If you follow me on Facebook (where I spend too much time these days and often forget about my blog), you may have seen that Nate had surgery last Monday. We had his tonsils removed as he was having too many episodes of strep throat and tonsillitis. Matthew had a T&A almost two years ago so we thought we knew what to expect........wrong! Their surgeries and recovery have been night and day. Matthew was a bit younger when he had his procedure (15 months) or maybe we just conveintly erased the experience from our memory, but Nate's experience has been quite an ordeal. The surgery itself went very well. He had to have a stitch or two to stop the bleeding and was only slightly disoriented coming out of anesthesia. Prior to putting on the mask the anesthesiologist told him the gas would smell like bubble gum. As Nate was waking up from the anesthesia he cried several times that "it tasted like bubble gum and he HATED bubble gum". Poor guy!
The first two days, Nate's spirits were great and he was eating and drinking pretty good. We were so not ready for day three, and for that matter, four, five, six, seven, etc. On day three he had very little to drink and eat despite our begging, pleading and basically prying open his mouth, and he laid lethargically around the house. Day four just happened to be my first day back at work from maternity leave. Before I even arrived to work, Brian called to tell me Nate was vomiting. Within two hours he had vomited several times and refused to eat or drink. I paged his ENT who wanted him sent straight to the ER. As it turns out, the zithromycin the ENT prescribed was too harsh on his stomach and caused the vomiting, plus he was already dehydrated from the previous day. He received two bags of IV fluid and a few additional meds before being sent home. Since then, we have pushed fluids as much as possible. Even when Nate cries out "the water is making me die" we still make him drink and munch on popsicles. His appetite has steadily increased and now on day ten he is doing fairly well with eating and drinking.
We were warned that ear pain could set in around the end of the first week which has happened. Nate has had ear pain on and off for the past few days. His energy is increasing day by day, and he is doing much better with fluid/food intake. I'm pretty sure he has stayed in his pj's most, if not all, of the last 10 days and has watched every kid's DVD we own. The ENT told us to expect 10 to 14 days of recovery.......I'm pretty sure it's going to take every bit of 14 days and perhaps a bit more.
