Kamdyn ENT update

This is probably a little more detailed than most people (other than our family) will care to read.  So it that's the case, scroll all the way to the bottom for the "bottom line" after surgery.

Before surgery:

The nurse who checked her in fell completely in love with Kamdyn.  Every chance she got, she came over and played with her, talked to her, rubbed her back.


Kamdyn was having tubes placed, and the ENT was also going to examine her airway with a scope to check for the abnormality that they saw on her x-ray.  I knew that it was going to take a little longer, and I feared that her sensitive airway, along with the abnormality would cause her to have complications.  I've been through tubes twice with Austin, so I know that normally this procedure takes all of 5 minutes.  It takes longer in recovery than the actual procedure.  Just as I was starting to panic at how long it was taking, the ENT came in.  I could not have been happier to see her.

As we were walking down the hallway, we saw a nurse holding Kamdyn as she screamed.  I wanted to run down that hallway to get to her, but I refrained.  The second the nurse placed her in my arms, and she cuddled into her usual spot with her thumb in her mouth, she was quiet.  I held her for a few minutes and rocked her in a rocking chair:
 


She was resting like that, when all of a sudden, she started gasping.  It sounded like her airway was closing up.  I immediately called a nurse for help, but as soon as they took her and held her up on their shoulder, she was breathing better and screaming.  She continued to scream.  They moved us to a new room, and she kept screaming.



She calmed down for a second to take this picture, but she was clearly in pain.  Her cry sounded raspy, and all of the crying was making her breathing sound off too.  She had one other episode of gasping.  I was starting to really worry about her.  Thankfully, the nurse that we had pre-op, the one that loved her, said that she knew it wasn't like her to be so upset, since she had seen how happy she was before.  She worked on getting her some pain meds right away.  She had a Tylenol suppository in the OR, but it just wasn't cutting it.  They sent morphine, and our nurse said she was going to cut the dose in half.  We knew she needed to calm down, and the only way that was going to happen was for her to sleep.  Just a few minutes after she had the medication, she was calming down, and then she fell asleep.  She slept for a long time, while I held her.  Eventually I had to pee, and when I stood up to give her to Brad, she woke up.



When she woke up, she wanted graham crackers and juice, and she was feeling much better.  We ended up being there for about 5 hours when it was all said done, and after a little scare in the beginning, everything turned out fine.  Kamdyn fell asleep on the way home in the car, and she took a 5 hour nap. 

We were happy to have our baby girl home, along with a new friend that the hospital sent home:


Brad calls her big head, yarn head baby.

She was up for a couple of hours and went back to sleep for the night, and slept the whole night.  I think it's safe to say she was worn out.

Today, she was completely back to herself:



Smiling, swinging and playing in the sand box at the playground, and back up to all of her usual tricks.



As far as the surgery itself, her tubes were successfully placed, despite her tiny ear canals.  She will have a follow-up hearing test in a couple of weeks, and we are hoping that her hearing will be back to normal.  The ENT found that she does not have thickened tissue in her airway as they thought, but she does have a piece of tissue that is partially blocking her airway.  The next step will be a sleep study to test for apnea.  That will tell us whether or not the blockage needs to be removed.