Audrey's tonsillectomy & adenoidectomy

Audrey had her tonsils and adenoids out on Friday, January 3rd. She was such a trooper. The first picture is before the surgery. She looks way too happy to be going into surgery! The second is just after she came out. I wasn't there as she chose Aaron to be the parent to take her. Upon waking up he said she cried very hard for about a half an hour and had a nose bleed. She was angry about her IV and in a lot of pain.

 Anyone who knows Aaron knows that he does not deal well with blood, needles, and hospitals, and all three were at play in that moment. As he was trying to comfort Audrey he began to get lightheaded. Luckily he has come to know his symptoms and told a nurse what was happening. The nurses looked at him and said, "oh dear." They had him put his head between his legs and one of the nurses took over with Audrey while another attended to Aaron til he made a recovery. :)

 The last thing is a video that Aaron took of Audrey just before they took her back. They had given her something...my guess is versed, and she was so loopy.

 Audrey is now just trying to recover and rest. The first 2 days were interesting. I expected that she would just want to sleep and I would get lots of cuddle time and be able to dote on her lots. Not so! She would not rest. She wanted to keep up with her brothers and play the days away.  She couldn't handle anything though and so there was a LOT of whining, yelling, and all around frustrated/angry behavior.  What she needed to do was rest, but she never wants to miss a party and wouldn't rest.

Last night I gave her the prescribed dose of Tylenol with Codeine.  She started to itch like crazy.  I became worried because she has had some bad reactions to medication, mostly antibiotics, and I wasn't sure what we were in for.  The itching was bad, but no rash or hives developed and she went to sleep.

The nights have been more tough on her.  But this morning she slept til 10 a.m.!  Her body needed it so much!  And after the reaction to the codeine I decided it would be best to just give her Ibuprofen or Tylenol.  Guess what?  Audrey settled down.  She relaxed today.  She slept late, like I said, and then later, took a 3 hour nap!  And, she didn't whine and fuss so much about life and just let me hold her.  I think the codeine had created a she-devil.  Now I know and I will just stick with regular pain meds.

We are hopeful that the tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy will improve Audrey's overall health.  She was having a lot of problems that I didn't realize were related to her tonsils.  The scariest was when she would get a cold and would cough and cough til she couldn't breathe and throw up.  This happened many times as we watched her struggle to breathe during a coughing fit.  Much like pertussis, but we think it was actually her gigantic tonsils.  They were nearly touching together.  We hope this will improve her ability to sleep, swallow food (which has also been problematic for certain types of food), speech, and that she won't have such terrible coughing issues anymore.

Before surgery from Julie Groff on Vimeo.