Recovery Day 4

On Friday, L had surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids, and to put tubes in his ears. Recovery so far has been awful. If you were to ask me if your child should have the same surgery, I'd say "Don't Do It!" Of course, that's not how it works. In the words of the surgeon, L's adenoids and tonsils were HUGE and blocking his airway.

Surgery itself went okay. It was at a hospital we'd never been to before {and not a children's hospital} but they were kind and on time {although they build in so much waiting time}. There was a chance we wouldn't be able to join him in recovery, which was a horrible thought, but in the end, we were able to go back to the recovery area. Good thing, too, because L was DISTRAUGHT. He would wake up and SCREAM. Finally, the nurse took the hint and pushed morphine in his IV.

Although he puked twice, there were signs that first day that L was healing well--he ate jello and yogurt and even shredded cheese. He slept soundly Friday night. Saturday morning was tough but he seemed better in the afternoon. Then Saturday night, he called for us several times. Sunday was tough, getting him to eat or drink (and by eat, I'm talking soft foods like ice cream) was like pulling teeth. He dry-heaved twice, yet I wasn't too concerned because he wasn't losing what he'd comsumed.

All this time, L was constantly on the couch. No energy. Looking like death. HEART-BREAKING.

Again last night we went to bed early in case he woke up frequently. Sure enough, he called us a million times, for wet diapers mostly, till at 1am we heard him puking. This one was for real. Since it was the middle of the night and we all wanted to sleep, we gave him a Zofran. Suddenly he was happy as a stinkin' clam and Hubby and I are looking at each other like "has he been nauseous This Whole Time?" The good news is, L was feeling better and drinking tons of water. The bad news is, he wasn't at all interested in sleeping. Eventually, I told Hubby to get as much sleep as he could before work, I'd stay in L's room. I ended up getting less than 2 hours of sleep. I let L "get up" {I'm not sure he'd slept at all} about 6:30 and then Hubby took over and I got an extra hour of sleep in my own bed (as opposed to L's floor). Worst night since the infant days!

Now he's taking Zofran regularly and he's eaten some ice cream and fruit so far today. And he's on his second nap, so he's likely to be nocturnal again tonight. :-( But it's nice to see him movig around again, and looking a little less like death. I'm hoping the worst is over.

I'll keep you posted.

Has your child ever been through something like this? Any words of wisdom?

That's Life 5/18/11

May has been a crazy month! Crazy! Averaging 2 doc appts per week on top of our regular stuff. Today was the allergist (again) and we have speech in a few minutes.

Continuing on our medical adventures, we did environmental-allergies-testing today. And it all came back negative. So what does that mean? Obviously, I'm glad L doesn't have some new issue to deal with. On the other hand, what about his "allergy shiners" and constant congestion? Theory #1: sensitivity to pollution. {There's a name for it--vaso-motor-rhinitis or something?} L can take eyedrops and nose spray as needed. Theory #2: we did x-rays to look for chronic sinusitis or enlarged adenoids. I don't know, this medical stuff is over my head. Anyway, I agreed to the x-rays, might as well rule more stuff out. The radiologist got us in and out fast, we'll have results soon.

Here's a question: when we saw the ENT last week and he found fluid in L's ears, he said something like "if he weren't already on Nasonex and Zyrtec, I'd have him take those." Now the allergist has taken him off those two. So do I keep giving them to help the ear fluid?! Oy vay!

This week is National Eosinophilic Awareness Week, which means I should be blogging all about EE. We just keep plugging along as usual. As I told his GI last week, we're doing well with the reduced volume of Neocate (28 ounces per day), we're confident he can get through a full school day. But we're frustrated that he eats so little real food, particularly proteins. Even what he calls his favorite foods, he'll only eat three bites. So she is getting us in (again) for a feeding evaluation. We won't do feeding therapy again (too much time and money), but maybe they'll have ideas to work on at home.

We went to kindergarten orientation last night. I can't believe my little boy will be in kindergarten this fall! Choosing an elementary school turned out to be really tough/complicated/aggravating, but we finally chose the Catholic school. I'm still not thrilled we chose a school that costs money, but he didn't get into our first choice charter school and we didn't want to chance it--we know for sure the Catholic school is top-notch. So anyway, orientation last night was kind of repetitive and not as informative as the info night we went to last month, but the kids got to take a tour AND I met the mom of a fellow incoming kindergartner, with whom we can have playdates and get to know each other before the fall. Yippee!

Oops, it's time to go to speech.

Medical Adventures

Once again, I've had a million plans in my head for what to blog but I never have time to sit down and do it. So I'm now going to write for 5 minutes (before Hubby gets home for dinner) and see what comes out.

At the risk of sounding like Negative Nelly, I can update you on our latest health woes. Yesterday.... Well, I should go back a few weeks. I took L to the pediatrician for a bad cough and because his SLP noticed he had swollen tonsils. The doctor pronounced him with a cold virus (hence the fever) and environmental allergies (she noticed "allergy shiners"--puffy eyes with dark circles) and referred him to an ENT for the tonsils. And she put him on Zyrtec and Nasonex for the allergies.

The cold (and allergies?) cleared up (thanks to meds?). Last week, we saw the allergist to talk about environmental allergies (even though we were there about 2 weeks ago talking about food allergies). He scheduled us for stick tests next week.

Yesterday we had the ENT appointment. Good news: his tonsils are fine! (Probably cleared up with the end of the cold and/or allergy meds, I guess?) Bad news: he found a bunch of fluid in L's ears. So he tested his hearing and found a mild "hearing loss." Frankly, I don't think "hearing loss" is a good term, it sounds like he's going deaf. Scary! He meant that the fluid is making him have trouble hearing. So we get to wait and see on that. We go back in a month, praying the fluid has gone away.

Today, we saw L's GI for a typical follow-up and that was thankfully uneventful. We did get to check out the brand new Phoenix Children's Hospital. It was very nice. I was thrilled with the abundance of parking--the garage was a ghost town above the second floor! But there was a complete lack of magazines. None in the waiting area or in the exam room. And we were waiting in the exam room a LONG time. L and I had to practice our patience.

I guess I'll be creating a couple new tabs: one for seasonal allergies and one for ENT. Stay tuned for updates.

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