18 Month Checkup

Overall, all is well! The Pediatrician said her tonsil area looks great, just a little bit of scar tissue sitting there.

She weighs 28 lb 14 oz (90th percentile), and is 34 inches long (99th or greater). When she weighed in the morning of the surgery, she was 31 pounds and change! She's lost 2.5-3 pounds through all this! The Ped said as long as she's still eating well (she is!) then it's totally fine. It's weird to see her slimming down so quickly - she still definitely has a gut, but her face has changed the most I think.

I did mention that I thought I've been noticing Kate walking a little pigeon toed. She watched her walk and agreed, then sat her down and lined her legs up. She said Kate does have some Tibial Torsion and her left is worse than her right. She said most of the time it fixes itself by 4-5 years old, but we will watch it from now on, and if it gets worse she'll send us to Scottish Rite to check it out further.

Recovery III

Jeff is up in Oklahoma at the OU game, Kate is asleep, and I'm bored so I figured now is as good a time as any to update on Kate's recovery progress. So today is, what, day 9? The last time I posted, she was doing great - then, starting around day 6 or 7, she took a turn back downward again for a few days. She started waking up twice a night in pain, needing more meds and comort rocking, and during the day she would be eating, drinking, or playing and then all of a sudden cry out in pain. She'd run over to me and lift her arms up for me to hold her/carry her around a bit. The pain scared her and she didn't know why it was happening or where it was coming from. Poor little sweetie.

Today, however, she was a little bit better again. She was more playful, had a decent appetite, and an even better thirst. She took a few sips of water and drank TWO Capri Suns! Prior to this it would take her about 2 days to finish ONE! The ENT told us at this point not to worry about the nutritional value of what she's eating or drinking, as long as she is. I can already tell she doesn't WANT to drink water when she could have Capri Sun, but that's a battle I'm going to save for when she's feeling better. I'm not going to let her get away with that one! But for now, as long as she's drinking, I'm a happy mommy.

She's supposedly going back to daycare on Monday, though I'm not sure that's really going to happen. Recovery really is taking longer than I expected, and I just don't know if she's ready for daycare. The ENT also said she should be completely off the Codiene before she goes to daycare - which we are still using at night. So tonight since she had such a good day I decided to go without, just giving her regular Tylenol to see what happens. Well, she's been down for 3 hours and has already been up twice crying. Wonderful. She was just due for more, so I gave in and gave her Codiene. We'll just take this one day at a time. At some point she has to go back to normal, right?

Recovery II

I am happy to report that when I was writing my last post, I didn't know it yet, but the worst was over. When she woke up Sunday morning, she was markedly better than the previous days. I also instituted my "forced hydration" policy - if she hasn't voluntarily taken a drink within an hour, we hold her down and force her to drink a 2 Tbsp syringe of water. It has really helped, and just as the ENT said - the more that goes down her throat, the more she'll be willing to drink. I rarely have to force her anymore. She still isn't drinking as much as I'd like, but it's enough to keep her out of danger.

She is still eating pretty well. Her favorites are watermelon (thank God! A great source of water), macaroni and cheese, eggs, mashed potatoes, and sonic ice. I think I might venture out to try her on hot dogs today for lunch. We'll see! Can anyone suggest other slimy, soft foods for her to eat? I feel like she's eating the same things for every meal! I alternate yogurt, applesauce, and pudding through the meals as well. She won't touch Jello. I have Pedialyte pops as well, but she doesn't really "get" how to eat them, and just ends up poking at it, or wanting to carry it around the house and spill it all over the carpet.

Our buggest challenge lately was her drowsiness. That tylenol with codiene really knocks her out. She'd fall asleep while eating or in the bath tub! As much as she hated taking it anyway, I was pretty eager to get her off of that stuff. So as of today, we're attempting to keep her on regular Tylenol! She's about 2 hours into her first dose, and so far so good! She isn't complaining of pain or anything! I think for a few more nights we'll still knock her out with the "good stuff" but try to maintain her during the day on regular Tylenol.

Jeff and I have also come down sick. Of course. We're not sure if we caught the virus Kate had just after surgery, or if we caught something different all together. So if you've been praying for us, now we'd appreciate prayers that we don't pass this on to Kate!

Recovery

I don't even know where to begin. It's a good thing I'm writing this fresh off a good nights' sleep rather than yesterday, I might have sounded suicidal. :)

This is, by far, the hardest thing I have ever been through as a mom. It has tested every physical and emotional boundary I have in my body. All seemed well on Friday morning when we were discharged from the hospital. Kate was up and walking (running!) around, eating well, and drinking at least a little bit.

As soon as I pulled her out of the car when we got home, I knew something was wrong. Her body was burning up. I took her temperature - 101. Her discharge papers said that something is wrong if her temp gets above 101.4 degrees. We just watched her all afternoon, and shortly after we got home, she went down for a much needed nap. When she woke up, her temp was still hovering around 101. By that time, of course it was Friday evening and we were facing a weekend without medical care available to us. I put in a call to the after-hours line of our pediatrician, and they said if it gets much higher, we needed to head to the hospital.

So Friday evening, just as we were about to put Kate to bed, I checked her temperature one last time. 103.5 - so out the door we rushed to the Emergency Room. A nice 5 hour process later, we were on our way home, but they had run another IV on her (poor baby), taken some blood to run some tests on, and given her a couple bags of IV fluids to rehydrate her. They also gave her a good dose of Motrin and some chest xrays. All of those things combined REALLY helped bring the fever down. By the time we left, she was running 98 degrees! Her xrays and blood work all came back normal, thankfully, which means she is physically healing well so far, but that also means she has a virus and there's nothing we can really do for her but tough it out. And the worst part is we can't give her Motrin because of the increased risk of bleeding at the surgery site. We got home around 3 am Saturday morning.

Kate woke up about 8:00 Saturday morning, so we all got only about 5 hours of sleep. The good news is that her fever stayed around 101.5 yesterday, so at least we didn't have to deal with a super high temperature. Her bath was pretty sad last night though, she just sat there and shook with chills the whole time. :(

I think THE worst part of the recovery is the Tylenol with Codiene we have to give her every 4 hours. Not only does it taste nasty (I had some on my hand that I licked off once) but it BURNS as it goes down. I can't imagine how horrible it feels on Kate's throat, and I don't really have to imagine. Jeff has to hold her down in his lap, pinning her arms and head down, while I come in with the syringe, squirt a little into her mouth, and plug her nose so she can't breathe and has to swallow it. Now, this process wouldn't be quite so bad if we only had to do it every 4 hours. However, there is also the ammoxicillin she has to take 3 times a day, and after lunch yesterday, she stopped drinking voluntarily. So, pretty much at any given time, every 30 minutes to 1 hour we are having to hold her down and repeat this horrible process to fight her pain, fight infection, and fight dehydration. I can't believe she still willingly comes to me, we are putting her through so much pain. When Kate goes down for a nap or to bed, then it's my turn to go cry it out. And I've done plenty of that. My heart just aches with worry and sadness for her. She has been through SO MUCH illness in her tiny little life, why can't she just go through the recovery process without having to deal with a viral infection on TOP of it? And then there's worry that she'll slip downhill in the midst of all this and something serious will happen to her. I'm trying not to let myself think about that, because it just devastates my soul.

I totally understand now why doctors don't like to do this surgery at Kate's age. She's just too young for so many aspects of the recovery process. For instance, I can't explain to her that even though it hurts, she NEEDS to drink, or she'll be back at the hospital getting another IV run. I can't bribe her to eat or drink. If we were to go get a milkshake, she can't use the straw, so we'd have to spoon feed her, which she won't let us do. She's at the "fiercely independent 18 month old" stage, and throws a tantrum if I try to help her do ANYTHING. Yet she's not compotent enough with a spoon to actually get it in her mouth, if she were going to eat it voluntarily anyway, which she wouldn't. She actually likes Go-gurt, but once again won't let me help her with it. She's ok with it at first, but once she eats the very top off of the tube, she doesn't understand how to squeeze the yogurt upwards, so she crams the tube in her mouth, which hits her throat, then she starts screaming. The screaming is even worse if, heaven forbid, I try to help her. Then we try the popsicles. We tried regular posicles at the hospital. The first one, day of the surgery, she let me feed it to her and that went great. After that, she didn't want any help. She carried it around, dripping it EVERYWHERE, and not really eating it. She's just not old enough for these things. So at home, we are trying Pedialyte pops. They're basically the same thing as those "pop ice" plastic enclosed tube popsicles. But once again, she doesn't understand the concept of squeezing it upwards, and we can't help her. So, she carries it around, dripping it all over the place. We are going to need new carpet after all this is done. We tried confining her to the high chair when she has one, but she won't touch it. We tried breaking it up and putting small pieces of it in her mouth, but she spits it out.

The only good news I'm clinging to right now is that Kate is still asleep - she went to bed at 6:30 last night, and now it's 7:00 am Sunday morning. This is the first full night of sleep she has gotten since Wednesday night. I'm hoping this will help with her recovery immensely. The other good news is that her diaper is wet. So that staves off dehydration concerns for another 6 hours when she will hopefully have another wet diaper.

I am just praying we see a little bit of improvement today. I can't imagine going back to work tomorrow if she is still feeling and acting like this. The Blairs are coming down this evening to spend the day with Kate tomorrow, but I don't know how I'll be able to do it. I need to be with her.

If you read this, please just say a prayer for Kate. She needs all the prayer she can get. Pray for the virus to go away so we can just concentrate on recovery. Pray for thirst. The doctor said the more liquid that goes down her throat helps everything to heal, and the more she will WANT to drink. Pray for pain relief. The sooner we can get her off the tylenol with codiene, the better. Just pray.

Surgery

Oy what a day. We finally got Kate down for a nap (she looks so tiny laying in a hospital bed! -they haven't delivered a crib yet) so I have a minute to come update.

The surgery went well! Her Dr said her tonsils were adult sized, and her adenoids were taking up 60% of her space back there. Wow! He said she should feel a dramatic improvement while sleeping.

I could have told them this (and did) but she ripped out her IV the second she woke up from anesthesia. They need(ed) to keep running fluids in her, so they had to hold her down and run another IV while she was awake.. Poor thing. They said they had a hard time finding a vein because she's such a chunk, so it was a bit traumatic. They didn't call me back until they were done with that. But really, after that she didn't do a whole lot of crying. Thank God for our portable DVD player and the Backyardigans. I plopped down in a rocking chair and got it going, and she just sat there in my lap and watched. For the first 3 hours or so, she'd just sort of cry on and off for a few seconds, once every 5 minutes. But she's really doing great overall.

We finally figured out one reason she was crying - she was HUNGRY! That's my girl! We started her off with applesauce and she gobbled that down. Then our lunch trays came - she ate a dinner roll, mashed potatoes, and some fruit! Good girl. She's not really drinking though. She's taken a couple sips of water or juice here or there, but she really doesn't want to drink. I find it interesting that it clearly didn't bother her to eat, but drinking seems to be painful.

The most annoying thing is the IV. That thing is in the way and so annoying, and I think that's half the reason Kate is crabby and crying. It really bothers her and we want it GONE! The problem is, they can't take it out until she drinks. So round and round we go.

That's the update for now, hopefully she takes a good, long nap. She needs it. Thanks for all your prayers, I appreciate it!

Tomorrow's The Day

Kate is in bed, and I'm busy with all of the last minute packing and preparation. I'm bouncing between moments of peace and panic. I'm just nervous about the procedure itself - the anesthesia, the removal of the tonsils, etc. I know she will be unhappy and in pain afterwards, but I'm just going to breathe a huge sigh of relief just knowing she came through ok. We report to the hospital in the morning at 6:30 am. The surgery starts at 7:30. All of your prayers are appreciated!