Our road to a tonsillectomy

I'm not going to lie... I abuse Google.  Especially when in comes to my children and their health.  Search engines can be a scary thing when you are innocently looking for information on a particular condition.  For example, when I "googled" information on my son's upcoming tonsillectomy, I got a lot of rather scary results.  People (including parents of children) who have had horrific experiences recovering from tonsillectomies, including a few catastrophic examples. I'm not saying those experiences don't happen, or that they won't happen to us, but I had a hard time finding tips on how to help my son during his recovery as well as what the experience was like first hand without reading something alarming.  So... I'm deciding to chronicle our experience with tonsillectomy recovery in the hopes that it helps even one anxious parent out there.  And, before I proceed, I must give the disclaimer that I am not a medical professional nor is a medical professional reviewing this blog.  This just my experience with my son.  Period. If nothing else, a good story for me to look back on someday when he's big and doesn't need my mom cuddles anymore.

Background -

My little man is currently 6 1/2 years old.  At the age of 2 1/2, he began developing frequent ear infections, some of which were drug resistant and required antibiotic injections to resolve.  Well meaning doctors continued to tell us that it was very unusual to begin developing ear infections so late in life (vs. in infancy) and he would "grow out of it" in no time.  At 4, he was still getting them as often as ever so we got a referral to Seattle Children's Hospital for an ENT evaluation.

It was determined rather quickly that he was a candidate for ear tubes so in August 2010, at the age of 4 1/2, my little guy had tubes placed in his ears.  Since his adenoids were fairly enlarged when the doctor got in there, they removed those as well to better allow his Eustachian tubes to drain.  At the time, his tonsils were "normal" and, given the increased risk with tonsil removal, we left them alone.  He recovered from surgery fairly quickly and was back to his normal energetic self in 2-3 days.

The ear infections didn't stop all together but the frequency was greatly reduced and the tubes allowed us to administer antibiotics through the his ear tubes.  In October 2010, my little guy woke up with a terrible sore throat, fever, and vomiting.  After a quick trip to urgent care, it was determined he had strep and his first bout of tonsillitis.  He would only have one more tonsil infection a short three months later but the damage was done.  His tonsils stayed the size of enormous grapes in the back of his throat.  The ear tubes required us to take him back to the ENT every 6 months for follow up, which gave them a good baseline to view his growing tonsils.  In August 2011, they urged us to consider removing them.  Our little guy seemed fine so we held off given his apparent lack of symptoms.  In February 2012, the ENT asked about his sleep.  Huh?  What did that have to do with anything?  But, being every compliant, I answered her questions.  Up at night? Check. Snores?  Check. Sweats when he sleeps?  Check and check. Apparently these were all symptoms of apnea and a little guy struggling to breathe at night.

Still concerned about the risks of surgery, we took him to a sleep specialist to determine if he really did have apnea.  The sleep doctor took one look at his throat and said "If we do a sleep study and it comes back abnormal, I'll recommend doing a tonsillectomy ASAP.  If we do a sleep study and it comes back normal, I'm going to recommend a tonsillectomy."  Given that recommendation and the ENT surgeon's description of his tonsils as "spectacular", we decided to push forward.  And that brings us to today, July 26, 2012.  The day my little guy said "see ya later" to his spectacular tonsils.