Before we left for Seattle, Colton had decorated our count-down board:
I would like it made known that there were NO CHAINSAWS used for his surgery! I like the robot eating ice cream. Obviously, we'd talked up all the awesome (junk) foods he'd get to eat while he recovered. Colton seems to have a little bit of anxiety at times, so I was trying my best to not just freak him out about the whole thing. But we were all a little nervous.
The night before, Craig's parents took us out to dinner for our birthdays (yay!) and then they spent the night at our house so we could both go with Colton to the hospital. So that was a big help!
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| Getting him in his gown and non-slip socks |
So I got to put on what they called "the marshmallow outfit"-- I looked smokin'!
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| Oh, yeah. |
It was weird sitting there while they got him under. Dr. Powers had warned me about this-- I really appreciated it, actually, because she just said, "You're going to feel really weird and out of place. That's normal. Don't worry about it." She'd also warned me that sometimes the kids flail and get crazy and they try to get them under as quickly as they can, so I was prepared for that as well.
As I sat there, the way the anesthesiologist held the mask just blocked me from being able to see his face, which I didn't like. The anesthesiologist was great, though, telling some whole story about how they were going to fly a plane together and were waiting for clearance from air control. All the time, he was adjusting knobs and dials. For a brief moment Colton's arm flicked and the nurses jumped all over him and the anesthesiologist kept twisting dials and talking to him and then he announced, "He's out." It was all so quick! The ENT jumped up and walked me to the door as fast as she could and I was dismissed! It all felt very abrupt, but I understand that you really don't want to be under any longer than necessary, so I was fine with that.
Craig and I sat out in the waiting area, and just as promised it took almost exactly half an hour before the doctor appeared. Even as she was walking towards us, she reassured us that everything had gone well, so that was nice. He'd had his tonsils and adenoids removed, and they'd also put tubes in his ears. After a few minutes they asked us to join him in recovery. He was barely awake and kept flopping sideways until we finally eased him down and let him go back to sleep. He proceeded to snore VERY loudly for the next hour and a half, and woke up just as it was getting to be time for us to leave. (The funny thing is that removing his tonsils should help with the snoring, eventually. So Craig and I were cracking up, making dumb jokes about what a miracle this surgery had been in correcting his snoring. We're dorky like that.)
He pretty much spent the next two days eating NOTHING and only sipping Gatorade when we reminded him to. For all that excitement about getting to eat ice cream and pudding, he wanted nothing to do with any of it. He was fine during the day with the tv on, but at night he'd wake up screaming. Apparently his throat would get dried out and hurt even more then. It would take twenty minutes or more to convince him to take his medicine and sip some more water and then he'd usually just drop back off again. (Codeine can do that, I guess.) And I learned that there is no way to let one kid watch tv without all the other kids watching it, too. So that was bad parenting, but what can you do?
I think it was eight days after his surgery when he asked to eat Honey Bunches of Oats (dry!) and they didn't bother his throat at all and we decided he was all better.
So that drama is (hopefully?) all over! I'm really hoping this will cut back on the ear infections and help him sleep better at night. But now we need to break all these new bad habits of letting him sleep on the floor of our room with us!
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