We were definitely proud of our little Benny-bo today. He did a SUPER (Cal's favorite word these days) job dealing with his surgery today. Mom and dad had to get up at 5am in order to make it to Lexington, MA at 6:45 this morning. Ben was the first patient scheduled at 7:30. Daddy had to bring him back for the anesthesia which was a little bit of a change from what we had planned on. Ben does a little better with mom since he's a clingy little monkey lately but Mom was forbidden in the OR because of pregnancy. All went well though and Ben didn't mind that daddy got the job of helping him "go to sleep". The surgery took 30 mins and the doc came out to give us the report.
Apparently Ben has a "short soft palate" so they only took out 80% of his adenoid tissue. The remaining tissue helps to close the space when he swallows so that liquid won't go up to his nose and his voice will sound less nasal. I think I'm explaining this right?! Anyways, they had to leave some tissue so that they didn't create a new problem while fixing this one. The doc also informed us that since he now got a better view of Ben's tonsils, they are, in fact, fairly large. So we have to keep an eye on them and see if the tonsils start to cause congestion and snoring in the future. I was hoping he was going to say, "His tonsils are big too, do you want me to just go in and take them out now since we're here". We would have said, "YES, PLEASE!" But no such luck. I think I'll likely push for another surgery if I see a hint of anything return since I had the unfortunate experience of having my tonsils out at the age of 23 and let me tell you it's 800 times worse than child birth. I can only imagine a really bad car accident or being shot in the head and surviving being worse than having your tonsils out as an adult. I'm not even kidding.
Anyways, we went back to the recovery room just as Ben was waking up. He was out of it and very fidgety and fussy at first. He kept turning his head to look behind him as if he wanted to keep an eye out for those nurses! Haha...he was quite happy to be offered water and drank a bunch right away which put me at ease. I had read all the pamphlets beforehand and they prepare you for the worst, a tonsillectomy, which is more difficult to recover from, even for children. Luckily, since the adenoids are more up near the nose and away from the throat his recovery is MUCH simpler and less painful. They said he should be fully recovered in TWO days and that he'd be eating normally by the afternoon!!
Back to recovery room though. The nurse suggested a popsicle and as soon as he got that thing, it was like magic. In literally, LITERALLY 3 seconds after putting the popsicle in his mouth he laid his head on my shoulder and went to sleep! He loved the popscicles! He'd wake briefly and suck on it or chomp it down and we had to keep getting him more. He was such a good little boy eating and drinking that they let us go at 9am. He slept the whole car ride home and continued to sleep until 2:30 this afternoon! He got a little morphine so I guess he was sleeping that and the anesthesia off. He got up and ate pudding, cheese, ice cream, rice cakes, milk, water....he was HUNGRY! So that was good. He was still a little groggy though and unsteady on his feet. He played a little, watched a little Doodlebops, read a couple books but by 3:30 had pretty much had it. He was getting cranky and sleepy so I put him back in his crib and he slept again from 3:45-5:30pm! Go Ben! He woke up and it was like nothing ever happened today! He started playing like his crazy, old self - yelling even! So we did some hardcore playing to try and expend some energy so that he'd sleep tonight. He went to bed at 7:30pm so we'll see what the nighttime brings. I'm ready for anything!
The most surprising news of the day was that it takes up to a week for his snoring to stop even though the adenoid tissue is gone. Who knew?!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment