Thursday was a big day for James, and a worrisome one for Stacy and me. He didn’t just have one surgery; he had three at the same time. James went to the ENT on April 3rd to discuss replacing his ear tubes. During that appointment the ENT discovered that James’ tonsils were enlarged to the point that they were touching each other. This obviously was the cause of the breathing issues he had been having for the past several weeks. Maybe longer. Since they will be in there removing his tonsils, the doc recommended having his adenoids removed as well. Three surgeries—ear tubes, tonsillectomy, and adenoidectomy—all at the same time.
The surgeries were scheduled to start at 11:00 am on Thursday, but they were slightly behind schedule and didn’t start until around 11:30. After he was wheeled off to surgery, Stacy and I grabbed some lunch at the cafeteria, and anxiously waited for the call that he was out of surgery. Even though he had three surgeries, they were all pretty quick. We got the call shortly after 1:00 pm that he was out of surgery, and we could go up to the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit) to see him. Because he was going to spend the night at the hospital, he didn’t need to go to recovery; he went straight to the PICU.
Before surgery:
After surgery:
The doc stopped into the hospital room after James was all settled in and told us that surgery went very well and that hopefully he’ll only need to stay in the hospital overnight.
James was unable to eat for 8 hours prior to surgery, and we figured he had to be hungry, so he got a little bit of a late lunch.
As the anesthesia was wearing off, he was getting a bit talkative, which started to kick up some secretions. Stacy and I were a bit nervous to suction him after the surgeries, but we knew we had to clean out the secretions, so we did it very carefully. Stacy noticed that one of his front teeth was loose. She mentioned it to the nurse, and she thought that maybe since he was intubated during surgery that the tooth got knocked when they were pulling the tube out. We’ll have to keep an eye on it, because we don’t want it to fall out while he is sitting up and get lodged in his throat.
He ended up taking a nap mid-afternoon, which threw off his sleep cycle a little bit. I stayed until around 8 pm and went home to go to bed. Stacy stayed at the hospital with James and said that he woke up shortly after I left. He started to wind back down around 10:30 and Stacy put him on his belly to go to sleep at 11:15 pm. They were up again at 3:15 am for medications, and a diaper change. He was a little bit upset, which is understandable after his surgery, but Stacy rocked him for a little bit until he calmed down and went back to bed at 4 am.
The ENT stopped by on Friday morning and gave James the okay to go home. He prescribed ear drops that James needs to get 3 times a day for 3 days and told us to give him Tylenol every 4 hours for about 4 days for pain management.
Today is Sunday and he seems to be recovering really well. Because he really can’t express how he’s feeling, we sometimes have to guess. We think he had a little bit of discomfort, but it was usually around the time that he was due to get a dose of Tylenol, so it was probably just the previous dose wearing off.
Before I finish this post, I would like to thank all of you that checked in with us, and left notes and comments on James’ Facebook page. You guys (and girls) are awesome! And if you’re not a Fan of James yet, please consider becoming one. You’ll get more frequent updates on James.
