"I'm not cold!!"

I get stressed out just reading all this. There is nothing worse than a sick
child! I am glad that sozlet is such a trooper though and her threshold for
pain seems to be pretty high too, she's no whiner! Good for her!

Oof -- continuing posivibes for the -let family.

So the hardest part is over, I think (knock on wood), but she still isn't BETTER. Fluids and food continue to be a struggle, though she's branching out more and more. She just has very little to no appetite and really doesn't enjoy drinking. Jello has been a lifesaver -- she prefers to eat her liquids -- and one particular kind of popsicle (but just that one kind).

The other indispensable thing in my fridge/ freezer has been bags of peas, for when her throat aches. Pain medication always takes a bit to kick in, the peas help immediately.

It's really not that bad though, she's pretty much normal throughout the day, walking around and going outside and reading and drawing and putting on her new glasses to look around our backyard and birdwatch. It's more of a preventive thing than anything else -- she's fine if I really push the fluids and food but if I don't, she's not.

So I'm trying to figure out when to send her back to school. The minimum was one week, then "if she seems ready." I'll be talking to the nurse at the ENT's office today and trying to narrow that down a bit.

(Oh and good news about the glasses! I'm not sure what happened, but she doesn't have 20/400 vision. The diopter prescription is -2.25 and -2.5, while anything under -6 is considered "mild" myopia. My prescription is -3.25. (Lower numbers are better.) So her vision is significantly better than mine, not 2 X worse as I'd thought. There isn't a direct diopter -> 20/whatever conversion, but seems like it's maybe 20/100 or less.)

Phew...almost.

My fingers are crossed for a return to normality in the near future...

Sounds like she's making good progress. RE: the eyeglasses, my prescription is -11.50. She's a loooooong way from there!

Lots of progress here, and I am glad her eyesight is much better than
anticipated. Mine is -8.5 and was a gradual worsening from -1.25 initially
when I was around 20.

How's our little trooper doing?

Trooping right along!

Loves her glasses and seems to be getting good feedback from friends.

Off pain meds (by and large -- did get sore last night and I gave her a low dose, seemed to do the trick. That was her first one in a few days).

Scabs seem to be mostly gone -- some white stuff left in the very back of her throat. She's got so much more room and is breathing so much better. Her breathing at night is now regular, easy, and very very quiet.

Nose seems to have healed (see "sozlet stories" for a bit of disgusting detail thereof, if you dare), and she's breathing much better through her nose, too.

Hearing seems good. (Still can't figure out how the floppy eardrum does its job so well.)

She's perky and energetic. Having a hard time not running, which she's not supposed to do until Monday. Can't do sports (soccer, softball) until the end of the month, which she's bummed about.

Got caught up at school within a day. (Her teacher predicted as much and didn't give her any homework for the recuperation period.) Her main complaint throughout this whole thing was the morning after her first day at school -- she was hesitant to go back because she was so overwhelmed by all the attention she got at school. "Everyone's so HAPPY to see me!!" We should all have such problems. (When I first brought her back, for a half-day, the first kid to see her gasped and then whole entire class ran over to her for a huge group hug -- the ones who couldn't actually get close hung back and waited their turn. I stayed for about five minutes and the hugging wasn't close to being over.)

She's drinking! Without me nagging her! That's one of the most encouraging developments.

Overall, seems really good. Main things to still watch for are: diet (pokier foods still bother her); finishing the process of losing her scabs (danger of bleeding until the process is all done); and the floppy eardrum. We have a follow-up appt. with the ENT in a couple of weeks, will find out more about what it's doing then.

Also have to get the special ear plugs made so she can dive in the pool this summer, have an appt. but not until mid-June. She CAN go in the (chlorinated) pool without earplugs as long as she doesn't put her head more than 2 feet under water. (This has changed since I was a kid.)


If things continue to go smoothly -- and until the scabs are all gone, we're not out of the woods -- this all will have been WAY better than I feared it might be. Especially, the pain was much more manageable than I expected. Someone (Butrflynet?) talked about it being like strep throat times 10, (something like that). She had one really bad night, with pain that Tylenol couldn't touch. Even that was only about an hour total. Other than that, she was mostly just uncomfortable -- she'd rate pain at 1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. She was perky and herself within 18 hours or so.

Re: "trooper," one more thing from the hospital. The night we were there, they put a thingie on her finger that measured her heart rate and blood oxygen level. It glowed red. At one point when it was dark and we were all easing towards going to sleep (she'd been sleeping and waking up since she got out of surgery), she gestured to me and I couldn't tell what she was saying. Did her head hurt? Her nose? Was there a problem with the IV? She kept pointing to her nose and then doing this weird thing with her hands...

Eventually I got it -- she was saying she was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (by putting her glowing finger on her nose, then doing the sign for "deer").


(Signing was very helpful for that first stretch when she couldn't talk. I did a lot of voice interpreting for her.)

Sounds good!!!


LOVE her humour.

I think I might have tried for ET...but she was in there for nose stuff, so Rudolph was PERFECT!

Rudolph! <hee hee> That kid is something else! Glad to hear that she's doing so well. I did read the story on your other thread. All I can say is GROOOSSS!

See, I would have a much easier time trusting doctors if **** like this didn't happen...


Sozlet's doing fine. She is breathing much better, no remaining pain from the surgery, etc.

However, the other day she was chewing weirdly and when I asked her what was up and she said that she'd had to learn how to swallow differently since the surgery. Eh? I remembered reading about people having to re-learn how to swallow, but only when they had their uvulas removed (a procedure sometimes done at the same time as a tonsillectomy, so when I researched tonsillectomies I saw some stuff about uvula removal too). I decided to take a look at her throat, which I hadn't done since the last follow-up appt., about two weeks ago.

Her uvula was gone.

Now, what was especially weird about this is that we had been checking her throat regularly after the surgery to see how the scabs were doing, if there was any bleeding, etc. She had an uvula then.

I emailed the ENT and we had an appt. yesterday. Long story short (and it's a long, irritating story -- he kept answering with "she's fine" when I was asking "what happened?"), I finally backed him into a corner and that he admitted that he messed up. In two ways.

First: He says, now, that her uvula was "unusually long" and needed to be shortened. This wasn't discussed ahead of time, it's something he just went ahead and did. He also didn't tell me about it after the surgery (he says he did, just apologized for "not explaining well enough"). It's still somewhat possible that there was a communication issue and he said something that the interpreter didn't adequately interpret, but E.G. was there with me for the discussions after the surgery, and E.G. confirms that nothing was said then.

Second: He cut off too much. It's not just not-abnormally long (and was it ever really abnormally long? I don't know), it's basically nonexistent. There's a little something, but hardly anything. He admits that it's "not what he envisioned."

As far as I can tell, what happened was that he cut some off during surgery (and chose a point too high up), then there was swelling where it was cut that made it look longer, and then as things healed there was some scar tissue where the tonsils were removed that retracted and kind of pulled the whole thing up. He thinks it may "drop" a little later on. (May or may not.)

It's also possible that none of this was planned and it was just a slip when he was getting her tonsils and adenoids out, and then CYA after that. I don't know.

I've gone through the spitting mad phase and am kind of resigned at this point. She's fine. There may be some actual benefits if the uvula was actually long -- the ENT was saying that could've had something to do with her extreme barfiness, since the uvula is a major trigger.

I don't plan to actually sue or take any kind of action. I'm mostly just really disappointed, I guess. And redoubled in my resolve to be a skeptical, informed patient/ parent. (I got a lot of brushing-off that had to be muscled through before I got some answers.)

That is a major disappointment. It must be very frustrating.

Sounds like it could be a time to re-evaluate the doctor's service to your family. Is this a deal breaker worthy of looking for another doctor?

Good grief!!!!!!


When they don't tell you, they know they stuffed up.

What the hell does an uvula DO???? When it's there to do it?

I would frankly be livid if I were you, soz. You can screw up on me if you must but you better not be screwing up on one of my cubs! This is not acceptable! At a minimum, I would report him to the medical board.

I'm a little neutral on the uvula since I haven't researched all about it, but am extremely irritated for you re the difficulty to obtain apparent honesty. Of course, I get the reasons, as even very sharp practitioners can be sued by irate patients/carers. And people who screw up can be sued.

I've not so long ago learned that I could have looked into suing about my eye botch (and I had a slight intimation on that before now) but, ah, whatever happened and why, it wasn't on purpose. I spent part of my design life worrying about myself or our group being sued, always keeping notes (I hate notes and accept their necessity and usefulness including for one's own design review), rarely having errors and omissions insurance (common for small firms), and relieved when I did have it, but rarely having even any question over 25 years for whatever firms I was part of, or on my own.
But when I was in the med field, I saw excellent people being sued, and the odd non excellent person (as the gossip went), and in the design field, some amazingly crazy clients in action against people I knew were competent.

So, I get the doctor's wariness, but totally get the sunken feeling of 'this guy, who seemed so straight, is not'. Ennervating.

On my thing, even if I had gotten all aggressive at the time, re lawsuit, it would be hard to prove negligence or incompetence (I mostly, if not entirely, doubt either of those) and really ruin my "wa" - or is that "wah", I forget.

I did "sue" once, when a neighbor spirited away my aunt and took her to an attorney (she hated lawyers) and had a will signed to her, with my aunt dying a week later (I had visited and found her, unusually, not home a couple of days in a row.) Luckily, I had a holographic will by my aunt and contested the official recent will. As it was, the small house, important in our family, had to be sold to pay all the parties when the matter was settled, and in the meantime the house value sunk. I got a smidge out of that, lost memories (grandparents wedding certificate, etc.). I had a horrible year that year, much insomnia, and the "horrible neighbor" died shortly after the settlement.

In retrospect, my aunt was the problem. She told stories against me to the neighbor (she uses 'mariajuana', I can smell it - funny, since I didn't, back then, and how would she know to smell, eh?) and stories against the neighbor to me (she is after all my money).

Not that you brought up lawsuits, soz, but they can wreck a peaceful life.

On telling the state board, I like state boards. generally.
I was on the legislative committee of one, way back when, and saw another, the contractor's board, be really useful in a situation for a friend contractor.
I'll be neutral on that right now, whether to inform. But I'd check out the site, just in case you decide to.

Also, I'm not clear on dropping him or her. I remember you did a lot of investigation before choosing. That would depend on if this was no big deal (or was) and your sense of your rapport, going down hill or not, versus his/her general expertise.

There may be some blowback from all your questioning, in which case, you don't want a defensive doc (or do you, that could go either way, but isn't the friendliest mode).
So, I'm neutral but would be looking around.