABR > this way Dustin only goes under anethesia once. This make sense to us...

p.s. Rob joined Facebook and evaulating how to pull together this blog, Twitter and Facebook to keep everyone in touch

40DB vs 20DB - Too Much Loud Rock Music

Dustin must be listening to too much hard rock music : )

We finally got a "decent" hearing test today and mixed results. They were hoping he could test well at 20 decibels (db) which is normal conversation level. However, he did not respond to this level but did at 40 db. This is of course an improvement over the initial test where we started (pre tubes) with 70 db.

So our next step is an appointment at Duke University where a more sophisticated test can be administered - this test is called sedated ABR and this test will be done next week.

We are praying for good results from this test.