4th grader with sleep apnea

I teach 2nd grade. Yesterday, a fourth grade teacher who knows that I sleep with a CPAP asked me to help a little boy in her room who has recently been diagnosed with apnea. He's been falling asleep constantly in class so the administration has approved a one teacher to one child ratio for him when he takes the state tests this spring. My job will be to stay with him for 2 days as his test administrator. We will takes breaks together, eat together, and of course we'll go through the testing procedure together. His teacher wants me to get to know him so that maybe I can help and encourage him with his treatment. I'm going to get a picture of all the masks I've tried--maybe put them on the old stuffed brontosaurus that my kids had when they were little. Perhaps we'll get online and look at the pictures of Laryssa.

Sadly, this little boy is from an economically disadvantaged home. (About 98% of our kids are on the free lunch and breakfast program.) The machine is going to be provided through a local government sponsored program. The kid will have the least expensive machine that can be had and probably will be given one mask that had better work because there will be help in finding what is best for him. (Not getting into the politics of it all--just talking about a little boy in a difficult situation.

I saw him in the hall yesterday and he's quite fat with a thick neck. Of course, I won't be able to advise him as to diet since the school meals are full of sugars. CPAP and a low carb diet have helped me lose weight and get blood glucose and cholesterol in control. I'll just sit there with my healthy lunch and snacks and maybe he'll ask me a question opening the way for a discussion about eating.


BTW, whose signature used to say, "It's all about the carbs,stupid"?

Personally I think it's criminal what is fed to kids in schools while everyone complains about kids getting fat and not performing well. I forget where I saw this, but people actually have looked at this and found that it's just as cost effective to serve kids healthy food as it is to serve them crap. It's not as *easy*, though, and getting people to change habits is hard too. There would probably be limited masks he could try anyway, since it seems they are mostly all made with large adult males in mind. Good luck with helping him.

Resmed has a "Kidsta" mask. It looks a lot like their Vista (they were there first...).

http://www.resmed.com/en-us/products/ma ... u=products



Good luck to both of you! He's fortunate to have you to help him.

O.

Ozij, I'll show him this picture and see if it looks like his. His teacher's FIL uses CPAP therapy, so she's very sensitive to his needs. It's just that there is quite a limit as to what we can do. I've got to be out for 6 wks for hysterectomy, but as soon as I return, I'll start spending time with him every week during my planning time.

Best of luck with the surgery!
O.

ozij wrote:Best of luck with the surgery!
O.

Thank you. The biggest concern for me is that lack of CPAP knowledge in this particular hospital and the high carb diet that will raise BG. Oh well, insurance will not cover me past a 2 night stay, so I won't have to put up with it for long.

Many of the cheapest foods in the grocery are the fat and sugar laden foods. All fillers, salt and breading. I can't speak specifically to school lunches nowadays, but about a decade ago the food they purchased was indeed much cheaper than fresh foods. I can tell you from experience that I can feed my husband and I on $50/week if we eat fish sticks and grilled cheese, but it costs $150/week if we eat chicken and fresh veggies. A 3 lbs chicken to roast is $12 and a medium sized bunch of asparagus is $5, while the bag of potatoes is $3 and the sack of rolls are $2. But I live in Kansas where much fresh food is imported, which of course raises the cost. (No, don't ask me why our own chicken and beef is exported while we get the meats from other states & countries. It makes no sense to me.)

My point is that opening the discussion to diet choices is a good idea, but keep in mind that if his family can't afford much, they're probably buying the cheaper foods out of necessity and not out of ignorance of good nutrition.

Good luck!

I feel for the kids that have to deal with it, but there are much, much worse maladies:

Data Mining of Inpatient Records Reveals the Disease Pattern of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

American Academy of Sleep Medicine
12/15/2008

Westchester, Ill. –A study in the Dec. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine is the first to show the full clinical picture of comorbid conditions associated with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), quantify their frequency of occurrence and reveal their possible interrelationships.

Results show that the number of cases of OSA peaks between the ages of 0-4 years, is low during adolescence, and then rises from 25-29 years to a peak at 55-59 years. The rates are slightly higher for girls than boys in the 0-4 age group (9.4% and 6.7%) and the 5-9 age group (6.0% and 3.9%), and the occurrence rate in males is higher than in females after 20-24 years of age.

stacia123 wrote:Many of the cheapest foods in the grocery are the fat and sugar laden foods. All fillers, salt and breading. I can't speak specifically to school lunches nowadays, but about a decade ago the food they purchased was indeed much cheaper than fresh foods. I can tell you from experience that I can feed my husband and I on $50/week if we eat fish sticks and grilled cheese, but it costs $150/week if we eat chicken and fresh veggies. A 3 lbs chicken to roast is $12 and a medium sized bunch of asparagus is $5, while the bag of potatoes is $3 and the sack of rolls are $2. But I live in Kansas where much fresh food is imported, which of course raises the cost. (No, don't ask me why our own chicken and beef is exported while we get the meats from other states & countries. It makes no sense to me.)

My point is that opening the discussion to diet choices is a good idea, but keep in mind that if his family can't afford much, they're probably buying the cheaper foods out of necessity and not out of ignorance of good nutrition.

Good luck!

You are so right about the cheap food. He eats 2 meals a day at school. They are high in carbohydrates which of course increases weight. The only good news I see is that trans fats have been eliminated.

The little boy is hispanic so he surely has beans and tortillas every day as do all of the children in my own class (pretty good stuff except for the high carb level. There is no way that I can start any conversation about his diet. Perhaps he'll ask about what I'm eating and I can just plant a seed about reasonable eating. I've been overweight since birth and for the first time, my weight is being controlled without any dieting. My way of eating is so politically incorrect and so goes against government standards that I would never proselytize, especially a child who isn't responsible for the food that he brings into his house.

This is wrong. You do not need to eat nearly as much when you eat a nutritious diet and the cost ends up being about the same, sometimes cheaper. The reason you don't need to eat as much is because things like vegetables, nuts, seeds, and complex carbs fill you up and digest slowly whereas packaged processed crap causes a spike and rapid drop in blood sugar so that you feel hungry (and tired) again shortly after eating it.

Also, meat is very expensive for not much benefit. You don't need to eat meat daily. I eat meat probably once a week, maybe twice at the very most. I almost never eat beef or chicken and stick to turkey and fish. Fish (without the breading/batter) is the most filling of all the meats IMO. You can eat a small amount of it and feel amazingly full and it lasts several hours.

There is no reason anyone should have to eat garbage all the time even if they don't have much income. The problem is that in poor areas you can't even find nutritious foods in the stores. Where I used to live in SE MI, you couldn't walk into a local grocery store and find fresh fruit or vegetables, but there were aisles upon aisles of chips, soda, and a huge section of pork products including gallon tubs of lard. This is what people eat and feed their kids? It's no wonder they are fat and sick.

stacia123 wrote:Many of the cheapest foods in the grocery are the fat and sugar laden foods. All fillers, salt and breading. I can't speak specifically to school lunches nowadays, but about a decade ago the food they purchased was indeed much cheaper than fresh foods. I can tell you from experience that I can feed my husband and I on $50/week if we eat fish sticks and grilled cheese, but it costs $150/week if we eat chicken and fresh veggies. A 3 lbs chicken to roast is $12 and a medium sized bunch of asparagus is $5, while the bag of potatoes is $3 and the sack of rolls are $2. But I live in Kansas where much fresh food is imported, which of course raises the cost. (No, don't ask me why our own chicken and beef is exported while we get the meats from other states & countries. It makes no sense to me.)

My point is that opening the discussion to diet choices is a good idea, but keep in mind that if his family can't afford much, they're probably buying the cheaper foods out of necessity and not out of ignorance of good nutrition.

Good luck!