Tommy's Tonsillitis

Those of you recently acquainted with Tommy know about his cute but very guttural way of speaking. It was like his mouth was full of marbles. Much more alarming was the way he would stop breathing for a second or two while he was sleeping. My sister-in-law Maria noticed in Hawaii that the way he spoke was much like the way her daughter used to speak and they had removed her tonsils. So at his 3 year check-up I asked the pediatrician and she said that they were big and referred me to an ENT. He took one look at them and said "They're huge!!" and scheduled a surgery date to remove his tonsils and his adenoids.

The previous post mentioned that he had gotten the stomach flu, so he spent the first part of the week vomiting and the second half of the week recovering from surgery. Not the best week of the poor little guy's life. But he went in, they gave him 3 stuffed animals and a blown up doctor glove to keep him happy. Doesn't he look happy? :)

So it was an incredibly short procedure. I sat in the waiting room for maybe 15 minutes and they came to get me. That part was horrible. They said little ones have a hard time coming out of the anesthesia and he definitely did. He screamed for 30 minutes straight while the nurse who didn't seem to know what to do with kids despite having worked with them before (I presume) tried to force him to eat a popsicle. Also, he acquired animal like strength which he was putting to use to viciously rip out his iv. I have never seen him so strong or so crazy. It was the hardest part of the day. I was very happy when we were able to leave. He was too, he calmed down considerably when no one was trying to force him to eat popsicles.

Thus began the worst week of his life. He had a prescription for the hard stuff (at least for kids), Tylenol with codeine and I thought he'd probably not need it after 3 or so days. I was wrong, he needed it every four hours exactly for at least a week. We used the whole bottle. He was beyond miserable. At one point, because I was so terrified of dehydration, I was shooting little syringe-fuls of apple juice down his throat because he refused to eat or drink.

But now he is over it and always says "I feel so much better, I got my tonsils out." Though he did freak out when I told him we were going to the doctor's for a post-op evaluation.

He sleeps better, breathes better and his voice is much, much clearer.

One last funny story: It's in my side-bar but the night before his surgery he looks up at me and says "After my surgery, will I be a race-car?" Poor Tommy, all that pain and he's still not a race car.

This video will likely be of no interest to anyone. Tom's sister Margaret said we HAD to record his cute little voice before it changed so we did. The video quality is terrible (Tom's phone) but if you have nothing else to do for exactly one minute, it's kind of cute.