Swallow Test

Strapped to another cold chair, Cannon waits for the X-Ray machine to see if he is having any problems with his suck and swallow. It is literally a 5 minute test that shows the efficiency, or lack of, his suck and then the safety of his risk of aspiration. It was amazing to watch the X-ray of Cannon sucking the bottle and swallowing it down. For as much as I don't know about Cannon and his body, I am learning a lot more about him than I ever did about Ethan and Ella.

The test told us that he is having problems effectively getting enough food out of the bottle, meaning he burns more calories to eat than he can take in. Once he does get the little amount of food in, he has a significant risk of aspirating which they diagnosed as too dangerous to eat orally. Although, I had a pretty good idea that is how the results would come back, it was still hard to swallow- pun intended. Bad joke, I know. We were referred back to Seattle to meet with the G.I. department (that's one of the last departments at Seattle we hadn't seen yet) to talk about feeding tubes.