Tonsillectomy

Leila has snored since she was little, its usually not very loud but just a constant soft snore.  When we went in for her 6 year old check up I mentioned it to her pediatrician,  who also told me she had a cyst on her tonsils so she sent us to and ENT.  When we went for that appointment her Dr. Morgan told us that snoring in children her age is not normal and when he looked in her mouth he said her tonsil were huge and had several cysts on them.  He said they would cause her problems and would be best to have them taken out.  We decided to wait until she was out of school to do the surgery so she wouldn't have to miss any school for it.  We talked a ton with her about what to expect so she was pretty prepared for the surgery.  Paul had to round at the main hospital that morning so he met us at the outpatient surgery center (connected to his hospital) as soon as we arrived.  He was with us in pre-op before he had to head over to the West Lakes Hospital.  Leila did not want me to take a picture of her in her tiny scrubs so all the pictures are blurry because she was running away.

We had to wait about an hour before they took  her back for surgery.  So we made silly faces and read books.  

The surgery went well and was super quick.  About 25 minutes after they took her to the operating room the surgeon came out to tell me they were done and that they would come and get me in about 45 minutes to see her in recovery.  I held her the entire time we were in recovery, I totally expected her to be sleepy but she was wide awake.  She ate a popsicle and a slushy and we read an entire Junie B. Jones book while we waited to be released.  

This is when it would have been nice to have Paul around, I could have sent him to fill the prescriptions while we were in recovery and then we could have just loaded her in the car and headed home.  Instead I had to haul Leila down to the pharmacy ( thankfully they were super quick) and back to the car.  We stopped at Sonic on the way home and got her a milk shake.  She had several friends drop off Popsicles off  and coloring books.  They gave her Tylenol with codeine for her pain, which is suppose to cause drowsiness but it had the opposite effect on her.  She was wired all day long, she didn't sleep at all, she watched a lot of movies and read books and stayed up until almost 10 o'clock which is way past her bedtime.  

Her recovery went pretty well, she definitely had some miserable times but overall she handled it really well.  She hated the taste of her antibiotic and the Tylenol with codeine so getting her to take those was such a pain.  She also got tired of eating Popsicles and ice cream and would just beg for regular food.  Within about 5 days she was pretty much back to herself and within two weeks she was pain free and back to a normal diet.