Nuts and Bolts: Good little patient

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Good little patient

Where to begin? Emily has struggled with ear infections since birth. She had her first set of Tubes around 9 months old and they helped a lot. Unfortunately they only lasted 7 months before falling out. When the tubes fell out the ear infections started to come quickly. I decided to try a more homeopathic route with oils and going to the chiropractor, and they did ease up, but never did they go away.

After spending lots of money on the chiropractor and oils with continued ear infections we started considering tubes again. Then she got another infection. She was put on antibiotics, after two weeks her ears were worse. She got a stronger antibiotic and by the third week of antibiotics we decided it was time. She was always in pain and I hated her taking so much medicine. I called her primary care physician to see how many ear infections she had actually had, it was 7 in 6 months. YIKES I didn't realize it was THAT many.

We went to the pediatric ENT Tuesday, who suggested taking her adenoids out too. Since this was her second set of tubes it would maybe prevent a third set in the future. I wanted it done ASAP because I knew she would just get more infections if we waited, plus Thanksgiving was approaching. The surgery was scheduled for Friday. Thankfully Seth was able to take the day off and take care of Abby and Brigham.

She was such a good girl. We had to be at the hospital at 530am and wait til 7 for our surgery. Seriously everyone kept commenting on how good she was in pre op, not to mention her overwhelming cuteness.

10 minutes before the surgery they gave her something to calm her down, and in turn basically make her super giddy. It was hilarious. Then they took her away :( She had to be under for roughly 20 minutes, she had to have an IV and a breathing tube, which I was really nervous about. But she made it through. The doctor said the tubes went in well and he cleaned out her ears. Her adenoids we larger then expected too so it was a good thing we took those out while we had the chance.

Waking up from anesthesia was really rough, as they brought me to her, I could hear her screaming for me. No Bueno. She had lines and tubes all over her and she was very disoriented. It was really hard to watch. I laid in the bed with her to try and calm her, she would ease up for a bit and then start wailing again and screaming for me despite being right next to her. After about 20 minutes of that not working I told the nurses I needed to pick her up. They helped me with all the gear, and once she rested on my chest, she was much better. She calmed down right away and fell asleep a few times. It took awhile for all the drugs to wear off but we were released around 10. We went home and had donuts, she was super clingy for a few days and rather grumpy, but today is day 12 post op and she is much better.

Here is hoping these tubes last much longer.