Aaron's adenoidectomy was a huge success. The nurses and doctors were wonderful with him. Well... except for the nurse in the recovery room, but that's another blog post. :)
The monkey in the picture came home with Aaron because Carolyn, the nurse who prepped us all for surgery, noticed Aaron had monkeys on his pajamas. She came back with his oral medicine and had 3 monkeys in her scrub top. She told Aaron that after he took his medicine he could choose any monkey he wanted to take with him to surgery and then home. He was thrilled. He swallowed his medicine like a champ and chose what Leland and I considered to be the most disturbing looking of the three monkeys. Plus it howls and screeches like a monkey. Oh boy! Later Carolyn brought a scrub cap for Aaron and one for his new monkey, which he named Elephant.
He didn't even look back when it was time to be driven away down the hall on the big bed. He was too excited to go for the ride.
The procedure was estimated to take 20-30 minutes. After an hour in the waiting room I was nervous. Aaron's surgeon came out to tell us the surgery had been very successful and that anesthesia had also gone well. Dr. Cave said the procedure took so long because Aaron's adenoids were "HUGE" and that they were actually growing into his nasal passages. No wonder the poor kid can't pass air through there. Dr. Cave said his nasal passages are "wide open" now. Woo hoo!
Aaron slept the hour and a half ride home and woke up just in time to see that Mommy and Daddy were ordering lunch at a drive-thru. Our cupboards are stocked with soft slurpy foods for him, but what did he want when we got home with the regular food? Mommy's fries and sandwich. The discharge paperwork recommends soft foods but also says that whatever the patient wants is pretty much ok. So we gave the kid some fries and half a sandwich. He devoured it all.
We thought/hoped he would be sleepy today from the events and also the codeine in his tylenol. Nope. We ended up napping in shifts (we were up at 3:30 and mentally stressed) while he played at full energy level all day. He had a lot of fun mixing different colors of gatorade with sprite and tasting his concoctions.
For dinner he had leftover pork tacos with rice and bok choy. I think it's safe to say he's on the mend. In a couple days the internal swelling should be down and that is when we will know how beneficial this surgery has been. Knowing that Aaron can sleep through the night while being fully oxygenated will be... well... words cannot describe.
