Tonsils, anyone?

This is going to be an ongoing topic on this blog so I thought I should at least bring it up today on the subject.

At the beginning of November I randomly noticed (probably while Cooper was screaming) that Cooper's tonsils seemed to be a bit large. I did some research online about them and found out that your tonsils actually DO have a purpose - they are the first line of defense for airborn illnesses that come in through the mouth and nose. So, I really didn't think much about them being a little swollen, especially since he was acting normal, had no fever, was eating fine, etc... So, when I called the dr to just ask about them I wasn't really shocked to hear them say that he didn't need to come in right away and that we should just set up his 2 year check up for the end of November and we'd talk to the dr about them at that point. Fast forward to the end of November. We went in for his "2 year check up" which ended up just being a sick child appt as Cooper had come down with some virus and was running a pretty good fever. His tonsils were huge at the time and because it was affecting his breathing at nighttime (meaning he had several moments of NOT breathing just the night before) they gave him a small dose of steroids to reduce the swelling in his tonsils to get him through the virus. They even tested him for strep as it looked pretty bad in there. The strep test was negative. Well, a few days went by and he got over his virus and was feeling better. His tonsils, however, were still pretty big. Oh yeah, and at our visit Cooper's dr suggested that we make an appointment with and ENT to see what they said.

So, at the beginning of December Cooper was feeling good and we finally got in to see an ENT. We were with the dr for all of 5 minutes. He looked in Cooper's mouth and said, "Yep - they're big". However, he did not want to remove them because of the "risks" that surgery on small children has. Apparently, they are at a higher risk for extreme blood loss and they oftentimes have a harder time coming out of anesthesia. And, since we don't know all of Cooper's biological history it's hard to predict what he might do under the circumstances. So, his recommendations was to wait until he's over the age of three or if he stopped breathing at nighttime for longer than 10 seconds to call him back for another evaluation.

Yeah....... I had several issues with this ENT appointment. First of all, 10 seconds is a LONG time for a 2 year old (heck, it's long time for anyone) to stop breathing. Now, I know that your body holds enough oxygen for you to not breath for, like, and hour or something like that. But, come on... And second of all, what am I going to do, take a stopwatch with me to bed and say, "Oh, Cooper stopped breathing, let's time it to make sure it's actually 10 seconds!" I don't think so. Besides the ENT we went and saw kind of creeped me out in a lot of ways.

So, anyway, back to the tonsil saga. On Friday the 5th of December Cooper suddently came down with a 102 degree fever after he had eaten dinner. If you are parent, usually you can tell when your child is at the place where they are going to be throwing up. Well, we were there. By about 7pm I could tell that he was not going to make it through the night with all of his dinner still in his stomach. We had out the towels, I was snuggling him, we were prepared. At least we thought we were. When his body finally did decided to loose all his dinner, little did it realize that his tonsils are HUGE and getting anything past them on the way back up was not going to be a possibility. So when he threw up he basically choked on everything, stopped breathing, turned blue, went limp, and Jeff had to do the heimlich on him SEVERAL times before anything else came out. Needless to say, by the time Jeff got something out I had panicked, called 911 and had the fire department on the way to our house. By the time they showed up, however, Cooper was fine and dandy and wondered why all these big men were looking at him and poking him.

A few days later we were back with Cooper's regular dr for his now rescheduled 2 year check up. He was healthy by this point but again he still had very large tonsils. We told her our story of what had happened and she gave us a couple options. One was the call the original ENT, tell them our story and see what they say or our second option was to be referred to a different ENT and get a second opinion. Let's just say, we've opted for a second opinion from a different ENT.

Well, since we've had holidays and too much snow for any getting to drs appointments, we have yet to get into another ENT. Hopefully, this week we can get a referral to one at the local children's hospital and get an appointment in the near future. In the meantime, Cooper has come down with yet ANOTHER virus. Which means, he is once again congested, coughing like crazy, then choking on what he's coughing up and has even BIGGER swollen tonsils. I'm getting tired of it and just wish they would get it over and done with so we can move on.

Of course, I'm not sure if I'm wanting that to happen for my own convenience or for his welfare. I'm hoping that the new ENT will shed some light on our options and any REAL risks that we might be facing if he going in to have them removed soon.

So, that's up to date on Cooper's tonsils. We'll see what happens next!