Oxygen

I know, I know...I am a slacker when it comes to posting, but I do have a good reason this time. O had surgery last week to remove his monster-sized adenoids, so I've been a bit preoccupied. Thank goodness all went well. The poor kid was having such a hard time breathing, sleeping, eating - you get the picture.

He was an AMAZING kid on surgery day.

We arrived at about 7:15 that morning and the woman checking us in was quite perceptive and gave O a Spiderman sticker for his admission bracelet. He loved that. After waiting just a few minutes we went back to have his bloodwork done. O is the only kid I know who actually likes having blood taken. He watched as his finger was pricked and then narrated the entire blood draw! He was given 2 Spiderman and 1 Cars stickers in this room. After the bloodwork was done, we went upstairs and got settled in a hospital room and O changed into his gown. It was big, so the nurse brought him some smaller flannel-type jammies. O really dug these. He had also discovered the remote by this time and had a blast changing channels and watching Backyardagins. We had to wait about 20 - 25 minutes in the room until they were ready to bring him downstairs to the OR. This was the hardest part, of course. He was fine until we were just inside the OR area and we had to hand him over. He cried for a few minutes. The anesthesiologist carried him in (he also happens to live behind my BIL, who is a doctor here, and he has a 3-year-old son). Oh, they also took a Polaroid of the three of us that O was able to take with him. I'll scan and post soon.

We were in the waiting room from about 8:10 until 8:40 a.m. and then the doc came out to tell us everything went great, and that O had the biggest adenoids he had every seen! He said they were so big that the soft palette couldn't open and his airway was almost entirely blocked. Yikes, I'm so glad we had this done. He drew us a picture on a paper towel, too - again, I'll post that soon.

About 10 minutes later, they carried O out to us and we went back up to his room. He opened his eyes a few times - and asked for grandma and grandpa - but he mostly slept on either me or DH for about an hour. One thing we noticed right away - he was able to breathe quietly with his mouth closed. WooHoo!!!

The doc checked on him about 1:30 hours after surgery and we were good to go. He managed to eat two bowls of Cheerios (!) and a bag of Skittles that the guy we were sharing the room with had given O along with some balloons. O had never had Skittles before (we try to limit candy) but he was so excited, we let him have them. The guy next to us had his appendix out overnight and happened to be dating a student of mine - she seemed a bit surprised when she saw us (um, if you ever went to class, you'd know what was up!). Anyway, the young guy was so sweet to give O some of his balloons

So, once we were home O ate two bowls of mac and cheese, pudding, applesauce, chicken nuggets, fish sticks, two popsicles and some water. My mom sent him Spiderman jammies and a new toy and he was running around like a crazy person in his new jammies all afternoon - he managed to put both shirts on. Pretty hilarious. He ran around so much (while ignoring our requests to calm down - even when we told him the doctor wanted him to rest) that his nose started bleeding several times. We were told to expect this, so we weren't shocked, but I am sure the activity didn't help.

So he's still doing great, although the poor kid now has a monster cold (not sure from where since we've been mostly home for a week), so he finally gets his airway cleared and then gets all stuffed up. He hardly slept at all last night - nor did I...

I promise I'll try to get the pics up later. It's essentially impossible to do anything when home with O. I'm amazed I was able to type all of this (esp while playing castle/superhero/dinosaur) :)