Tonsillectomy. Adenoidectomy. The whole shebang. Call it what you may, but I’m officially filing it under, “Not a Good Time.”
Gracey had her tonsils and adenoids removed Tuesday morning. We’re on Day 4 of recovery and I sort of feel like sobbing every minute of the day. It’s a tough, tough thing to watch your child go through so much pain. But in the end, we (still) have confidence it was the right decision for us. Gracey has been a strep carrier for about 10 months now. Carrier status basically means she carries the strep virus in her throat ALL the time. Even when she’s not symptomatic, she has strep. And as you can imagine, this doesn’t bode well when you also have 3-month-old twins. Gracey had been on too-many-rounds-of-antibiotics-to-count in attempts to eradicate the infection, but it didn’t work. The tonsils had to go.
After months of thinking/worrying/stressing over the decision to do surgery, off to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin we went. Most of the photos below were taken before her surgery. It breaks my heart to see these photos, simply because our little angel didn’t know what was coming. (I can barely even type those words, it feels so … wrong.) But that’s the thing about parenthood. You make lots of decisions, ones that hopefully will better the well-being of your kids in the long run. And you know what? Tommy and I, we’re the lucky ones. Many of the parents at Children’s would die for a simple tonsillectomy diagnosis on their children. So many kids are much worse off. Thank you God for all our blessings.
There have been some pretty bad parts about the whole ordeal but honestly, I don’t want to relive them and add another not-so-great story to the Internet for other worried moms like me to read. It was the right decision and we’re (slowly) beginning to get a few laughs out of our Baby Girl again … with Daddy’s help, of course.
Five stars goes to Children’s for the way they welcome the kids as they arrive. They knew Gracey by name, had plenty of toys to keep her occupied and the nurses were extremely kind and accommodating.
We got her a special Minnie Mouse “hospital backpack” for the day … it helped, she’s 2. 😉
The nurses put a hospital bracelet on Gracey’s doll, too. Which was a total hit. Good move, nurses, good move. 🙂
Show Mommy your tonsils, Baby Girl …
Dear Daddy, I love you.
Ouch, my heart …
Tinker Bell saves the day — we got her the new Tink movie and saved it for her hospital stay.
These were some of the first photos of her once we got to her room after the surgery. She looks pretty peaceful here, but that’s not to imply she was this calm in the days to follow. There has been lots of pain, but we are getting there …
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