My 4 year old had to have his tonsils and adenoid out about
a month ago. I accompanied him into the
theatre and stayed until he was anaesthetised.
He settled onto the bed easily, accepted the mask on his face without a
twitch, closed his eyes and immediately went to sleep. The nurse was astonished. She asked “is he always this compliant?” While he is a good kid, he’s a pretty typical
4 year old. When I told her we’d
practiced for the operation the night before she said “bless you – it makes it so
much easier on everyone when they (and you) are calm and well prepared”. I wondered why they don’t suggest it when you
book in for surgery.
Here’s what we did – in case it can help someone else:
·
We only told him about the surgery the day
before. No point letting him build it up
in his head. He’s ok with change and
isn’t wedded to routines, so we didn’t want to give him too much thinking time.
If he struggled with change we may have told him earlier.
·
The evening before we told him we were going to
play “going to hospital”.
·
I am fortunate enough to have a theatre gown,
hat, mask and booties. I work in a
hospital (in an administrative role) and somehow ended up with them after a
work fancy-dress event. So I put them
all on. You could make do with a scarf, apron etc. I put on the washing up gloves too! I then
called for my patient.
·
My husband carried my son in and laid him on the
couch. He looked nervous and also ready
to do something fun.
·
We had my husband’s dust mask from the shed and
I, the doctor, explained that it was going over his mouth and nose, and that it
had special air in it. The special air
had medicine in it that would help him fall asleep and then we’d do his
operation. He’d stay asleep and wouldn’t feel anything. He knew his tonsils
were coming out but we never specified cutting or anything remotely
threatening/scary.
·
We got the toy doctor kit and I then tried to be
as funny as possible – tickling him with my instruments and generally hamming
it up.
·
We then had him “wake up” and told him his
throat was a bit sore and that we’d give him medicine and ice cream.
·
Of course then his big brother had to have a go
at being the patient and my younger son got to be the nurse. He loved it.
The whole thing was a big game. The next day was so much easier than it may
have been as a result.
A couple of other things I wish I’d known about
tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy in kids before we went ahead:
·
They arch/stiffen their body just before they
completely lose consciousness. It is
perfectly normal and happens to almost everyone. I wish I’d known that – it
scared me at the time. The anaesthetist
reassured me it was normal, but only when I asked.
·
My son recovered physically quite quickly. He was eating toasted sandwiches by day 3
post-op. What wasn’t so smooth, but is
apparently very common, was the 10 nights of night terrors all night long. He’d sleep for 45 minutes to an hour, wake up
in the grip of a night terror, and take about 30 minutes to settle down from
it. He’d then sleep for another 45-60
minutes and it would start all over again. During the night terror his body was
stiff and unyielding. He didn’t want to
be held or comforted. He couldn’t answer questions or respond to commands. His night terrors lasted 10 days, but
apparently they can go for as long as 2 weeks.
His disturbed sleep was also exacerbated by night time episodes of
copious floods of sticky, mucous-y saliva.
He found this extremely upsetting, which of course didn’t help him
sleep.
All in all it wasn’t an experience I’d care to repeat, but
could have been a lot worse. The sleep
deprivation for those first 10 days was horrible. We only found out how common the night
terrors were and how long they last on day 10 and I wish we’d been expecting it
from the start!
This is Michelle's son a month after the operation:
Michelle Austin
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