Friday, January 13, 2012

This sucks

Recovery is hard, y'all. Olivia woke up yesterday all swollen in the mouth and crying and wouldn't swallow anything. Today was much the same as yesterday. I don't really know how to fix that.

It seemed to get better as the day went on. By bedtime yesterday she was dancing in the shower and chattering away. But mornings are hard. Everything is hard until she can work herself up to swallowing some medicine. And that takes most of the morning.

My first duty is to get something of the pain-reliever variety in her as soon as she wakes up. It's hard, but necessary. We spend 15 minutes trying to accomplish this. Then she whimpers until it kicks in. We spend another two hours trying to work ourselves up to eating/drinking SOMETHING so she can take her antibiotic and steroids and the REAL pain medicine (all of which should not be taken on an empty stomach, are you kidding me?!). So, here it is after ten o'clock, and I'm still in my pajamas and the only real thing I've accomplished today is force-feeding my kid some ice cream (!) and getting her to take two of the three important meds. We'll work on number three (the narcotic) later, when the steroids kick in and give her a little more energy to eat something and be more cooperative.

I'm exhausted, but I can tell she is even more exhausted. She's also a little confused about her voice. Yesterday, until the swelling went down, she sounded very much like Kermit the Frog with his tongue frozen to a flagpole. Today is a little better, but maybe because she refused to speak any real words for two hours and communicated in grunts and moans. By the end of the day, she sounds more normal, but still a bit pinched. Even she noticed it. "Mommy, my voice sounds weird. It doesn't sound like my normal voice anymore." Sorry kid, that's probably permanent. Adenoids were blocking your air passage. Things are going to be different now...mostly good, but might take some adjustment.

One day at a time. We are on day two of meds and recovery. We were told to expect ten days of soft foods and mild activity. So patience is the name of the game. I suppose it's a good thing that winter decided to kick in just now because it would REALLY suck to be stuck inside and miserable in pretty weather. The snow seems fitting.

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

It isn't what you want to do, but they do make Tylenol suppositories if you need them. We've had to use them once or twice - they are miserable, until you're in the position where not having any Tylenol would be even worse.

Also, a couple of new Disney movies were very helpful to us in the recovery period.