Owen's surgery

Sorry for the long absense from blogging. Things have been a little crazy around here and I've been lagging a little on things I need to do. :)

Yesterday Owen had surgery to have tubes put in his ears and we also ended up having his adenoids removed. This happened a little sooner than we were expecting. As my last post said, Owen got yet another ear infection, but this time it would not respond to the antibiotics prescribed (Omnicef - didnt work last time we tried either) and also did not respond to the rocephen shots he got a few days later. Therefore, he ended up having that ear infection for at least 10 days and the pediatrician was very concerned so she called up the ENT we were scheduled to see on Friday (Dr. Murray @ ENT for Children) and got us squeezed in with his partner, Dr. Paul Bauer, on Thursday. He too was concerned and decided it would be best to get the surgery done ASAP so he scheduled us for first thing Friday morning. He spent lots of time with us on Thursday explaining what was going on, answering lots of questions and really making sure we understood what could be causing Owen's various problems (nasal congestion, eye infections, ear infections, etc, etc, etc). After a long discussion, he decided it would make sense to go ahead and look at his adenoids while Owen was getting his tubes and was under anesthesia, and if they were too big, go ahead and take them out at the same time. It turns out they were HUGE and blocking a very large percentage of his nasal airway, so we chose to have them removed. We are very hopeful that these 2 little procedures will make a dramatic difference in how Owen feels. The poor little guy has been sick almost constantly since September (and was also sick all spring last year) so we are looking forward to him getting some relief.

His surgery was at Texas Pediatric Surgery Center in North Richland Hills. It was nice because all of the people there are pediatric specialists, even the anesthesiologist, so that made us a lot more comfortable. We had to be there at 6am, so we didnt get much sleep, but we made it there right on time! (Yes - we really did...) He was the first surgery scheduled for the day, so we were only there for a few minutes before they took us back. When they first took us back, they gave him some nose drops that made him kinda drunk. It was pretty funny how goofy he was acting. Then they took him back to the operating room and put him to sleep with some gas. Putting the tubes in took about 5 minutes and then the doctor came out to show us the picture of his adenoids. Then he went back and took about another 10-15 minutes to remove the adenoids and then we got to go meet up with Owen in the recovery area. He got to take a cute little monkey home with him. :)

So far his recovery has been phenomenal! Immediately after he woke up from the anesthesia he was fighting mad for a good 20 minutes or so, but after they took out his IV, he calmed down a little and eventually calmed down enough that he was ready to go home about 45 minutes after his surgery. In the car on the way home, he was hungry so he ate a banana, and some iced animal crackers, and 3 of Momma's hash brown sticks from Whataburger. He was happy and seemed to be feeling pretty good. They gave him some pain medication before we left the hospital, so perhaps that helped a little. When we got home, he was ready to play so we played for a little while, ate some yogurt and drank some juice. Then he took a bath and when he came out of the bathroom and got a clean diaper on, he laid down for about 30 seconds before he was sound asleep. After we all got a nice long nap, we headed over to Nana's and Poppy's house for a visit with the family and some dinner. Despite the tough morning, Owen had a good day and is feeling good so far today as well.

Well I think those are the details. Hopefully I didnt miss anything too important. We are so thankful that everything went so smoothly and that he's feeling so good. We can't wait to see how well he does from here on out. :)