@CalamityJane,
Aw, what a sweet picture.
Except for some pain this morning (due to dryness after a long night's sleep, I think), things are about the same. She's doing well but it's a constant struggle to get enough fluids + nutrition in her.
She's spooning some jello into herself, for once, so I'll grab the moment to try to get some details down about the surgery, etc.
She had an amazing attitude throughout. Really was the calmest of the three of us.
We were supposed to get there at 1 PM on Monday and the surgery was supposed to start at 3 PM, so I was expecting a lot of waiting around. It all went amazingly fast. We did some intake stuff, (forms, etc.), then were whisked to a room where sozlet was told to put on hospital clothes and lay on a hospital bed. Shortly after that, our ENT showed up for questions. Shortly after that, the anesthesiologist showed up for questions + demos. (I really liked that -- the anesthesiologist said that the gas they use works great but "smells like a wet dog," and offered a choice of "flavors." She chose root beer, and they brought her a mask with some of the root-beer-scented gel/ syrup/ whatever on it, and she was able to play with that and get used to it before the real thing.)
The nurse was buzzing around getting her vitals (temp, blood pressure, etc.) and then the ENT came back for questions part 2. (We had a lot of questions of course and he'd had to go somewhere before we'd finished in the first session.) Then he said he was ready to operate. (This was a bit before 3.) Then someone else came and wheeled her out of the room.
I'd had the impression -- not sure where from -- that I'd sit with her until the anesthesia took effect, and then go once she was asleep. But we reached a crossroads in the hallway and the person wheeling sozlet pointed out where we should wait... and I was like, wait, we're leaving now? We need to say goodbye now? We did. That was hard, though sozlet remained calm throughout. Another thing I liked was that they let the kids have their stuffed animals if they want, so faithful Beary stayed with her throughout. I gave him a stern talking-to about taking good care of her.
Then the worst part, pretty much -- the waiting room. I was pretty verklempt what with the abrupt goodbye and watching the little top of her head recede down the long hallway in a hospital bed, and the first thing my eyes lit upon was a little yellow fish in a big tank that was apparently ailing. It just lay there on some coral as all the other fish swam around. I kept willing the fish to swim, to look lively, and it wouldn't.
My attention was drawn by something else and when I looked back, I saw a dead fish on the bottom of the tank, belly to me, being jerked around and apparently eaten by another fish. I looked up at where the yellow fish had been -- nothing. Oh no! Then the cannibal-fish was revealed -- it was the yellow fish that was aggressively eating the dead fish! (Which was white or something.) It was the eatER, not the eatEE. In my overstressed mind, that meant that sozlet was going to be fine, and I calmed down a bit.
About 30 minutes into the surgery, while E.G. was saying something to me, I got this bad feeling and said "wait...." It was such a strong feeling that I went ahead and told him that I was really worried about her right eardrum.
So when the doctor came out about 20 minutes later, and didn't look totally happy, and said "there was a bit of a problem with her right eardrum," my heart leapt into my throat.
It seems like it's very possible it will all be OK though.
What had happened is that her eardrum had been pulled inward by negative pressure. A normal eardrum looks like this:
Her eardrum looked something like this:
(The blue lines I added.)
That's not quite right but gives an idea.
The doctor had to go in and peel the eardrum off of the bones. If all goes well, the eardrum heals and tightens up and goes back to its usual position, and that's that. What we need to watch for is the loose, floppy, stretched-out eardrum to touch those bones again. If it does, intervention would be necessary again.
The tonsils and adenoids and turbinate cautery all went fine. As sozlet said in what I posted, her tonsils and adenoids were really big, as we'd expected.
The tonsils are just done. They're gone, and can't grow back.
The adenoids and turbinates were
reduced, but might grow back. The ENT said that sozlet is just highly sensitive/ reactive, and it's hard to know what causes it and whether the cause is controllable or not. He recommended further allergy testing. (She's been tested for about 60 allergens, and no allergies were found.)
The ENT's overall take was -- we were right to wait and see as long as we did, and we were right to intervene when we did. The chances of everything going smoothly from here are good.
Now, one of the big things I learned was that the Eustachian tubes aren't really tubes. If there is negative pressure in the eardrum, it's not necessarily because of fluid or a blockage (such as enlarged adenoids) per se. Two things are at work:
1.) The Eustachian tubes are not open as a default. They open and close. If there is a lot of swelling of the sinuses and related membranes, even when they are given the message to open, they just can't, due to swelling behind them.
2.) The body likes oxygen. If there is pocket of gas in the body (such as in the "middle ear space" in the first picture, the oxygen will be absorbed. That reduces the total volume, and helps create the vacuum if there is no way to stabilize pressure. (This is why tubes are important.)
I think I'll pause here and then resume when I saw her post-op. (I know this isn't terribly interesting, I'm doing my usual thing of getting things down because it often proves useful in the future, and this seems to be the best way for me to record things...)
