It's hard for a 4 year old to have a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. It's an even harder recovery.
I write this because I think I was naive. I thought it wouldn't be as long as they say.
I was wrong.
7-10 days is the recommended recovery time.
It took Carter every bit of those 7-10 days.
His day of surgery he did fairly well. He never vomited from the pain meds, ate lots of popsicles and ice cream, drank Gatorade, and slept a lot. Carter's post-op instructions were specific in that we needed to give pain meds (Lortab alternating with ibuprofen) every TWO hours for the first 48 hours after surgery. It's almost like having a newborn baby again... ;)
**This is a long and tedious account of his recovery that you might not care to read. I just want to have it so that I remember, and that it might help if anyone is about to go through the same ordeal.**
POD #1 (post-op day 1): This might have been Carter's best day. Looking back, he probably still had some of the anesthesia in him, as well as the strong hospital pain meds. He was still starving, and asked for rice/cheese/sour cream from Chipotle for lunch. :) Wow. We thought we were on a roll.
We were wrong.
That night was a bad one. He started refusing his pain meds. He was exhausted. We were tired. He was hurting. He spit Lortab all over our bed. Blech. No one slept much that night.
POD #2: Carter still cried a lot, refusing to take meds. He was officially "behind" on his meds, just the opposite of what the doctors had recommended that we do. How do you reason with a 4 year old?? He would slowly start to feel better after he either agreed to take his medicine OR we snuck it in something.
POD #3-5: We realized that Sonic slushes were our friends. :) We could convince Carter to take some slush with a syringe or dropper, and add pain meds to the syringe/dropper when he wasn't looking. It made for a better day. He still wasn't readily taking his meds by themselves. We watched a ton of TV. He didn't feel up to doing much else other than snuggling on the couch. I think I can quote most episodes of "Word World" if you'd like... :) He also was freaked out to sleep in his own bed. He only wanted to sleep with us. Let me tell you, you're suddenly in survival mode.
POD #6: I ended up calling his surgeon and asking if we could get an additional Rx for popsicles and suckers with a numbing agent in them. Several friends had recommended these, and we were willing to try anything. We had totally stopped the Lortab, as we couldn't hide it in anything due to the horrible taste. Carter was on round-the-clock ibuprofen, except we had stopped waking him up in the middle of the night. We decided that sleep was better. He liked the suckers, and they seemed to help. As a sidenote, I was hoping he could go back to preschool this day, since it had basically been a week. But, no, he had awakened in tears, as he had the previous days, and was not willing to take meds, so no preschool. :(
POD #7: It's been a week since surgery, and things are slowly looking better. I still cancelled my morning activities, but Carter managed to tolerate a quick lunch out. I was quite stir-crazy! :) He is still very quick to cry, and looks like he's on the "verge" almost all the time, but at least he is up and playing! And we've started to see a few smiles, too. He refuses to let me look at his throat, though, so we have no idea if his scabs are on, have fallen off, etc. We never see any blood. Yay!
POD #8: Carter returned to preschool, for his normal three hours, all while medicated. :) He is very clingy, but goes. Everyone talks about how they're glad he's back, and he looks dumbfounded. I'm not sure he knows what hit him last week. He asks to play outside after school, which is a welcome sign! Still taking ibuprofen 3x/day. This was the first night that he slept ALL NIGHT. Woo-hoo.
POD #11: TODAY! Carter tolerated church, eating a donut for breakfast, chicken and fruit for lunch, a few popsicles in between, and a hot dog and fruit for dinner. He played all day without a nap. He only took ibuprofen when he woke up and before bedtime. His voice continues to be higher and very nasal-sounding, but he is talking more and more. He is still emotional and needs lots of love. The biggest accomplishment is that he doesn't snore! At all!
**Final thoughts: We were surprised that in those brutal days of pain, that even a 4 year old could not make the correlation that drinking a sip of medicine would make him feel better in a matter of minutes. He never got it. He spent hours staring at his medicine dropper, full of medicine, just whimpering and saying he didn't want it. That surprised me. He was willing to drink almost anything we gave him, so although we were told to be wary of dehydration, he never got close. His breath smelled terrible from the time he came home from surgery. We joked that an iguana died inside his mouth... :) Someone told me that the adenoidectomy is what gives them such bad breath. Brushing his teeth didn't help. All in all, we're glad the past 10 days are behind us, and are thankful for all the help and prayers from family and friends.
