Two week post-tonsils

Happily, I survived the tonsillectomy! Truthfully, there were a few days that I wished I hadn't. I'm so happy for Vicodin (to kill the pain) and Phenergan (to kill the nausea caused by the Vicodin). I'm so happy that my husband took good care of me and even stayed home an extra day and a half because I felt so lousy. I'm so happy that we were able to schedule this "little procedure" at a time where both my kids could be gone away for a week, so I could rest easily without having to worry about what they were up to while I was unconscious. Which I was for the better part of seven days.

The night before the operation, the kids went to friends' houses to stay the night and part of Friday. The Dear Husband and I went out for dinner (my last solid food for a while!) and came home to watch a movie. Bright and early Friday, sans coffee - which may have been the hardest part - we set out for the surgicenter. A brief wait, an IV full of saline, a quick chat with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, and away I went.
I heard, "This may burn a little going in", and then "Good night". I don't think I was awake 30 seconds in the operating room.

90 minutes later, give or take, and I was awakened by a nurse asking if I was OK, if I could swallow a pill, and if I could get myself dressed while she went to get DH. Door to door, the entire thing took a little more than 3 hours, and that was with 20 minutes' drive each direction! Dr. S came out and told DH that my tonsils were "QUITE large and QUITE deep", and that I should expect a sore throat for a good 10 days or so. Boy, he wasn't kidding.

Kids came home in the afternoon, finished packing, and I was a happy girl with icepacks around my neck and Sonic Slush for inside. Swallowing wasn't pleasant, but I was still well-medicated. Saturday saw the kids leaving for their assorted destinations and the anesthesia wearing off. Suddenly I wasn't quite sure that I should have gone through with it after all.

The next few days pass in a bit of a blur of ice water, shaved ice, jello, pudding, and pills. Somewhere along the way, Tuesday perhaps?, I decided to cut back on the 2 AM pain pills and instead of taking 1.5, I took one half a pill. Not very smart....the next day I was right back to taking about as much as I could choke down.

Strangely enough, Friday - 7 days post-op - saw me awaken to a throat that was significantly improved. One side hurt very little, and the other was down from 9 on the pain scale to about a 6. Miss M came home from camp on Saturday, and we had a lovely but unusual weekend with only one child. (She would have liked to keep it that way, but that wasn't going to happen.) By this past Monday, when Mr. M was brought home by his grandpa, I was feeling MUCH improved. I promptly overdid it, and wiped myself out. Typical me.

Today, Miss M tested positive from strep throat, a lovely souvenir from diabetes camp last week. Apparently a few campers tested positive at the end of the week, and I hear that there are quite a few post-camp cases of it circulating. I also had my post-op check today, and Dr. S said that I needn't worry. Theoretically, I could still catch strep throat, but odds are that I won't. How would I know? I still have a sore throat.

Sooo, as it stands, one side of my throat hurts....it feels a lot like it would if I DID have strep. Or how it felt for a good deal of the past winter. More annoying is the lingering numbness in my tongue and the lack of sense of taste. Food doesn't have a lot of flavor for me at the moment, and sometimes i have trouble swallowing because 1/2 my tongue feels like I've been Novocained. Dr. S told me today that these may last a few weeks, even a few months.

Even if they do, I'll take that over being as sick as I was this year. Hopefully, the taste will come back and the numbness will dissipate....eventually.

Got Tonsils?

I do, for about another 12 hours - then it's ADIOS to the nasty little buggers.

So there may or may not be anything new coming your way for a few days, depending upon how much pain medication I actually consume. Shocking, I know - no new updates from the Rambling Mom! Oh, wait, you're already accustomed to that. :)

Bet I'll ramble even more when I'm on Percocet or Vicodin......

In the good old summertime....

the kids will gripe and whine.

Thus ends my attempt at modifying old song lyrics. ;)

We are now ending the first Monday of summer vacation, and my dear children are "so, so, so, so, so, so DESPERATELY bored"! Because, you know, they have nothing at all to occupy their time....unless you count the books, games, toys, electronic gadgets, 250+ channels of television and music, the swimming pool, the bikes and skateboards and scooters. Nope, those don't count.

Thankfully, next week they will both be off to their special trips.
Miss M is off to Camp AZDA, the ADA's camp for kids with diabetes. This is her fourth summer going to camp, and it is the ABSOLUTE HIGHLIGHT of her entire year. Last year, she announced that she wanted to live there all year, even though it's not actually D camp year-round....didn't matter. She is also VERY excited to have our good friend, known at camp as "Knockout", as her DC (diabetic counselor) this year. Each cabin has a young adult with Type 1 assigned to that group; generally each cabin has 6 or 8 girls, I believe. They also have Med Staff, which can be a nurse, doctor, CDE or other medical professional that is experienced in dealing with the D Monster. These wonderful DCs and Staffers, all of whom have "camp names", work very hard to keep all the kids as safe as it is humanly possible to be. During the 7 days she is at D Camp, she is more closely monitored and supervised than any other place she goes - probably even more so than she is at home. There is ALWAYS someone with her that knows what to do. We check in with med staff at camp drop-off, and get a report from the same staff at camp pick-up, including a log with everything that happened d-wise during the week.

The Boy will be off to grandma and grandpa's house for his special time with them. Two years ago, he started going there to do Vacation Bible School in the morning at their church, and then spending the rest of the day exploring the Sonoran Desert that surrounds their home. Grandpa always enlists him to help with projects and puts him to work in one way or another, and he has a grand and glorious time being the center of attention.

And what fabulousness will I be experiencing sans children, you might ask?
Hold onto your hats - *I* will be recuperating from a tonsillectomy. Yes, that's right, at the tender age of I will be saying goodbye to my germ-laden, oversized, nasty sickness-bearing tonsils. Doesn't THAT just sound like fun?

May I just say that one of the worst things I've chosen to do in the last week or so was to google "adult tonsillectomy" and spend 2 hours reading assorted postings from previous patients. DUH!!! I had already heard plenty of stories from people, but I just felt some insane need to try to negate those stories with internet info. DOUBLE DUH!!!! While I knew it wasn't going to be the most pleasant thing I've experienced, I was hoping it wasn't going to be that bad. One of my brothers had to have his palate and uvula reshaped due to sleep apnea, and had a really, really unpleasant couple of weeks. My hope is that it won't be quite as bad as his recovery turned out to be. Did I mention that I have the pain tolerance of...something with absolutely no pain tolerance? I'm the mom who asked for the epidural at 7 months....I'm hoping for a swift recovery, or at least for good pain meds.

Otherwise, it won't be the kids doing the griping and whining.