Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Surgery

A couple of months ago I talked a little about Connor's heavy breathing and our pediatricians suggestion to see an ENT. Well, we took him in a couple of weeks ago to get checked out.  As we expected, the doctor said he had very large tonsils and that she shouldn't be able to hear him breath from across the room like that. She suggested we at least remove his adenoids but thought that we would just be back in 6 months to remove the tonsils. So her recommendation was to remove both. While John and I both hated the thought of putting him through this, we both knew this was for the better. And the younger you can have this surgery the better. I would know, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed at 18 and it was the worst experience of my life (yes, even worse than childbirth!). The doctor explained it would be a 2 week recovery so we knew we had to do this sooner than later as not to ruin his Christmas. So we scheduled it for that very next week (Tuesday, December 12th). In addition to being out of school for 2 weeks he could only eat soft foods and would need pain meds every 4 - 6 hours.

I was doing ok up until the night before the surgery. Then I started to get really nervous. How do you explain to a 2 year old that they have to have surgery when nothing is seemingly wrong? We ended up telling him the doctor found a boo boo in his throat and was going to fix it. He accepted that, probably because he didn't understand what exactly that entailed. His surgery was scheduled for 8 am so we had to be there at 7:15 am. He couldn't have anything to eat or drink and to my surprise was a non issue. I got a little emotional when they took him back when they said we couldn't go with him. I was so worried he would be scared but he wasn't. He went back with the nurse without a fuss. He rocked surgery and came out of it better than I ever could have imagined. When the doctor came out afterwards she said things went great and that if we had any reservations at all about doing this to know we did the right thing. She went on to say his tonsils were huge and that this will definitely help with all of his breathing issues.

We got home around 11 am and Connor was in great spirits, loving his new diet of Popsicle's and Gatorade. Then we got a call from daycare. Addie had a temperature of 101 :( This was not what we needed. So I went and picked her up and took her to the doctor later that afternoon. The ear infection she was diagnosed with the week prior had not gone away and was now worse. So we switched up her prescription but her fever didn't go away for days. She wasn't able to return to school until Friday. This was not our ideal circumstance considering John and I both had to work and take care of Connor. Thankfully Connor continued to do well and hardly complained at all. The only times he talked about his throat hurting was in the middle of the night. At that point he didn't have to tell us since he would wake up screaming in pain. Poor baby. But all in all he has done wonderful. We are on day 9 and can already hear a difference in him. The only thing is his bad breath and higher pitched voice which should subside in the next couple of weeks.
   

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