Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Tonsils

The girls are scheduled to have their tonsils (adenoids) removed this Friday morning. They had the blood work done last week and that was really enough of ordeal. We had not told them where we were going because we never would have been able to get them in the car.


Katie was suspicious as soon as we arrived in the hospital parking lot. She had a lot of questions right away. I tried to get her out of the car without responding to her questions but she was becoming insistent about knowing exactly why we were there. I couldn’t help myself and started kind of laughing. Then I would think that I must be a horrible mother to laugh and I would try to stop but couldn’t. It was kind of a nervous thing because I knew that she was going to FREAK. After all, she had to get a shot about a month ago and it took three people to hold her down. And she’s four.

After handing in the lab order to the clerk, we waited to be called back. Claire and Katie played with the waiting room toys, unaware of what we were doing there. Their dad decided to tell them that they had to have a little test done so that they could get their tonsils out soon. Then a lab tech came out calling, “Kathryn.” Katie suspected that they were calling her and reluctantly followed me back. There were about five women there and one quickly positioned herself to block the door. Katie took one look around and yelled in a panicked voice, “No, Claire! Claire first! Claire first!” She continued crying and screaming as I tried to move her to the chair. She finally let me pick her up and hold her as they swabbed her arm with alcohol. Which set off a whole new round of screaming, “I HOPE IT’S NOT A SHOT!!!” Which in turn caused me to start a whole new round of snickering. It’s not that I wanted to laugh but it just struck me as funny. Which then made me feel like a terrible mother, again.

Claire went in next and was very cooperative despite having heard her sister screaming. She said, “Ow, ow!” a few times and cried a bit but handled it well overall. She really did not like the bleeding time test. She really yelled during that one. They told her it would just be a tiny poke and then continued to soak her blood onto the round absorbent disc, all the while telling her that they were making a “pretty flower.”
OUT OF BLOOD!
I can’t imagine what she thought about that.

As the surgery date gets closer, the girls question me about when they go to the hospital. Claire says that she doesn’t want to go because she knows that she is going to have to take bad tasting medicine afterwards. I feel awful that they have to go through this but they have had one strep infection followed by another and there really isn’t a choice.

1 comment:

NocturnalRN said...

Maybe if you tell them there will be lots of ice cream? No, it still sucks. They will be glad in the long run though. Wish mine were out!