Hunter's Surgery

Hunter had tubes put in his ears today and also had his adenoids removed. The doctor said afterward that it was a really good thing that we did it now - his adenoids were very enlarged, and there was lots of fluid behind his eardrums. We haven't noticed too much difference in his voice, although he's a bit hoarse and has quite a cough. No telling how much better he is hearing now - we'll check that out in a month when he has a follow up appt with Dr. Albright (I highly recommend him, btw).

Hunter's recovery was a bit more difficult because of the adenoidectomy and because he's only 11 months old and the anesthesia is tough on such a little guy. I don't think he actually opened his eyes before around 10:00 (surgery began at 7:45 and we were back in the recovery room with him by 8:15 - very fast). He just kept going in and out, and when he was awake, he was crying. They gave him morphine (twice - not good) and it didn't do anything except make the recovery longer, I think. We finally asked if we could give him formula around 10:30 because we knew he had to be starving. For some reason, I had it in my head that we could only give clear fluids - they said to go for it and he sucked 4 oz down pretty quickly, and then back to sleep. When he woke up the next time he was obviously doing much better.

So we got out of there around 11:00 - total of 5 hours at Texas Children's Clinical Care Unit. The only picture we got was this one unfortunately, although I may take some pictures of his war wounds before they heal up - he's got marks from the pads they had on his chest, the IV in his hand, and the oxygen tube at the corner of his mouth. He looks pretty rough!! This was a before picture, in his cute hospital pj's, which he wore nearly all day.