Tonsil Surgery

As most of you know because of Facebook, Sophie had her tonsils and adenoids removed a month ago. I figured I better write about how it went for her before I forget. The main reason she had them removed was to see if having them out will help her breathing at night. Back in March we met with her lung specialist to let him know that Sophie was still needing oxygen when she sleeps after almost three years being on it. We told him how she snores at night and he recommended that she have a sleep study done to see if they were obstructing her airway. Well in July we finally had time to have the study done. Then in August we heard from her Doctor, the study did show that her tonsils were blocking her airway but we couldn't be for sure if that was why she needed the oxygen. He then referred us to go and see an ENT doctor. We went to see the ENT who said that yup she needed her tonsils out and her adenoids that they were pretty big. SO the following week she had an appointment to get them out. I then became a nervous wreck, like I was in tears every time I thought of her having to have surgery. For the whole week I tried very hard to distract myself and not think about it. Finally the day before the surgery Damon asked if I wanted a blessing too, he had already given one to Sophie. I'm so grateful that he was prompted to give me one, my nerves right away were calmed down and I was able to relax.
Surgery day, because Sophie was considered a high risk patient she had surgery up at Primary Children's Hospital, man we love that place, it has such a sweet spirit and all the staff is great. When we got up to the hospital it was a lot of waiting and filling out paper work.  They asked us in the beginning if we wanted to give her a sedative to help calm her down and we quickly agreed.   She had that about 25 minutes before surgery and at first we didn't think it was working but then Sophie became hilarious.  She had the whole waiting room laughing.  Out of nowhere she would just shout out phrases like Buzz Light-year to the the Rescue!!  Oh how I wish we had been filming her.  Finally the time came to say goodbye, always a hard part but I knew she was in good hands.
After she left, Damon and I ran down to the cafeteria because we were STARVING, since Sophie couldn't eat all day we knew she would have freaked out if we had been eating.  By the time we were back in the waiting room and just finishing up our lunch the doctor showed up to tell us that surgery was all done.  They were so quick, total surgery time was about 40 minutes.  The doctor was very pleased with how well it went, and he said a few times that her tonsils were huge!!  Next was just a waiting game for us to get to see her after she woke up. 
After she was awake, we then got to hang out in the recovery room till about 7pm.  We were the last ones to leave for the night.  We weren't surprised that she was needing oxygen when she was awake we had been expecting that, but the doctor wanted to make sure that she didn't get any worse after surgery, so we got to hang out until we convinced them that we were comfortable with how she was doing.  I did not want to have to spend the night in the hospital if we didn't have to.
Next came time for recovery.  I was worried with how this was going to be, I had heard from friends that it was not easy.  Amazingly though Sophie did awesome.  We kept on top of pain meds and gave her lots of snuggles.  The hardest part was trying to get her to drink enough, but thankfully this girl loves milk in a bottle and that was her saving grace.  She would drink those and she did good.  I honestly think the worst part of all of this, was her breath, oh my goodness did it ever stink.  It smelt like something was rotting in her mouth.
By the two week mark after her surgery though she was back to her old self, I'm so glad that she did so good.  I told my mom though that maybe I've dealt with worse with her, that this just wasn't that bad.   

Sophie on her happy medicine!!

After surgery ready to go home.

So I'm sure you are all wondering if the surgery has helped.  We don't know for sure, we need to do another sleep study to see how she does at night.  During the day though her numbers seem to be higher.  We are so glad we did it though, and would do it all over again.