ENT Appointment

I made an appointment with an Ear Nose Throat Specialist a few weeks ago. At first it was because I was mostly concerned about his minor speech delays and the fact that his congestion could be playing a role in it. Then 2 weeks ago, he woke up with red bumps all over his face and it turned out to be a staph infection. Even before he got off the antibiotics his nose started running again! Then came the congestion with the runny nose. That's what I usually term as "snotty nosed". He's congested but it's still running. This ENT has come highly recommended and has worked wonders on my godson who as an infant & toddler had multiple ear infections & ear tubes. Unfortunately for him & his mom, it took seeing many other not so good (I'm being nice) ENT specialists before they found this current one. Dean and I went in expecting him to check Ryan over & possibly just say it was allergies and maybe treat him with something stronger than Zyrtec. Ha..were we wrong. We came out with an appointment to have his adenoids removed. In simple terms, the adenoids are at the back of the nose down near the throat. His adenoids are enlarged thus not allowing the mucus to drain as it should. Because his congestion has been going on since September, the doctor recommended removing them. We could wait it out because most kids do outgrow enlarged adenoids (they will shrink) but usually not until they are older (after age 5 for some kids, or older for other kids). However; if we wait, this could cause more harm than good. He will probably continue to get infections which as we saw the last time, may not respond to treatment with antibiotics, he would still continue to have trouble breathing since his nose is congested thus his sleeping habits will not get any better (this may be the reason he wakes up at night and IS the reason he snores) and in some cases facial & dental abnormalities will occur. He has had enlarged lymph nodes on his neck since he had strep throat last year and it has always worried us and the doctor says, this is also because of the swollen adenoids. I'm wondering if his throat hurts and this is the reason for him not really wanting to eat (we've been struggling to get him to eat for the past 3 weeks--a whole other story in itself!).

The surgery itself will only take about 20 minutes. Getting to the outpatient surgery center to complete paperwork and get ready, then recovery will take the longest. When he had his MRI done last October, recovery was a nightmare for us. He woke up from the anesthesia fine but when he realized he couldn't get up and walk around, he was livid! We got home and basically had to sit on the floor with him and get him to stay sitting. Telling a 2 year old he had to sit that wasn't happening. He did finally cry enough to tire him out and fell asleep for an hour but that wasn’t long enough for the anesthesia to wear off so for another 2 or 3 hours we continued to try and distract him and calm him, mostly to no avail. All I can hope for this time is that it’s not as bad since he won’t be under anesthesia for a long time.