About 1 year ago (a few days after Brody was born to be exact) Molly had strep throat. That was a great week bringing home a new baby to a 2 year old with strep throat. She went on antibiotics, and was on the mend fairly quickly, and we thought nothing else of it. Fast forward about 5 months, and we took Molly to a doctor's appointment for some illness...I can't remember...and the doctor asked if I knew Molly's tonsils were swollen. I had no idea. She said it could be due to the current illness Molly had, and we'd keep an eye on it. Molly got better, and we thought nothing else of it. Fast forward another 5 months to April of this year, and Molly had been increasingly gagging on food, snoring, waking at night and all that stuff, and that little voice in my head said "Remember that doctor's appointment 5 months ago where the doctor said we should keep an eye on Molly's tonsils? Maybe you should check them again." So I looked in her throat, and sure enough...huge and swollen. I felt so bad that she had more than likely had these big swollen tonsils for almost a year without me realizing! We were between insurance at that time, as Marty had just started his new job, so we decided we'd wait until his insurance started up to take her to an ENT, unless her symptoms got worse. I took Molly to the ENT at the beginning of July. He hardly even looked in her throat and said, "Wow, what big tonsils you have!" It was decided we would take a month of us watching her while she sleeps {creeper status} to see if she was having obstructed breathing (sleep apnea) as well as trying to help her gain weight and get a little bigger before surgery. No matter our efforts though, she didn't gain any weight and after observing her, she was having obstructed breathing every 10-15 minutes while I would watch her. It was enough for the doctor and us to feel like we needed to go ahead with the surgery, and the surgery was scheduled for September 9th.
Back to where we were. We arrived home from our lovely trip to Utah {minus Brody being sick...which as it turns out, looks like he's got roseola...fun times} on Monday evening.
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| You can see Brody's roseola here...the rash on his belly and it was on his head too. |
We received the call Tuesday morning that Molly's tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy was good to go for Wednesday morning and to be to the surgical center by 6:45 a.m. (look how fancy I am, using the technical terms....OK, I had to google it. Turns out they don't just call it "cutting your tonsils and adenoids out")
Tuesday afternoon, Molly and I went to the store to get some popsicles, ice cream, yogurt and juice to have on hand for the recovery. She obviously had no clue what to expect, but was excited about the treats.
Wednesday morning we were up bright and early and went to the surgical center. Molly was so confused as to why we were going to the doctor when it was still dark outside. She kept telling me that the "sun would come up in a minute" and that "the moon is following us".
We got to the surgical center, and the receptionist made a fuss over how cute she was in her pajamas, and asked her questions all about her Doc McStuffins doll...which she obviously had to bring with her. We were taken back to a room to get prepped - which for a 3 year old really is just me talking to a couple nurses and signing a couple papers. They don't do IV's on the kids until they're already asleep from the anesthesia. They gave Molly a little bowl of stickers and her mask for anesthesia and let her decorate it to her heart's content. Then she played around a little with Doc McStuffins and waited patiently. They were nice enough to let her keep Doc with her the whole time.
Showing me how the mask works.
Letting Doc McStuffins try out the mask.
I went out to the waiting room, and was probably out there for about 30 minutes when they came and got me. As we were walking back, the anesthesiologist said to me, "I don't think she knows what she got herself into." This was actually the hardest part for me, seeing her waking up from the anesthesia. She was just whiney and when I went in and said hi to her, she reached out and whimpered, "hold me mommy!" They got me a big comfy chair and put Molly on my lap, then wheeled us over to a recovery area where they let her wake up slowly.
We waited in the recovery area for about an hour until we felt like she was doing OK, and then she got to ride the wheelchair out to the car and we went home. We were home before 10:00 a.m., and just hung out.
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| I think she was just really confused at this point. |
They were right!
Day one and two was really not too bad. We kept up on her pain medicine, and she was happy to watch TV, color pictures and drink juice.
And then the train hit....
I have to say nighttime was the hardest of all. She was upset when we woke her up to take medicine, but we knew we had to keep up on it, and she'd wake up crying that her throat and stomach hurt (her stomach hurt because she would eat and was hungry and had the medicine on an empty tummy). I pretty much didn't sleep for a full week between waking her up to give her medicine, her whimpering and crying out, trying to get comfortable myself just to have her whimper or cry again, or the alarm would ring for me to get up and give her more medicine. It was rough. Her cry was just so pitiful. Every time she would start to cry, she would put her hand over her mouth and look at us with her big sad eyes that indicated pain as well as being sad. She did eventually start saying "my throat hurts" while crying, but still there isn't much we could do. We encouraged her to drink a lot, because the pain is worse if she gets dried out, but there's only so much you can say to a 3 year old...especially when they're disoriented and in pain during the night.
About a week after surgery, she really hit a bad patch and started to refuse to drink or eat anything at all. She didn't use the bathroom at all in a full 24 hour period. We tried really hard to push the fluids. But her throat was really raw, and the scabs were starting to come off. We ended up calling into the doctor's office to see what else we could do, and they prescribed her some stronger pain medicine with the hope that it would give her enough relief to get her to drink. Her options were to have that work, or we were to take her into the ER to get fluids. Thankfully, the strong pain medicine did the trick and she was able to drink again so we didn't have to go in.
We are almost 2 full weeks out, and it has been 10 times harder than I expected it to be. She is doing quite well now, but will occasionally still be a bit whiney and is still a little extra tired. But she's starting to eat more and drink more and not complaining about her throat, which we are SO grateful for! It was really rough there for a while.
I have to just keep up the hope that it'll all be worth it in the end.
No more waking at night, no more apnea episodes, no more gagging on food...it'll be worth it!
About a week after surgery, she really hit a bad patch and started to refuse to drink or eat anything at all. She didn't use the bathroom at all in a full 24 hour period. We tried really hard to push the fluids. But her throat was really raw, and the scabs were starting to come off. We ended up calling into the doctor's office to see what else we could do, and they prescribed her some stronger pain medicine with the hope that it would give her enough relief to get her to drink. Her options were to have that work, or we were to take her into the ER to get fluids. Thankfully, the strong pain medicine did the trick and she was able to drink again so we didn't have to go in.
We are almost 2 full weeks out, and it has been 10 times harder than I expected it to be. She is doing quite well now, but will occasionally still be a bit whiney and is still a little extra tired. But she's starting to eat more and drink more and not complaining about her throat, which we are SO grateful for! It was really rough there for a while.
I have to just keep up the hope that it'll all be worth it in the end.
No more waking at night, no more apnea episodes, no more gagging on food...it'll be worth it!
