Apologies in advance this is going to be rather long but will try to make it as brief as possible.
DS2 was born at 32 weeks. Stayed in NICU for 6 weeks to feed and grow basically and was then discharged with no issues. At around 3 months he started making a weird noise when he breathed (he sounded like Darth Vader). Hospital thought it was Laryngomalacia and that he'd grow out of it. By 15 months he was still breathing really loudly and making the noise so they decided to do a barium swallow on him at which point they found he had a narrowing of his osophagus and trachea and thought it was a Vascular Ring or Double Aortic Arch,
We had to go to GOSH as our local hospital has no peadiatric cardiology department and he was given a CT scan and very detailed echo. Upshot was it's not a complete Vascular Ring but something called an ARSA(Aberrent Right Subclavian Artery). Basically one of his arteries has come off his aortic arch in the wrong place and pushes on his esophagus and trachea which causes the breathing issue. After lots of discussion they decided it was just a variation of normal so to speak and it shouldn't cause him any major problems...they could operate to reposition the artery but it's massive open heart surgery and there is no real benefit. We got discharged from GOSH just before his 2nd birthday.
He is now 7.5 and tbh you wouldn't know there is anything wrong with him at all. The noisy breathing is hardly noticeable now and he has no major issues at all. However he keeps getting headaches and it's worrying me slightly. He is not a child to complain but I would say 4 or 5 days out of 7 he says his head hurts and its enough for him to ask for medicine and then he just lays on the sofa. Took him for eye test and his eyes are fine.
My concern is that when they did his BP in hospital it was significantly different in each arm...one was much much higher than the other. Obviously Im no medical person but it seems to me like the side where this artery is makes the BP higher perhaps? And Im wondering if the headaches are a result of this?
Ive taken him to doctors about something else and mentioned it then and he just said its unusual to have high BP in a child and wouldn't take it...but he has a fairly strange plumbing issue going on with his heart so he isn't a "normal" child in so far as his body isn't going to behave normally!
Any medical people around with any thoughts? Go back to GP and insist they check it? Or maybe it's nothing to do with that at all.