Kyrie's Surgery

While on our trip to Disney World, I started to put some pieces together about my darling daughter. First, sharing a hotel room, I noticed that she snored pretty much all night long. Then, I thought about how her lips were always dry & chapped even when I was shoving lip balm at her every 30 minutes. She was always breathing through her mouth, even to the point that she periodically had to suck the drool out of her mouth. I talked about it with Darren, and he agreed that something didn't seem quite right... her voice sounded unusually nasally. We talked about it with Kyrie who often told us that she simply couldn't breathe through her nose. When we got back, we talked with our pediatrician.

Our pediatrician suspected enlarged adenoids and gave us a steroid nose spray to use daily and sent us in for an x-ray. The x-ray revealed large tonsils and "really large" adenoids, so we made an appointment with a pediatric ENT. The ENT reviewed the x-rays and examined Kyrie. Then he recommended a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. He said that much of the space she should have open to breathe behind her nose & mouth was blocked by tonsil & adenoid tissue. We set a surgery date for the end of April, but then the doctor moved the date up because he didn't want to wait so long. So, then we were heading to surgery in just a few weeks. 

Kyrie had some anxiety that came & went in the weeks before the surgery. She was mostly worried about pain. The night before the surgery, I let her choose dinner (homemade pizza) and stay up late. The next morning, she wouldn't be able to eat or drink. I joined her in the fast in a show of solidarity. Darren & Degen accompanied us to the surgery center before saying good-byes when we headed back to pre-op (they would have lunch before Darren dropped Degen off at a friend's to play). 

Back in pre-op, Kyrie started to get scared quickly. Changing from her clothes into the hospital gown was more than she could bear. I asked the nurse for some sedative, which soon had Kyrie smiling & rolling around on the bed in a giggling stupor. Soon enough, they were wheeling her to the operating room. Darren came back to the surgery center to wait with me and attend to Kyrie post-op. After the surgery, the doctor told us that he found more tonsil tissue than he expected and suggested providing extra OTC meds in addition to the prescribed narcotic.

In post-op, Kyrie was in quite a bit of pain. Both Darren & I held up ice water and a popsicle to try to soothe her sore throat. The nurse gave her a dose of the narcotic before we got her dressed and headed home. It seems quite surreal to be standing at your child's bedside watching them cry & moan as they wake up for surgery and then less than an hour later be carrying them out to the car to go home. (I am not saying that there's anything wrong with out-patient surgery, just that it is a strange situation because your child still seems so fragile at that point...it's a feeling akin to taking your newborn home from the hospital when you question if you are ready for the experience ahead.)

Thankfully, Kyrie slept for most of the car ride home. And once home, we settled her into the room next to ours (which is the kids' TV room). She would spend the next week in that room recovering. She was surprisingly "active" the first night, but the overnight (as all the overnights in the week to follow) was difficult and lead to a terrible morning (as all the mornings in the next week). She spent most days just lying on the couch sleeping or watching TV as we kept a steady supply of pain medications in her system and tried to keep her drinking and maybe eating. (She did well with her fluids, but ate hardly anything for almost the whole week. She was already a small girl, and she lost quite a bit of weight during recovery.)

On Thursday (6 days post-surgery), we ventured out for the first time. She felt weak with a sore throat and upset stomach. On Friday, we went out again for a short time and the trip ended painfully as she started to lose her scabs. Friday night was difficult and she spent most of Saturday in bed. She was saving all her strength up for the Girl Scout camp-in that we had scheduled weeks before we knew that she would be having surgery. I checked on her frequently throughout the day. She was intent on making it to the camp-in, so we left the house armed with lots of soft foods, lozenges and a full supply of pain medication... and it went well... really well! I kept her well-medicated and though she had a few earaches, bellyaches and a sore throat, she made it through the whole overnight. Whew! The next night, she slept the whole night without waking in pain for more medication- a first since the surgery. Hooray!

She seems to be doing really well now, though we are still taking it day-by-day. Passing through her bedroom, I noticed that she wasn't snoring. Then she told me that she could kinda breathe through her nose. I wanted to pump my arms in the air and do a happy jig! I hope that the rest of the healing comes easily and that she can breathe better from here on out. This has been a tough week, and, as always, it feels good to be on the other side of a difficult experience!

She got lots of cuddles from the cats!

Though she spent a lot of her time sleeping, when she was awake she was grateful for activities she could do lying down like art- thanks, Aunt Jess & Uncle Jack!

We surprised her with the Rapunzel LEGO tower that she had been wanting. It was a great distraction during her recovery! Little surprises like this and movies helped brighten her days!

Lilah was just the right purr-scription for our sick girl!