Elinor's surgery

Since she was a baby, Elinor has had a hard time breathing and sleeping. The ENT had told us a year or two ago that the size of her adenoids is 3++ on a scale from 1-4, so very enlarged, but we still dragged our feet in scheduling the surgery because it is, after all, surgery.

After being told that she would likely go another decade before growing into her adenoids, we finally bit the bullet and scheduled the adenoidectomy for January 3rd. We were lucky to get an early slot in the day, since Elinor had to be fasting when she went in. I took her to the surge center while Joseph got the other kids off to school and the registration process was very quick and easy. Within half an hour we were here, in a room with Elinor in a gown, socks, and hat.

This is my favorite picture from the day

This picture was taken after Elinor was given a medicine to make her "relax" about the whole process. The medicine made her absolutely, hilariously crazy. She spent the next 20 minutes asking me why I had three noses, singing songs about losing and finding her socks, and talking about that girl in the mirror who looked like she was about to hit her head on the bed, and then proceeding to bang her head on the side of the bed.  I remember trying so hard to understand what she was saying, then repeating it back to her as a question, only to have her look at me, bewildered, and say "Mom, you don't make any sense."

After that they took my little girly away and I tried to get some work done, but the doctor was back less than 20 minutes later to tell me everything had gone smoothly and I could see her in a few minutes.

When I got to the post-op room, poor Elinor was crying big humongous tears that were just so sad. She looked pretty beat up and miserable. She just kept saying, "I want to go home" and "Get me outta here!" over and over again while trying to pull out her IV and remove her pulse-ox. They let us leave early, and soon we were home.

 She gradually began to feel better, and then was almost back to normal later that day. She stayed home from school that week, and we did have one pretty scary middle-of-the-night major nosebleed, but besides that the recovery was pretty seamless.

Here she is on her first day back at school, one week later. She also happened to lose her very first tooth that day!

Our Elinor is completely back to normal now, with far less mouth-breathing throughout the day and with much more peaceful slumbering at night. I am glad we went through with the surgery, but also grateful to have it behind us.