A Rough Recovery

Today Owen went to speech therapy.  It was his first time leaving the house since getting his tonsils out (except for donuts at Krispie Kreme, and that was only because he was high on hydrocodone).  Today was day 12, and it's the first day that I feel like Owen is actually healed.

It's been a rough 12 days.  Actually, rough doesn't begin to describe it.  It's been a horrible 12 days.  The first few days weren't too bad.  It took some coaxing (and bribing) to get him to take his medicine, but it was always a fight.  A few days into it, we couldn't convince him to take the nasty tasting hydrocodone, so we switched to over-the-counter Tylenol and Advil.  They worked to mildly manage his pain, but it was still a fight to convince him to take them.  He was always in pain, just less so when he would take his medicine.

Nights were the worst.  He slept in our room, and would wake crying in pain.  I would then spend the next half hour convincing him to take the pain medication.  Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I wasn't (and then he'd wake crying a half hour later because he was still in pain). 

On day 6 Scott left for 3 days in Sun Valley, and Owen quit taking pain medication all together.  He just flat out refused.  He fought me over it, and if I managed to pin him down and squirt it in his mouth, he spit it back out.  So I quit trying to force it on him.  And that's when the nights got really hard.  He would wake every half hour, crying in pain.  I would go to his side and try and comfort him, and ask him if he wanted some medicine to make it better (although I knew the answer was always "no").  He would eventually fall back to sleep, only to wake crying a half hour later. 

I would get up the next morning at 7 to get the school kids up and ready for school.  I would hope that Kate would sleep in, so I'd be able to climb back into bed when the last of the kids left for school at 8:30.  Some mornings I'd get another 20 minutes if I was lucky.  But then Kate would be up and needing my attention.  Owen would nap off and on through the days, but I didn't have the luxury of napping with him because I had Kate running around. 

I was so tired!  I felt like a zombie trying to stay awake through the days.  Owen was miserable, and so was I.  I couldn't wait for Scott to come home so he could take some shifts in the night. 

Scott came home on Friday (day 8), but he had to leave Saturday morning at 7am to take the three older kids to their softball tournament in Payette, so I took the night time comforting again Friday night.  Saturday night, I got up again with Owen, simply because Scott wouldn't wake up.  Sunday I stayed home from church with Owen, and he seemed to be feeling better.  But nighttime came and he was restless in the night again, so he missed preschool on Monday morning (he slept in till 10). 

But I'm happy to say that last night he slept clear through the night without making a sound.  He went to speech therapy today and has been happy and playing the whole day.  He's even back to eating.  He didn't eat for a week.  He'd manage a few swallows of water or drinkable yogurt a couple times a day, but never more than just a swallow or two.  He got skinny, really skinny.  But he has been eating really good today and his cheeks are starting to fill back out. 

This is my 4th time taking care of a child recovering from a tonsillectomy, but experience doesn't make it any easier.  I'm glad we survived and are on the other side of it all.  Now I need to catch up on my sleep!