Tonsillectomy

Lily has always snored and tossed and turned at night. It wasn't until recently I began wondering about her tonsils. At her yearly check up in December I asked her doctor if her tonsils looked large or not. She said, "Well I'm on the fence. I'd say they cover about 60% of her airway." That seemed like a lot to me, but I didn't think to ask her how much was a normal amount. Ty and I discussed it and we went ahead and had them refer us to an ENT doctor. I had to have mine taken out as an adult and it was a nightmare so if she needed them out, I wanted to do it now rather than later. 

First thing I asked the nurse at the ENT was what a normal amount of airway the tonsils usually cover... she said 0%! Haha. Then these things have got to go!!! Basically the doctor said large tonsils and snoring were not a reason to take them out, but that if she had sleep apnea at all then they needed to go. He said that sometimes in kids it wasn't just the usual pause in breathing but also restlessness and light sleep. With kids sleep apnea tests are hard to do, so he didn't want to have to spend the time or money on it. He said he trusted that if we showed up on surgery day then we had watched her a few times and were confident she was struggling at night. I had her sleep with me a few nights while Ty was out of town and she definitely struggled. I had Ty go watch her a few minutes before we went to bed a few nights and he agreed, so we showed up on surgery day March 12.

She was nervous but we managed to convince her to do it ...with promises of a week off school and all the ice cream and popsicles she wanted. Haha. Surgery went well and the ENT doctor said her tonsils were 'really really big' instead of the 'medium big' he had initially thought they were which just makes me think they needed to come out all the more. All the nurses in the recovery room were admiring her awesome blanket she brought that Grandma made for her when she got baptized. After being monitored for a bit and eating a crushed up popsicle, they let us go home. 

Lily said she didn't want to go home. She thought we should go to the store so she could pick out a toy. HAHA. This girl knows how to milk it for all it's worth. We laughed because she had just had surgery but was sure she could manage walking around a store. Well believe it or not she got her wish. We had to stop at Sam's Club to get her prescriptions and - after throwing up in the throw up bag - she insisted she was fine and wanted to go inside. Haha. So I put her in a cart with her blanket (and a new throw up bag... thank goodness the nurse convinced me to grab a second one) and rolled her inside. She knew just what she wanted. Last time we were in Sam's she was begging for this little art kit and I told her it cost too much ... well she got one today. Haha.

Her recovery was so much easier than I had antisipated. She ate ice cream and popsicles the first day and was loving chicken noodle soup the second day. Day 3 and 4 she didn't hardly eat or drink anything. But Saturday she started getting an appetite again and was jumping ...carefully... on the new trampoline!