teequillin.com

Seriously.

It’s been a rough week since I last posted. In fact, it’s been so rough, that I’m opening a new window to read my last post to make sure I’m not repeating anything.

So, Tylenol with Codine did the trick. It was much easier to deal with the pain after that and he slept a little better (at least during the day–more on that in a bit), but the psychological damage had been done with regards to food and we are still dealing with that a little bit even today.

The day of the surgery, when we got home, he saw mom eating her lunch which just happened to be his favorite meal in the world: spaghetti. He pointed at it to indicate that he would like some and when I asked him if that’s what he wanted, he nodded “yes”. (Speaking was still painful to him at this point so, speech therapy or no, we weren’t pushing the whole talking thing like we normally do.) The doctor told us to give him anything he wanted as long as it wasn’t any warmer than room temperature. So, I cooled down some of mommy’s spaghetti (testing on my arm like I haven’t done in nearly nearly 4 years) and got down to work.

I picked up the fork and tried to give him a small bite all the while telling him to chew it up really good. Well, bless his heart, he was so hungry from not having eaten since the night before the surgery that he kept trying to grab the fork out of my hand. I would back the fork away telling him that I needed to feed him, but that just upset him further. I decided that it would be okay for him to feed himself as long as I was right there with him. He tried to scarf the food down in huge handful-sized bites. At this point, he was still riding the high of the anesthesia from the surgery, but it still didn’t stop the sharp pains in his throat as he swallowed the huge bites of food.

So now, in addition to just being pretty pissed off about the constant pain in his throat, he was also afraid of food. He wouldn’t even go near the typical tonsillectomy fare like ice cream and popsicles. We could hardly get him to drink anything let alone eat. So, keeping him hydrated and medicated became a WWE affair with the tag team of Big Bad Daddy and Hot Momma in one corner and Ian “The Hulk” Quillin taking on a grudge match in the other corner. “THIS TIME THEY’RE GOING DOWN!!!”

No kidding. Bekah had to hold his arms in place while I, standing off to the side so as not to get kicked in the nuts (kicking below the belt is apparently not only allowed, but encouraged in this league), would have to use one hand to hold his head straight while I tried to use the other to put the medicine–and eventualy, Pedialyte–into his mouth with a syringe, of which he would promptly spit out 75%. Of every dosage.

At one point, there was a streak of pink goo streaked across his bedroom wall that, had it been red would have looked perfect in the next Halloween installment–what is it now, XXXV? But I digress.

By Saturday, the only thing he would even attempt to put down his throat on his own was chocolate milk. I now own stock in Nesquick. I love that damn rabbit. Love him. And somehow he just knows, you know? If you click on that link, one of the first things you’ll see if the phrase, “Come to Your Happy Place.” Coincidence? Uh-uh.

Ian didn’t eat his first solid food until almost exactly one week after his last meal before the surgery. That’s right. Tuesday night, he suddenly walks into the living room, pats me on the shoulder and says–actually speaks–, “I want pizza.”

We were in the car headed to Lil Caesars so fast, I’m sure I broke several land speed records. I got the pizza home and adequately cooled off and he very carefully ate two whole slices (he doesn’t like the crusts) and helped himself to two cups of his beloved chocolate milk.

But, I haven’t even mentioned the lack of sleep. The first night, since we were on Tylenol only, he suddenly reached up with his hand and pointed toward his bedroom and slipped off mommy’s lap and started putting himself to bed. I thought, wow, this might actually be an okay night. That was around 7pm and rather than Bekah and I immediately following suit and crashing into our own bed, we decided to sit up and have some adult TV time. (No, not that kind of adult TV time.) Silly parents.

By 9pm, we would hear him beginning to cry through the baby monitor which I had dug out of moth balls and placed back in his room for the first time in nearly 3 years. By the time we could round the corner and step into his room, he was into full-out hysterics. 9pm also happened to be when his next dosage of Tylenol was due. So, we headed back into the ring for one more round. After that, the only thing that would calm him down was mommy slowly rocking him back and forth. So, she headed to the rocking chair while I acted like I could go to sleep without having taken my Ambien that night. Silly Daddy.

Eventually, Mommy made her way back into the bed room with an arm full of very sleepy, yet very pissed off little boy. We decided to let him sleep in our bed that night. I use the term “sleep” in a humorous way. We didn’t sleep because every time he swallowed, he would burst out into tears. Even after the Tylenol. So, every 10 minutes or so, when his mouth had filled up with all the saliva it could handle and he was forced to swallow it, we were awakened by the sound of him screaming and catching his breath after having swallowed. This didn’t help the whole fear of food thing, either. Eventually, whether through exhaustion or simple repetition, he got to the point where we could just tell him that everyting was okay and he would stop crying and catch another 10 minutes of sleep.

We did this for two nights straight.

Friday morning, neither Bekah nor I felt human. If you listen to this week’s episode of the podcast, you’ll see that I wasn’t really part of it. John put the whole show together for me. He also got to have a lot of fun at my expense, but what did I know? I was a walking zombie.

In a way, it was worse for her because she had to go in to work and deal with The Public. I, on the other hand, got to stay home and try the one-on-one bouts of administering his medication. The first real night of sleep we got was Monday night. Thankfully, Bekah had Tuesday off so as to get Morgan registered for school.

Skip forward to yesterday; one week and one day after Ian’s surgery. Morgan wakes Bekah and I up complaining of a sore throat. Since we were both enjoying the deep restful sleep that only corpses and overnight security men enjoy, we shrugged it off as her trying to get a little bit of the attention that brother had been stealing from her for a whole week now.

After we got up and checked her out, it turns out that, in fact, she was running a fever. We both instantly jumped to worst case scenario (because we are parents). If Morgan had strep throat, then it would be likely that Ian could get it. If Ian got it on top of just having had his tonsils out, not only would he wind up in the hospital, we would also be starting over from square one with his recovery.

We quaratined Morgan to her room and called the doctor for an appointment. Then we watched the flashing colon on the digital clock that is our cable box slow down just to mock us. I finally took Morgan in to the doctor and we went thought the whole culture thing–which I can’t stand, let alone sit by and watch someone do it to my daughter. It came back negative, so after spending the co-pay to the doctor’s office we went home without so much as a courtesy prescription of Placebex (use only as directed) just to make us feel better. We were told to watch her temperature and come back if it didn’t go away in 24 hours.

It did.

The story is not quite over, however. This afternoon, Morgan began to develop a light rash around her lips. Bekah treated it with some Neosporin and we went about our day. In fact, Morgan got to spend the day swimming at her Maw-maw and Paw-paw’s house. Tonight, when she got home, the rash had begun to show up on her hands as well. I immediately called Nurse Maw-Maw and asked her what I could do tonight other than putting more Neosporin on it. She told me that it looked like the beginnings of impetigo, which she very likely picked up while we were at the doctor’s office getting her sore throat checked out.

And now, tomorrow morning, I have to take her back to the same doctor’s office to get her diagnosed with impetigo and, hopefully, have something a little stronger than just the over-the-counter Neosporin to knock it out because she could very well miss her first day of the first grade if she’s not contagion-free. I don’t want my little girl to miss her first day of first grade for some silly, highly contagious rash.

I wrote all of this to simply tell you that if you happen to live in the greater Nashville area and happen to need any medications of any kind, they are probably all over at our house. See, I didn’t even tell you about all the medical stuff that happened to me this week…

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