That’s what I was saying at the end of the day yesterday.

In Kindergarten Cody set off some red flags to his teacher because she felt his fine motor skills were lacking and his speech was behind as far as how he pronounced words. (His vocabulary is excellent.. in fact he’s been accused of being an old man trapped in a child’s body with the big words he likes to use and some of the stuff he comes up with to talk about.) She suggested he have a full evaluation by a team at the school. I agreed even though I have never noticed anything wrong. Unlike his siblings, Cody has never been into coloring, drawing, writing, etc. He also waited till Kindergarten to choose which hand he was going to use. It drove me nuts because he was constantly using both. He’d eat and write with both his left and right hand equally. For a while he even favored his left hand and we thought he might turn out to be a lefty. I asked his teacher to keep an eye on this and if she saw him favor a side, to encourage him to use that side only and I would do the same at home.

He went through the testing. It was not invasive at all and he never knew he was being tested. He got to do stuff like play catch, draw, etc. When the results came back, it was determined he was perfectly normal, just as I suspected. His writing improved over the school year and summer but his speech stayed the same and he was behind on some letter sounds.

On another note, Cody was plagued by chronic bloody noses and he snored loudly for a six year old. He also constantly sounded stuffed up like he had a cold, even when he didn’t. The bloody noses got worse and worse and eventually became a daily occurrence. I had to send him to school with a “bloody nose kit” so he’d always be prepared. (Poor guy got a bloody nose on the first day of school this year too.) I taught him to not cry during them as that made it worse and pretty soon he was pretty ‘ho hum’ about it. When it got to the point of multiple occurrences in a 24 hour period, I got him in to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. She gave him a thorough exam including sticking a camera up into his nose and down his throat. It was pretty freaky but he took it in stride and never so much as whimpered. (He didn’t like the nose numbing stuff, though) It turned out he had blood vessels very close to the surface of his nose on both sides so she cauterized them. He has not had a bloody nose since. However, she discovered he has extremely large tonsils (they almost touch in the middle) and very large adenoids. She said this is likely the cause of his speech issues and his excessive snoring. She recommended they be removed.

I had to think about that. He’s never had any issues with this tonsils. He’s very healthy, rarely gets sick… but he does talk like he’s constantly got a wad of gum in his mouth and he’s snorty. (lol) We had a follow up appointment scheduled to check on his nose so I told her I’d think about it and get back to her then.

Back to school… This year his first grade teacher suggested some extra tutoring for his speech/reading. I agreed. She also mentioned the stuffiness. I explained the large tonsils and adenoids and I’d be talking to his specialist in a few weeks. His reading tutor also brought it up and seemed really concerned that this was having a negative affect on him. I told her about the large tonsils, adenoids, and his upcoming appointment. She mentioned she thought he might have hearing issues and said he didn’t know all his letter sounds. He could read words, but wasn’t able to differentiate letter sounds. She even wrote a letter for me to give to the doctor to help explain what sort of hearing issues she suspected he had.

Yesterday I get a call from the school nurse. Apparently his teacher had expressed her concerns about his speech/stuffiness to the school and sent him to be examined by the school nurse. She called to inform me that he has extremely large tonsils. !!! Ya think?? I told her I knew that and that I had told his teachers that and had appointment for him.

What I really wanted to tell her was “Leave my kid alone! I KNOW he has mutant tonsils/adenoids! I KNOW it is possibly affecting his speech/sleep! Quit examining him! Quit calling me! Quit sounding alarms! BEFORE you give the poor kid a complex!” But I was nice. It’s not that I mind them being concerned, it’s just that I’ve told them what’s going on. I told them he had appointments with a specialist. I told them all this… twice. Once with a phone call and once during his parent-teacher conferences. (And by the way, there is nothing wrong with his hearing and he knows all of his letter sounds now.)

Today at his appointment (funny the school called me a day before the appointment I already told them he had) his doc said his tonsils are so large she is surprised he doesn’t have a hard time swallowing. She showed them to me and holy crap! No wonder he sounds like he’s talking with a giant wad of gum. Those suckers are HUGE! They basically meet right by the hangy-downy thing. (I know it’s called the uvula but hangy-downy thing is more fun to say). This diagram is what a normal mouth with tonsils look like. Picture Cody’s reaching all the way to the uvula and even overlapping it a bit on each side of the uvula.

Between the freakishly large tonsils, his mondo adenoids, and the snoring, he could start having issues down the road such as sleep apnea. I grilled his doc with my billion and one questions and in the end we all agreed he should have both the adenoids and tonsils removed. I really don’t want to mess with sleep apnea risks.

So this winter break Cody gets to eat as much ice cream, pudding, and jello he wants. I’m sure he’ll hate every minute of it.