Tonsillectomy Recovery: What It's Like (Days Nine Through Ten)

(Keeping in mind what I said before, which is that the title is based on the search term I used when I was looking for information about different experiences, and not on the silly assumption that it's the same for everyone.)

See also: Tonsillectomy Recovery (Days One Through Nine)

When we left off, mid-Day-Nine, I was about to take Elizabeth to her post-op appointment with the ENT doctor. Luckily, luckily, luckily, LUCKILY, through some sort of LUCKY WHIM or else because she already felt queasy but didn't want to tell me, she brought a bucket with her. And then she threw up all the way there. She's always had trouble with motion sickness, but it's been so long since she actually threw up that I've taken apart the Emergency Barf Kit---and I didn't have a diaper bag with me either. No wipes. Luckily, fast-food napkins in the glove compartment and a roll of paper towels under the seat. But we were almost late because I had to pull over to help her and to empty the bucket in the grass by the side of the road, and then I felt very embarrassed that the doctor would be looking into her non-teeth-brushed mouth after this, and that she was carrying a not-very-clean plastic bucket. But she had a drink at a drinking fountain and she had an Altoid, and I wiped out the bucket with paper towels, and that just had to be good enough. If we'd had more time, I could have washed out the bucket in a hospital bathroom, but we signed the sign-in sheet at 12:59:34 for a 1:00:00 appointment, so there wasn't time.

She saw the doctor, and he said everything looked great. He let me look, and it was not as gross as I'd feared: I could definitely see pinkness/redness and a small (dime-sized) scab, but it didn't look AWFUL or scary to me. I told him that Elizabeth did/didn't want to know how bad it looked like the Day Ten Scab Process would be, and he said "Ha ha ha" but then didn't say anything else. And I felt silly, then, for having been indirect, and too silly/awkward to then follow-up with something more direct, so I hope it's that there really isn't any way to know if the scab situation is going to be worse/better than usual and that's why he didn't answer (rather than it being that he can tell it's going to be bad so he didn't want to scare her worse).

The doctor mentioned again that the codeine could be causing nausea, but the thing is, she's been throwing up MORE when I skip a dose or a dose is due-but-late. And she hadn't been in a car for over a week, and she was scared and upset about the appointment, and she's been eating a lot of dairy and sugar, and she's always had problems with motion sickness, and the chart says ear pain is a common side effect so I'm guessing the area that handles motion sickness is also involved in this. Still, he says to keep it in mind, and that she can switch from tylenol/codeine to just tylenol now.

He also says she's "talking through her nose" and that she needs to practice learning to talk again. I'd noticed she was hard to understand, but I'd thought that would go away with the throat pain and swelling. But no. She has to practice.


Day Ten: We were out shopping (MUST GET OUT OF HOUSE OMG MUST GET OUT) and we stopped at a fast-food place for lunch. I got the kids hamburgers, and I got one for Elizabeth too even though I didn't think she'd eat it and she said she didn't want it: it was only a dollar, and I figured if she took a single bite that was a good step back to normal, and also the other kids would fall like vultures on anything she didn't eat so it wouldn't go to waste. She ate 2/3rds of it. AND she didn't throw up in the car: I gave her benadryl half an hour before we left, and either it worked or else it's that she wasn't upset/scared today, or WHO KNOWS, anyway she didn't throw up.

Lying-Awake Brain

I'm gradually learning that if I have wine in the evening, I have trouble sleeping that night. Gradual connections are being made, one night at a time. Last night I had wine, and then I lay awake. First I kept seeing shadows down the hall, made by cars driving by, and thinking they were the shadows of people creeping around in the house. Then, when I'd reminded myself that a cat can't walk across our floors without making a creak with every step, I started thinking I heard Furtive Sounds, perhaps PEOPLE TRYING TO BREAK IN. That went NOWHERE GOOD, let me tell you. At one point I realized that my entire body was tense, including clenched fists, and that I'd spent the last five minutes or so imagining defending myself against intruders with a floor lamp: I could bash them with it for awhile, and there would be pointy glass when the bulbs broke, and if I got the upper hand I could use the cord to strangle them. I'd gone on to imagine that they'd lost consciousness--OR SEEMED TO--and what would I do to make SURE they were either dead or incapacitated until the police could get here? If I have learned one thing from movies, it's that you don't get overconfident that a Downed Attacker is actually down. So would I do something that would stain both my hardwood floors and potentially my conscience (though I think it's highly unlikely I'd struggle with my conscience if it was an intruder in a house with my children)? and what would I use to do it? and would it be easy (because I'd be so scared) or would it be much harder than I expected it to be? and boy, I wish there was such a thing as a gun that would materialize only when needed. Or would I...somehow tie his hands and feet (with what? and I couldn't really leave him to go root around in the dark basement for some rope) and then call 911?

This was when I noticed every single muscle was tightened up and my fingernails were hurting my palms. And also realized that the floor lamp I'd been envisioning grabbing with one swift smooth action-hero-like motion (ha ha, now I'm picturing James Bond wielding an attractive floor lamp) is one we Freecycled a few months back because we never used it. And the other floor lamp in the room is plugged in behind the bureau, so I'd have to shift the bureau, then lean as far as I could and make sound-wave shapes with the cord until the plug wiggled out of the socket, etc.

So I tried to think of something more relaxing, but instead my mind drifted to something that had been bugging me earlier in the day, which was the word "jailbait." I hadn't given the word much thought over the years, since I don't move in circles that have a use for such a word. I started out feeling that the word was mildly icky and wrong, and by the time I'd thought the thing out thoroughly, I was ready to go back and EAGERLY take out some feelings on that imaginary intruder, perhaps by lifting the entire bureau and slamming it onto him. I wish we didn't even HAVE that word. It isn't that I don't UNDERSTAND why we have the word; OH I UNDERSTAND WHY WE HAVE IT. That is the PROBLEM: that I think I see exactly why we have that word, instead of just having the word "teenager." "Bait" implies a trap, a set-up. Men are being LURED by this child, TRICKED into a TRAP by...the child? society? And so they resist the child, NOT because it would be wrong to get involved with a child, NOT because they are personally icked out by the idea, NOT because they are horrified at the thought of accidentally getting involved with someone so young---but because of the potential for jail, and because they are too wily and clever to be trapped. Jailbait. And congratulating themselves. I hate everybody. Please turn me loose on a building scheduled for demolition, so I can gnaw on it until I feel better.

Tonsillectomy Recovery: What It's Like (Days One Through Nine)

That title is kind of funny, because as the ENT doctor said, and the nurses said, and all of you with experience with tonsillectomies said, the experience varies WIDELY. But that's the search term I was using when I was anxiously looking for more information, so that's what I'm using as the title.

Day One (day of surgery): We had to be at the hospital at 6:30; the surgery was at 7:30; the doctor was coming out to tell me everything went fine at 8:10; they called me back to see her at 8:25; we were headed to our car at 11:00. Between the surgery and the time we went home, Elizabeth mostly dozed. When she did wake up a little, she was cranky and wasn't interested in the little stuffed hamster I'd bought at the gift shop, but didn't seem to be in much pain. When she woke around 10:20, though, she was saying "Ow ow ow" and crying, so the nurse brought her a dose of tylenol/codeine, and by the time we were leaving the hospital she was even CHEERY, and was able to walk to the car, and sang along hoarsely with a few songs from the Phineas & Ferb CD on the way home.

At home she had some popsicles and watched some TV and everything was going way better than expected. They'd told us she'd likely nap on and off all day, but she didn't. Then she got kind of blank-faced and slumpy. Then she started throwing up. She had three sessions of it: afternoon, early evening, later evening. She was miserable. I was highly fretful and lay awake that night worried that I should have called the doctor about the throwing up, worried that she wasn't holding down either the antibiotic or the painkiller, worried that she would have to go back to the hospital. I felt hugely under-qualified to be handling post-surgical care.


Day Two: She was much better. In my fretful lyings-awake, I'd thought "She HAS to be improved in the morning, or else I'll call the doctor." I woke her around 4:00 to take pain medicine, which was a gamble: it could let her absorb it while asleep and non-barfy---or it could make her throw up all over our mattress and herself. Gamble paid off: she woke up better and held down her antibiotic too, and then I kept right on top of giving her the pain medicine every 4 hours exactly. She still felt crummy all day, but NO BARFING, and a couple of times got off the couch and wandered around for a minute before going back. Refused to nap. No smiling. Wouldn't talk, and would barely shake/nod her head (said her jaw hurt when she moved her head). Ate a little applesauce with flax seed meal stirred in, and maybe 1/4 cup of a non-dairy smoothie I made with banana, strawberries, blueberries, spinach, rolled oats. Also ate popsicles and ice cream. Some interest in Tonsillectomy Presents.


Days Three and Four: Doing prematurely better: up and around, doing some talking, seeming to feel much better, very interested in tonsillectomy presents. Then on the evening of Day 4, two more episodes of throwing up.


Day Five: She woke up crying from the pain but wouldn't take her pain medicine. She is SIX, but she has been acting THREE. When I put a little medicine in her mouth, she let it dribble out; I tried not to be angry at the sick child; when that failed, I tried to at least mostly HIDE being angry at the sick child. I gave her a Sucrets (numbing cough drop) and then she took the medicine---I think because the cough drop let her back down graciously from the stand-off, rather than because it helped, but maybe some of each. She barely ate anything all day, just a few popsicles. At dinner she wanted to try pizza, so Paul cooked it a little less (normally he makes the crust crispy and the cheese chewy, but he went with a soft crust and melty cheese) and she did eat a few bites. At 8:00 she put herself to bed.


Day Six: For lunch she asked for and ate half a peanut butter and honey sandwich and a cup of milk. But it's so back and forth: for even a few hours she'll seem almost normal, but then she'll be weepy and crabby and saying she has a headache, and she'll sit still for hours watching a movie. Her voice is different: a little lower, and she's saying vowels differently, like "hev" instead of "have." Her jaw/throat still look a little swollen. She's very nervous about Day Ten, which is when the ENT doctor said there's usually a setback (because of the scab, and that's probably all you want to know about it).


Day Seven: She woke up crying in the middle of the night but wouldn't say why. We've been using a system for measuring pain: I hold up my hand, fingers splayed, and I point to whatever finger is farthest to her left and I say "no pain," and I point to whatever finger is farthest to her right and I say "the worst it's been so far with this," and she chooses a finger. It's always finger 1 (no pain) or 2 (small amount of pain) now, but she complains of headaches, and she says in calmer moments that when she's crying and won't tell me why, it's because she Feels Terrible---not pain really, not queasiness really, but just feeling really really bad all over. So now when she cries and I can't figure out why, I hold her hand and I tell her to squeeze once for yes, and I ask is it pain? (no squeeze) Nightmare? (no squeeze) Feeling terrible? (squeeze) The squeezing system isn't because it hurts her too much to talk but because she gets in these stubborn mute phases when she's upset, and this is a way around that; we use it when she's not post-surgery, too. This afternoon she went into her room and closed the door, and when I looked in on her later she was asleep.


Day Eight: She doesn't seem to need the tylenol/codeine for throat pain, exactly, but when I skip a dose she gets crumply and weepy and doesn't eat or drink. I'm glad the doctor was generous with the prescription so I can keep giving it to her. (But I am feeling some renewed resentment with my OBs, who have always given me a prescription for 1.5 days' worth of painkiller after c-sections. Thanks, OBs! Obviously it's exactly the right time to apply Just Say No!) I haven't been waking her to take it or keeping her on a rigorous every-four-hours schedule---but I'm giving it to her first thing in the morning, two doses during the day, and one more before bed (she's been sleeping in our room every night, and usually doesn't go to sleep until we do).


Day Nine (today): Today she has a follow-up appointment with the ENT doctor, and she desperately DOES and desperately DOESN'T want to ask him about the status of the scab. The ENT doctor warned us, by the way, that her breath would likely be "like a chain-smoking alcoholic's"---but it hasn't been bad at all. I notice mostly that she smells a little fruity and medicinal.


So! That's how it's been going. I'm feeling a little worn out, mostly I think from being cooped up in the house and from trying to get her to eat something nutritious. I had such a good list of soft/pureed foods, and it seems like she'll eat each one once and then never again. I'm not fretful, because the ENT doctor said he didn't care if she ate nothing but ice cream for two weeks---but on the other hand I think she's a lot crankier when she's subsisting on ice cream. Look, isn't this a good list of liquid and soft food possibilities?

scrambled eggs
applesauce (with or without flax seed meal)
yogurt
mashed potatoes
peanut butter stirred into ice cream
pudding
Jello
macaroni and cheese
canned fruits
shakes
smoothies of various sorts
bananas
ice cream
popsicles
juice boxes


But here is the list she is actually eating:

ice cream

CORN

Every time I turn around, this bag of corn startles me:

Use the Force...Kirk

SarahLena mentioned on Twitter that some days she gets so sick of things being overdramatized on social media. That reminded me of a tip I'm not sure I've shared with you: when I'm being bothered by someone Pumping Up The Drama, or Manipulating For Attention, I use the Captain Kirk voice to read whatever they've written. You are familiar with William Shatner's Star Trek acting style? And, more importantly, with the way he spoofs his own acting style, which is something that makes me love him with teary-eyed love? Anyway, that's the style I use when I read people's Overblown Drama, and it really helps. Just put Drama Pauses in wherever (they're funnier if they're at unnatural breaking points), speak as if acting woodenly, and look intently at the corner where the wall meets the ceiling.

Conflicting Medical Instructions

Elizabeth's tonsillectomy went just fine. She was the first patient of the day on a non-busy day, so she got a lot of attention and everything was done sooner than predicted. I barely had time to have a cafe mocha and a strawberry-cream-cheese danish in the coffee shop before they were calling me back to see her.

Our main nurse was exactly the style I do best with: she told me the whole story in advance, like this: "First I'll do x, y, z. Then the anesthesiologist will come in, and he will ask you some new questions, but he'll also repeat some of the questions I already asked you, for safety. Then the doctor will come in, and he will do the same thing, and also he will listen to her heart and lungs again. After he leaves, that's when you should get dressed in your paper suit."

After we went home, things were pretty rough. Elizabeth threw up a lot, and she tried to cry about how much her throat hurt but couldn't cry because it hurt too much, and I lay awake that night fretting that she wasn't keeping her antibiotic down, and that I didn't know if I should wake her up for her pain medicine or if that would just make her throw up all over our bed, and that she might have to go back to the hospital (the ENT doctor said that if she couldn't keep fluids down he would check her right back in and give her an IV). (A measure of my phone anxiety is that I was just as nervous about the possibility of having to make that phone call as I was about having her back in the hospital.)

Another thing making me nervous was all the conflicting information. The post-tonsillectomy sheet from the ENT doctor was different than the post-tonsillectomy sheet from the hospital. The verbal instructions from the ENT doctor were different than the verbal instructions from the nurses. I didn't know who to follow.

The nurses, I'd think, would be more familiar with the practical effects: the doctor gives his instructions and then is gone like a summer breeze, while the nurses are there caring for the barfing patients. But the doctor is at least in theory the boss/expert of this show, and he's the one I'd have to answer to if something went wrong as a result of me NOT following his instructions, and it's hard for a layperson to tell the difference between the nurses who can wear the "Thank a nurse: we keep the doctors from accidentally killing you" t-shirts and the ones who really shouldn't take that adversarial tone.

Oh, I could ask for clarification when I find differences in instruction? Genius! But often such questions don't crop up until after I'm home and the potential complication mentioned on the sheet presents itself---so I would need to call. And more importantly, ask WHOM? If I ask the doctor, he'll tell me to follow his instructions; if I ask the nurses, they'll tell me to follow theirs. And both will have good reasons!

You know, maybe the professionals could work these differences out among themselves, rather than putting patients in the middle to figure it out and make guesses and "trust their guts" (which I find seems to work only in hindsight, during the self-congratulating/rebuking stage of a decision). I have EVEN LESS of a medical degree than either of the two groups, so I don't really care how much "YOU have to be the ADVOCATE of your HEALTH!!" is going around, I am not QUALIFIED for that POSITION. Which is why the Large Checks go FROM me rather than TO me: I'm paying people with education, expertise, and experience to tell me what to do, because "my gut" doesn't know anything ABOUT tonsillectomy recovery.

(She was way better on the second day, thank goodness.)

Spinach Smoothies Recipe; Room

I read somewhere that you could put spinach in a smoothie and not even taste it. And I thought: "Ha ha, yes; I'll bet this is from the same people who told me that tofu is undetectable and that fruit makes a GREAT dessert."

But then I read that Minnie puts spinach and even KALE in her smoothies. I was particularly persuaded by this part of her post:

...the added bonus of making me feel so very accomplished to have eaten 2 servings of leafy greens for breakfast. It’s like I expect some kind of angel of leafy greens to come down, bless me and give me a medal every time I have one.

So I tried it and lo, I will use the word "lo": it was barely detectable, if at all, and indeed I DID feel as if I deserved a visit from an angel of leafy greens.

Smoothies are a "wing it" kind of recipe, but I can't get behind any recipe that doesn't even say if we're talking about 1/8th teaspoon or 2 cups of an ingredient (see also: my late mother-in-law's cinnamon roll recipe), so here is my Winging It Spinach Smoothie (measurements are approximate---but I HAVE approximated them):

2 T. flax seed meal
1/4 c. rolled oats
2 t. sugar
big firm 5-fingered pinch of spinach leaves, plus another 3-fingers pinch
about a third of a cup of yogurt
about a third of a cup of orange juice
something like 6 or 7 frozen peach segments
about a half a cup of frozen blueberries

(sub any frozen fruit for peaches/blueberries)
(you could also use fresh fruit, and then ice cubes)
(bananas work great, but I don't like banana)

First blend the flax seed, oats, and sugar, until the oats are like flour. Then add everything else. The spinach will look like wayyyyyyyy too much spinach---like, practically filling the blender. Be brave! Trust Swistle. Blend it up.

This might make enough for two adult servings in some households, but at my house it makes enough for me to share with a child.

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Elizabeth, with enthusiasm: "The best thing about pillow pets is you can use them EITHER as a pillow OR as a stuffed animal!!" Yes. Welcome to the point of this product.

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I finally read Room. I consider myself more sensitive than average to stories of child endangerment, and yet I got through it fine. I did have one section in the middle where I thought I might have a heart attack, but I reasoned that MANY of us are sensitive to child-endangerment stories, and yet MANY of us had read the book and I hadn't heard any outcry, so it must be okay. I think part of the reason it worked for me is that it was told from the child's point of view rather than the mother's: I didn't have to think much about how SHE felt. And by the time it occurred to me to think of it, I'd finished that section. (I did a little skimming ahead, too, to make SURE.) The thriller part only lasted the first half of the book or so---and more like just the second quarter of it, since the first quarter is "figuring out what is going on."

I did find it thought-provoking, as pretty much everyone who read it mentioned. Lots of interesting issues to mull while doing boring cooking or cleaning or exercising. Even though I'm someone who lies awake worrying about how we'd all get out in the case of a fire, I didn't find that this book gave me fresh material to worry about. Instead, I found it reassuring/interesting: it said, basically, "Look, here is how someone took a terrible situation and made it livable." And then you get to wonder if you would have made the same making-it-livable decisions. (Still, I guess it does make my heart pound afresh if I think about it too intently.)

A complaint: from time to time I felt like it veered into "And a little child shall teach us" territory. The child is supposed to be less than a month past his 5th birthday, and yet his thought processes seem unusually sophisticated/observant, and he makes sermon-quality remarks about how other people waste things, and fail to appreciate things, and consider themselves so stressed and busy. Yes, thank you for that lesson-for-us-all, Author-speaking-through-child. This was fortunately only a SMALL and OCCASIONAL issue.