ENT visit

Our concern of Cara's disrupted sleep, some nights, and her "stuffiness" led us to seek out the opinion of an ENT. We got a great referral from Cara's speech therapist. Dr. Werle really knew his stuff and knew what to say and how to say it to ease parental fears. Right now, we are in the beginning stage of finding out what might be causing her to snore and snort a lot. We are going to be going to Children's this week for a lateral neck x-ray to check her tonsils and adenoids. From looking down her throat and up her nose, it was concluded that Cara has enlarged tonsils and adenoids which isn't in and of itself necessarily a concern, but something to be checked out. Sometimes, kids just grow into them or they shrink with age. They can also be enlarged because the child is fighting off an infection. In any case, we're going to have a look-see. Dr. Werle also said that Cara has extra cartilage in her nose, which could be causing her to snort and snore. He wanted her to have a sleep study, but a call to Aetna put it on the back burner for now. Our primary insurance will not cover anything as we have not met our $5K deductible. When I called the Sleep Center at the hospital, I was informed that a typical pediatric study for sleep apnea runs no less than $4K and usually more like $7K! Holy smokes! I'd like to know one average person out there who could drop that kind of money for something non-essential. Even with our CICP, we were looking at $585 per service! $585 for the therapist, $585 for this...you get the idea. Our already impressive bill with Children's would increase almost tri-fold. So, I got back on the horn and told her ENT's nurse and we agreed to postpone the sleep study and just go with a hearing test (got to rule it out), the xray and an office visit. If after all that is done, Dr. Werle still thinks a sleep study needs to be done, we may have to bite the bullet. That will be a very big one to swallow, however.