Double Surgery Deja Vu

Before

A couple of days after the funeral we were faced with the biggest challenge of the summer: double tonsillectomies for the boys. Didn't we do double surgery once before?  (Check out this link!) Hadn't we learned our lesson then? Apparently not because it was a nightmare around here. Tyler had had multiple strep throat infections over the prior 2 years and after 6 cases in 4 months we decided it was time to get those tonsils out! The ENT felt that Tyler's strep was hiding in his adenoids and not ever totally going away and would continue coming back unless we took those buggers out. Near his surgery date (we put it off until school got out), Tyler began having episodes at night where if he rolled onto his back in his sleep, his tonsils were so big that they would flop back and gag him and he would throw up in his sleep. He didn't even wake up! Not only did he ruin his fairly new mattress but I was terrified he would aspirate the vomit. Trevor didn't have a ton of strep infections but he did have such ginormous tonsils that they would close off his airway when he was sleeping and he would have apneic episodes. If you know me, and know what I do for a living, you'll know that I was pretty nervous about this too. So going in to the surgery I knew it was necessary but not any less scary. We had it done at the new Primary Children's satellite center at the Riverton Hospital. Our ENT is very experienced and we felt comfortable with him. After the surgery both boys refused to swallow the liquid Lortab or Tylenol with Codeine so they only took regular OTC Tylenol. That was the first problem- their pain was never under control. We were able to get Tyler to eat and drink enough to be OK but Trevor refused everything- including popsicles. I took them to the store the night before to pick out popsicles, jello, pudding, Gatorade, etc but Trevor refused it all after the surgery. We barely got him to drink enough water to stay hydrated. Tyler was back to normal after two week but it took Trevor three weeks and I didn't think that I was going to survive. It was so bad that the potential of having to go through it again may be enough to make me decide against having more kids. We'll see.

After