The Surgery

On Thursday the little prince had to undergo T&A surgery. He's never had surgery before and I pray that he never has to again. I had my suspicions that the earlier diagnosis of "allergies" was possibly something more when my little guy was constantly sticking his finger in his nose and sounded as if he had cotton balls stuffed as far up his nasal passages as they could go. He's been on medicine for months now for the 'allergies' but it wasn't really working.

So off to the ENT to find out if my suspicions were founded or if I was being a paranoid mom. The doctor checked his throat and confirmed that his tonsils were enlarged but without an x-ray he couldn't tell about the adnoids but suspected that the "stuffy" sound was because of those. His treatment method - take them both out.

I had a feeling that his adnoids were a problem but I was shocked by the tonsils. After getting over that (which took about 3 seconds), I had to deal with the sick feeling in pit of my stomach about my almost 3 year old child going under the knife (which took a WHOLE lot longer). I refused to think about what could possibly go wrong. I'm a woman of faith and I can't ask God to do His job and then worry that He won't. So I said a silent prayer and went home to tell my family - my prayer warriors - what was going on.

Now that I had prayer "back-up", we were ready for surgery day. I didn't explain to the prince what would happen until the day before. Mainly because I had no idea what I was going to tell him. The other reason was because I've learned if I give him too much information too early, he worries me to death about it and I was already dealing with my own nerves. So armed with the knowledge that he would have his tonsils and adnoids removed, we headed to the surgery center at 5:45am. I worried that the hardest part for me would have been the moment I had to hand him off to the nurses to take him back in the O.R. So when that time came I was pleasantly surprised that I was chuckling at my very drug induced baby. The nurse had given him a liquid to take that was meant to relax him, a process they do to make it much more pleasant for young children to go into surgery. When the medicine took effect it was quite comical to watch. He could barely hold his head up properly and though I wasn't saying a word (we were listening to the anethesiologist), he looked at me and said "mama, shhhhhhhhh". The nurse arrived to take him back and he happily went, as loopy as they come.

The surgery took only 30 minutes and an hour or so after being there we were in the recovery room holding our baby boy - he did great. We took him home and he slept most of the day, the effects of all the medicine. By Friday, he was up and playing like he had not had surgery at all...wasn't he supposed to be lying around? I suppose that speaks to the resiliency of young children because if you didn't know that he had surgery almost 72 hours ago you wouldn't believe it by the way he's acting. Guess the idea of a mini vacation for mommy just flew out the window....LOL.