December 11, 2009 was a great day as my wife and I welcomed the birth of our new son. The photo below was taken fifteen minutes or so after his birth.
Unfortunately he has been in the ICU for the last 3 nights and we do not have any idea when we will get to take our little one home with us. Low blood sugar was the initial problem but now he is not eating enough on his own. Upon visiting him tonight we found a feeding tube in his nose that we were praying to avoid. Hopefully we will have him home soon in a few days and we can put the frustration of the last 6 days behind us.
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I hope all is going well with your bundle of joy. I am praying that he is finally home and that your family is enjoying him.
Just to let you know that I found your blogs about tonsillectomy extremely helpful. I am scheduled for a tonsillectomy in a week and have only read negative things Your posts were so real and postitive. Thanks for the honesty but most importantly, for sharing!
Thank you Rubi. Yes our little one finally came home a few days before Christmas which was a huge relief for both my wife and I. I hope you have a wonderful and safe New Year and please let me know how things go in a week. Just remember to drink, drink, drink and if possible try to talk when you can. Oh and do not forget the gum! We will keep you in prayer next week as the countdown begins. Please check back in when you start feeling better!
Post Surgery Day 5:
Ok, so i am glad to say that I made it out of surgery and have been fairly well! I really haven’t experienced much pain; maybe just a little pain and discomfort but nothing unbearable.
I have been good about taking my meds and making sure I take my temperature at least once a day. I haven’t had any bleeding and have noticed that I am beginning to heal.
I live alone which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because I don’t have to worry about taking care of anyone and can rest all day and night without distractions. Bad because if I need anything in the middle of the night, I have to either do it myself or wait till morning. I have the most amazing coworkers and they have been in and out of my house everyday. One of them even slept here the very first night.
I should also mention that I got a cold on day 3. The running nose made me crazy because I couldn’t blow my nose. If I did, it would hurt the back of my throat. Occasionally it is hard to breath while sleeping. I’d wake myself up snoring and breathing with my mouth open. I also lost my appetite completely! I was nausea and had a headache the size of a football field. I attributed all of this to the fact that I got a cold. I tried to eat soup but threw up a few minutes after. Throwing up really really hurt. That entire day i only ate applesauce and drank lots of water.
About my diet:
I’ve been drinking tons and tons of water. I’ve been eating lipton soup, jell-o, applesauce, pudding, ice pops and mashed potatoes. Needless to say, I AM TIRED OF ALL OF THESE!
I was feeling so well on day 2 that I begged one of my co workers to bring me a strawberry coolata and a glazed donut from dunkin donuts. Much to my surprise, he brought me a couple of donuts and I ate each and every one of them, slooowwwly. Another coworker came by while I was enjoying them and reprimanded him for bringing me a solid food. I should say that he would no longer be making dunkin donut trips for me while i am healing
I was told not to eat ice cream. Dairy forms mucous in the back of your throat which would lead you to want to clear your throat which would result in you possible “interrupting” the healing. process. BUT I must say, I couldn’t help but eat ice cream! (lol). I did so with a bottle of water right by my side though
I’ve rinsed with warm water and salt three times since i’ve been home and i nearly choked the first time. I must’ve forgotten how delicate I was and took a big gulp of water. Needless to say, I learned my lesson.
All in all, I’ve had positive experience. I won’t sit here and say that all has been wonderful but I must say that it has not been terrible.
This was probably the only blog I read about someone having a positive experience after a tonsillectomy. I was scared. But you put me at ease. Thanks for sharing and for allowing me to share my experience!
By the way, how is the little one doing? You and your family are in my prayers.
Rubi
That’s great to hear Rubi! Having a good support network around you helps as well, so I am glad to hear your co-workers are there for you. I believe you should be on day 6 today which is great! I will tell you though that the in my case the next few days of the recovery were probably the worst. When my scabs came off I had a few days of discomfort which felt like a major setback at the time. Couple the discomfort with the boredom of eating the same bland things daily almost drove me insane. Just know that if you do start to feel a little worse for wear in the next week that it will pass very quickly (a few days that is). Just watch out for bleeding as the scabs come off. I woke my wife up one morning because I was freaking out about bleeding from side of the throat but it was a very minor amount of blood which is normal. If you do experience bleeding, make sure to swish your mouth with ice water for a few minutes to help stop the bleeding and then you should be fine.
I am not trying to scare you with things that may lay ahead but I just want to mention some things that may happen to you so you know that it is normal during recovery. Many of the blogs I read prior to surgery always painted either a very bleak picture or contained very few details about the latter stages of recovery. Personally I was very down when I hit the bump around day 8 when I went from feeling decent to feeling blah. I just wasn’t mentally prepared for the setback because very few people had mentioned anything about it. In doing a few searches after the fact it looks like it is quite common to have a setback somewhere between day 8 to 12 due to the scabs starting to fall off. I pray you do not experience any of this (even if you do, it really is not that bad, it becomes more of a mental challenge than physical pain) and that you have a wonderful recovery!!
The little one is doing great, thank you for asking, but his parents are starting to feel a little worse for wear! It has been many days now of very little sleep but it is completely worth it. I will say that in a weird way the tonsillectomy prepared both my wife and I for this. Waking up every 2 hours to take pain medication was great preparation for waking up every 3 hours to take care of a baby!
Please let me know how things continue to progress for you. By the way, are you back to work yet or have you been able to just rest for now?
Hi! It’s Day 9 (counting the day of surgery).
I went to work yesterday and today. I couldn’t stand being home any longer! I figured, since I was feeling better, it would be ok. It went well.
All has been going fine. My throat hurts a little and the roof of my mouth also hurts for some reason. The only thing that comes to mind as to why the roof of my is hurting, is maybe the device they used to hold my mouth open during surgery. But I don’t know, I am only guessing. But it’s not that bad.
I now have an annoying constant coughing at night…it’s bad! It started about 3 nights ago. It’s so bad that there have been some nights that I haven’t been able to sleep. Did you experience this??
I am now eating some solids like pancakes (yum) and I even ate a little rice yesterday.
I am so glad the baby is doing great! Congrat!
That’s great to hear that you are back to a semi-normal life! I did have some throat irritation around that time but no coughing fits. A few weeks after I think I had a few scratchy throats that send me into a quick coughing fit but it passed fairly quickly. Have your scabs come off yet? I believe my problem around day 9 was the scabs coming off which caused the throat irritation.
Is the roof of your mouth irritated or sore? I did not experience that really but I did have some tenderness right above the surgery site in the roof of my mouth that I believe was inflammation that went away about 2 weeks after the surgery.
I think you are crazy for eating rice! I made the mistake of eating a meal with rice a few days after I had my wisdom teeth pulled and it took me a few days to get the rice out of the craters in my gum. Obviously nothing to do with with tonsil surgery and probably too much information.
Have you had your post-op visit yet? Make sure to ask about the coughing if you haven’t seen your doctor yet. I am sure it is normal part of the healing process since the muscles in the throat are sore and the surrounding tissue is inflamed but make sure to double check if it continues.
I am so grateful that you have kept me updated on your progress and I will continue to keep you in prayer. My goal in posting my experience was to try to provide a somewhat positive experience amongst the plethora of negativity I had found on the internet prior to my surgery. I hope in some small way that my experience helped provide a little bit of comfort amid all of the anxiety you may have been experiencing. Thank you again for sharing your experience with me and for keeping my family in your prayers as well. Please feel free to keep posting your progress although I am pretty sure you are on the uphill climb now to a complete recovery! Take care and I hope you are having a great weekend!!
Sorry for the major delay in response. Today is day 15 post surgery. I must say that this experience has not been as bad as I expected it to be (given all of the negative blogs I read on the net). Thank God!
I’d say I am at about 95%. Every once in a while, I’ll get a slight sore throat but not for long. I am back to eating solid foods without any discomfort and haven’t taken meds since day 9.
About the scabs: I am not quite sure when they fell off. Maybe during one of my coughing attacks.
Can you believe my post-op Dr’s visit isn’t until April?!? I called them on day 2 just to make sure that the letter I received in the mail had the correct date-it did!
I am sooo glad you posted your experience!! I was extremely worried before I stumbled on your site. Your experience provided me with peace of mind which is why I believe everything turned out so well for me.
Thank you for allowing me to post my experience on your site.
I hope that you and the family are doing great!
Rubi
Awesome! That is crazy to hear that the post-op isn’t till April but it sounds like you are doing great anyway! Thank you for sharing your experience with me and I pray nothing but great health for you going forward! Everything else going okay? Take care and we will keep praying for you…
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