Miller Times: McCoy's tonsils are gone

When McCoy was little and started talking, I thought to myself that it sounded like someone who was sick with a sore throat. I blew that thought off and just figured that's how he talked. Now move forward a year or more to when we had moved here. He ended up in our room a lot since the move and because he was sleeping in our room we couldn't help but notice how much he snored! After a week or so Bret was like "he has got to get out of this room so we can sleep".

I saw a video of lady and she was talking about how her kids were getting their tonsils out and one of them was because they snored. That was the first time i had heard that. Then I was getting really frustrated with McCoys sleep habits so I pulled out my handy dandy sleep training book. In it it said if your child is snoring read this chapter so I did. It explained every thing that McCoy was doing and I even learned that kids that snore are often small because they are not sleeping well enough for the growth hormones to kick in. Well this kid is tiny especially compared to the other 2. It also said to help with that you need to take tonsils out but they don't really like to do that in the states anymore. So it got me thinking more about it but I didn't know if the American doctors here would go for it. Then I got talking to my good friend here about it and she said that her daughter was doing the same thing so she had her tonsils out. They did have trouble in the states convincing them to do it. They said it helped so much once they did do it. So after that i decided I needed to at least take him to the doc and just see what he says.

Our appointment was with the American Doc on base. We get there and talked with him some. He looks at McCoys tonsils and said "wow those are big, ya he should get those out". He also confirmed that kids do tend to run small if they snore a lot. There is not an American hospital at these bases so we had to go through Germans. Our appointment with the German doc was pretty similar, after one look he commented on how big his tonsils were. So we made an appointment to get them removed. The German doc said to us multiple times at our appointments "we will take them out, he will eat, and he will grow".

June 13th came around and it was time for the surgery. Germans like to be very cautious so they warned us that it is a minimum of a 4 night stay in the hospital, then they will see how he is doing and if he can go home. The plan was to have Bret stay with him the whole time, 1-because he speaks German (most of the nurses and docs do speak English), 2-because McCoy is a crazy daddies boy, and 3-because I did the last hospital stay with McCoy. I thought it would work out with Bret there and I could be at home to take the other kids to and from school and even make dinner and just take it to Bret every night. I even turned down the option of having dinners made for us when i was asked if we wanted any. Ya I was way wrong...

It was so much harder than I thought. It was so hard to leave McCoy. He just clung to me after he woke up. He would cry for me when I would leave to get kids from school. At first I just figured it was because I was the one leaving and he didn't want to be there. He kept asking to go home. That first night Bret said McCoy just cried all night for me. Bret stayed one more night with him and then I decided to stay the last two nights. When Bret left McCoy just waved good bye, no crying. I was soaking up the times he wanted me because he usually doesn't. Those days of him in the hospital were the hardest. The first couple days I would drive to the hospital hang out for a little then leave in time to get the kids from school and then go back until bed time. By the second day I was kicking myself for turning down dinners. The hospital has terrible food and only for the patient so i would bring some kind of food for Bret and McCoy. I brought so much because McCoy wouldn't eat anything so I was bringing anything I could think of that he might eat. The second night I went to the exchange on base to get fast food and I thought I should get McCoy some chocolate milk. That was the ticket. He downed it so fast. The nurses didn't like it much because they said if he threw up they wouldn't know if it was blood or chocolate milk. He was eating/drinking something though so they let it go. He had been on IV fluids a good part of the day. After drinking the milk they let him not have the fluids through the IV. He pretty much lived off of chocolate milk for 2 weeks with little bits of food here and there. It was a rough 2 weeks. This kid doesn't like to take medicine anyways and then add in a sore throat...it was hard. Every few hours we would have to hold him down, hold his cheeks and blow in his face to get him to swallow. He would cry for about 45 min after (and a few times he threw it up so we would have to do it again) and then the meds would kick in and he would be good for a bit and then the process would start all over. I hated it almost as much as him. I would ask him if he wanted it to just hurt and he would say yes he wants it to hurt. So a couple times that second week I let him go longer in-between meds and he liked not getting meds but he was more ornery and would drool every where so I would just give him meds anyway. I think if he just would have taken the meds we could have stayed on top of those better and it all would have been smoother healing. I got to a point on the 3rd day I think, where I was so frustrated and just tired. The nurses kept telling me over and over that he needed to eat/drink and take his meds. I was trying so hard. I just wanted to call my mom or sister and complain but then it was more frustrating because we live in Germany and there is a time change and there was no Wifi in the hospital and sketchy service. I just cried for a little. It would have been so nice to have family around to help. We do have our family away from family though and they are amazing! Marci brought us dinner one night at the hospital, she also came another time to just visit and play with McCoy (he loved it). Jill and Rachel kept tabs on us and how things were going. When we got home from the hospital we had no groceries and Bret left over night to do a race. So my friend Emily came and watched my kids so I could go get food. Even the family that we shared a room with at the hospital were super nice. Lucky for us they were Americans. Their 10 year old boy got his tonsils out also. It was weird to be sharing a room and hearing the 2 boys cry and moan through out the night but i really was grateful for who we shared it with.

I am glad to be done with that and now McCoy doesn't snore and has gained a little weight since his surgery! So it should be good for the long run.

Checking his and the bears temperature.

They put numbing cream on four spots so they could be ready for which ever vein was better.

Happy in his Elephant gown and monkey socks.

This was after some oral meds but before the surgery.

He was pretty loopy. Bret and I were laughing so much.

Just waiting his turn for surgery.

Meeting some people.

They gave Flako (the bear with no stuffing) a hair net also. They are giving McCoy some meds right here. They warned me that he would whine and flinch/flail some but it was still kind of hard to watch. Then he was off for surgery.

Waiting for him to wake up.

He was actually more upset that I was taking a picture.

He laid like this forever. He cried when I had to put him down to go get Coop and Lynndon from school.

Post op nausea, good catch Bret. Look how pale McCoy is. This was before the chocolate milk and the only time he threw up (not counting the few times just after giving him meds).

They had a little room full of toys and books right across the hall from his room.

I was trying to get a pic of the room. The beds on the right were for us and the bed on the left for the other family. There was another fold up bed but it was in the door way and had to be up during the day or we couldn't walk around. One of his parents only stayed the first night anyway.