Oxygen Test

After many, many months of putting off the “pulse ox” test ordered by Trey’s pulmonologist back in July, we finally completed the test this past week. We postponed the test time after time due to the congestion Trey seemed to carry in his chest since day one of Kindergarten. Trey never ran a fever, did not have a cough, and never missed a day of school because of it but the thought of anything spoiling the results of this test made me want to wait. Specifically, the test measures Trey’s oxygen levels as he sleeps; a test to determine if Trey has sleep apnea.

The machine was delivered and explained to me with the mistake of not having Trey around at the time to see if the finger “splint” fit (I found out the hard way that it didn’t). I put Trey in our bed to keep an eye on him, the connection of the machine and the cord from wrapping around him during the night. We started the test at 8:30pm and at 12:45am, Trey was still awake and the machine had buzzed at least 20times during that time…talk about a negative reading! I figured out that the finger splint was too big for Trey’s short, little finger. I called the next morning and had a pediatric splint on hand for that night. This time we wrapped the sensor around Trey’s big toe and our baby slept soundly through the night.
The results haven’t come back to us yet. I did note however, that the oxygen levels were 4-5 percentage levels higher when attached to Treys finger as opposed to his toe…wonder if that makes a difference. Trey loved the machine and has asked me a couple of times if we could put that light on his finger. Trey is so smart; I just wonder if he only asks that to be able to sleep in our bed???