The Strum Family: Going Under The Knife

Andy and I finally decided to take Greyson to the ENT to see if he needed to have his tonsils & adenoids removed. Since Labor Day he has had Strep four times, has taken $80 worth of antibiotics and we discovered that he had sleep apnea (which is very common) but explains why he wakes up and comes into our bedroom 3+ times a night. Dr. Zlab agreed that a tonsilectomy/adenoidectomy was the best option for him. Only a short couple of weeks later on November 26th we headed to Skiff Medical Center for the surgery. Greyson was sooo brave, but you could tell he was extremely nervous and scared. He didn't talk a whole lot and that is not normal for my little guy! (Takes after his mother :) )

The staff at Skiff was WONDERFUL!! We were probably only in the Pre-Op area a total of 15-20 minutes before they were walking him in to the OR. They let him wear his own pajamas and they also let us go into the OR until he was asleep (something we weren't able to do with Kaeden at Lakeview). My poor little man was just a shivering because he was so scared. It was so hard to see him fall asleep, it's such a scary sight that no parent wants to witness, but I'm glad that we were able to be there with him.

Twenty minutes later we were talking with Dr. Zlab about the outcome of the surgery. All had gone well and Dr. Zlab said that his adenoids were "huge and ugly". Good! Hopefully having those little, er I mean big suckers out of there will help him to sleep better! He gave us the run down of what to expect over the course of the following 10 days. It's not a fun recovery! Ten days on a soft food/liquid diet, minimal activity, lots of liquids and pain meds round the clock (every 3-4 hrs) for the first 2-3 days. Luckily both Andy and I had the next 5 days off to stay home with him.

Greyson did awesome and took his medicine when needed, which was an improvement from Kaeden. After the 2nd day, Kaeden wanted nothing to do with the pain meds...ugh! The first couple of days went by smoothly, but the third day was a rough one for him. He was in quite a bit of pain and as any parent knows, it's hard to see your little ones in pain and know there isn't anything that you can do for them. We had hoped that he could go back to school on December 4th (8 days post-op) with the restrictions of a soft food diet and no recess or PE. Well, that did not go according to plan. On Wednesday night, in the middle of the night, he woke me up in tears saying that his throat hurt so so so bad! More pain meds and back to bed for him. I called the school a few short hours later and told them that he would not be coming for the rest of the week. They said that it was probably better that way because he would tire pretty quickly and we wouldn't want a relapse.

On Friday night (9 days post-op and day 10 supposedly being the day that they can generally go back to normal food and activities) Greyson decided to sneak some popcorn and proceeded to eat it. About 10 minutes later he was telling us that it hurt and that he had a funny taste in his mouth. I told him to drink some water and that it was probably a little bit more of his scabs coming off. He rinsed his mouth out with water and spit it into the sink and then said "mom, there's blood in it". Talk about hitting panic mode! I then recalled how Dr. Zlab had told us that days 7-10 are the most crucial and when bleeding can occur....not a good thing! We had him drink ice water while checking the bleeding every couple of minutes or so. Finally, after about 10 minutes we were able to stop the bleeding and a new clot had formed. Phew! Got by lucky that time. NO more popcorn for him! But we weren't out of the woods yet. Yesterday morning Andy woke me up saying that Grey had woke up early saying the same thing again....that he had a funny taste in his mouth and sure enough he was bleeding again! Although this time he was only sleeping when it started. Panic mode again! This time all of the "what ifs" starting going through my head...."what if he wouldn't have woke up", "what if it would have been during the middle of the night and weren't checking on him". This time it took about 15 minutes for the bleeding to stop. So I made a phone call to Dr. Zlab's office and spoke with their "on-call" surgeon. He assured me that we were taking all of the proper steps to get the bleeding to slow down and for a new clot to form. He said that we had two options, 1) to continue what we were doing or 2) to bring him in to Blank Hospital to have him take a look at it and probably have to have it cauterized. I decided to wait and see if it happened again. He said that was fine, but that if it did happen again to head on into Blank. So for the remainder of the day we watched him like a hawk. Constantly asking him if his throat hurt or if he had a funny taste in his mouth. We had the big "Strum Thanksmas" (Thanksgiving and Christmas together) yesterday so he had to stay low-key which was a bummer for him, but he did great! I also took him and Kaeden up to the Prairie City Candy Cane Lane and to see Santa. He was a little upset that he couldn't eat any of the goodies that he received, but I promised him that I would save them for when he could.

I didn't sleep the best last night for fear that it would happen again. I think I checked on him every couple of hours (which he didn't appreciate). Today has been a great day! No pain, no bleeding and he seems to be in better spirits. He still needs to take it easy and be careful until this new scab falls off and he is healed completely, but hopefully we won't have another set-back. We even went to get our Christmas tree today!