Sleep

Today we reviewed the results of Ryan's sleep study. Despite it being an abnormal night's sleep for Ryan during the study, they were still able to determine that, yes, he does have sleep apnea. Other interesting findings included that he only entered REM sleep very briefly -- for less than 5% of the time that he was asleep, as opposed to the normal 20-25% for adults. The amount of time that he spent in Stage 3 (deep sleep) was also very low. His sleep is very disjointed, which is a big concern. He will be starting to use a C-Pap machine by the end of this week and then he will have another sleep study next month to figure out the best settings on the C-Pap and make sure it is helping him get better sleep.

The other main thing they found during the sleep study was that Ryan suffers from severe limb movements during sleep -- also known as restless legs.

The limb movement index parameters are 

10-20 = mild

20-40 = moderate

greater than 40 = severe

Ryan's count for this study was 357! That definitely falls into the "severe" range! Because of this, he will have a bunch more blood work done to check his iron levels and something to do with his bone marrow. It was also strongly suggested that Ryan see a neurologist sooner rather than later concerning his low profusion witnessed during his hospital stays. They didn't actually test his profusion during the sleep study, but when I mentioned how low his profusion was at the hospital, it concerned the provider who went over the results of things with us today.

Ryan has started feeling more anxiety at nights and he is having vivid dreams again that almost feel like hallucinations. This brings back memories from his hospital stay that he would rather not re-live. Hopefully we will get this sleep thing figured out for him soon. We didn't realize before how many things in life hinge on getting a good-night's rest!

God continues to guide us through this. We can't see very far ahead on this path, but we feel comfort in knowing that this is the path we're meant to walk.