The Blue Light Special!

Last summer we took Sam into Dr. Schueller to have his ears, tonsils and adenoids checked.  All the tests came back that he needed the surgery.  His hearing test came back lower then it should be and his ears were full of gunk which was causing all of his nasty ear aches.  For some reason I felt like we shouldn't do it quite yet so we held off.  Well, ends up Dan got a new job with awesome insurance so as soon as we were covered we got it scheduled.  His surgery was January 28th and of course there was yet another snow storm that morning.  As previously mentioned in the past post I get serious anxiety in the snow so it was a good thing Dan was there to drive.  We had to get up way early so we could drop Ellie off at the Simmons and be up there by 7:30. 

 He was pretty nervous but he was very, very brave.  Once we got all the paperwork and stuff filled out and ready to go I think he went into surgery at about 8:30.  We took him to the same surgical center that Gary works at (Sam's papa).  Luckily Gary does the scheduling and made sure that his partner was the one that would be Sam's gas doctor. :)  He got to see Papa before he went in to surgery and he was happy about that.  The surgery was pretty quick and everything went just as planned.  They do this surgery all the time and the nurses called it the blue light special.  His tonsils were huge and were touching at the back of his throat.  Which is why he could hardly breathe while sleeping at night.  It would kill me to walk in his room and hear his breathing so bad.  Dr. Schueller said he pulled a ton of glue like junk out of his right ear and his adenoids were large as well.  I am sooo glad we finally got it done. 

He had a hard time coming completley out of anesthesia when we got to see him and he was in a lot of pain when he woke up.  He was really freaking out saying "I can't breathe, I can't breathe".  He was freaking himself out and his throat felt really weird so he thought he couldn't breathe.  They got him some more meds and we were able to get him to sleep and he was pretty good after that.  My best decision may have been downloading Tangled on the ipad.  That really helped keep his mind off of everything while we waited until we could go home. 

All of the doctors and nurses kept saying what a great patient he was.  He stayed calm after they took him away in the wagon and was just sitting on the bed before they put him under smiling and just as brave as could be.  They said lots of kids come out of anesthesia screaming and freaking out but he was just calm as could be.  (Until he saw us :)) They really know how to stroke parents egos there.  We were proud parents because they kept telling us what a great patient he was.  I'm sure they say that to everyone but I don't care.  We liked hearing it. 

 I'm not going to lie the first couple days/weeks were kind of rough. 

Thank HEAVEN for modern day medicine. As long as we kept up on the meds he really did pretty well but he was in quite a bit of pain for a while there.  He really wanted a picture of the bandage on his leg where they had the IV.  He loved all the ice cream, popsicles and any other soft junk I would give him. 

He is now fully recovered and doing great.  We had his post op and everything looked great. His hearing is up to normal where it is supposed to be and the tubes look great and are right in place.  We did have to have special ear plugs made for him because the cheap ones from the store that you are suppose to be able to mold into their ear don't work and hurt him.  He doesn't need them for chlorinated pools but he does for the bath and he cannot keep his head out of the water during a bath so it is going to be so nice to finally get them so we can pop them in and out.  His breathing is so quiet now it is crazy and I love it.  So glad we finally got it done and he is healed and doing better.  Yippee!!