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Saturday, December 09, 2017

[lă-ring′gō-mă-lā′shē-ă]

I just diagnosed Alexander with laryngomalacia.

I'm not a doctor or anything like that, but I am a mom and so I diagnose things all the time.

Hangnail.
Second-degree burn.
Hand-foot-mouth disease.
Ingested penny.
Strep throat.
Pink eye.
Croup.

Sometimes we go in for a formal confirmation of our diagnosis (mostly so we can get a prescription) but other times we simply don't need to. There is no course of action for laryngomalacia (unless it happens to be interfering with breathing or eating, which, in Alexander's case, it's not).


When we were in the hospital several of my nurses asked the on call paediatrician to come in and listen to Alexander breathing (it happened three times), but the doctor always would say that he didn't seem to be struggling to breathe. There was no obstruction. His breathing was simply the way that it was. And what it was was noisy.

He's still noisy.

Noisy enough to be comical (he sounds like a goose, guys). Noisy enough to concern passersby ("Aw, does somebody have a cold?"). Noisy enough that he really can't be secreted into a senior recital (believe me; we tried to attend my cousin's percussion recital this evening and I ended up listening from the hallway because this boy is loud).

Basically, his"laryngeal structure is malformed and floppy, causing the tissues to fall over the airway opening and partially block it," resulting in "stridor," a fancy term for "noisy breathing." The good news is, it should resolve on its own by the time he's 24 months (so only, like, 22 months left of listening to Alexander squeak). The bad news is, it could get worse before it gets better (I'm assuming this means...louder).

At any rate, at least I can tell people what's wrong with him now.

"Does he have a cold?"

"No. He has laryngomalacia."

He just honks like a goose 24/7. It's fine.

1 comment:

  1. Ha! You might as well just give them the description because even if you correctly pronounced it and replied, "No. He has laryngomalacia," I'm betting most are going to be like: "huh?" :)

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