Eleven days ago, my son had his tonsils out. The reason I can say it’s been 11 days without checking a calendar or thinking about it for longer than it takes me to swallow is because every one of those days is seared into my memory like a scar on my body from where someone cut out a small mass of its lymphatic material.
Did I mention they also took out his adenoids? That he had ear tubes placed that day, too? It was a threefer.
In case you’re like me, or like me last month, and you don’t know what adenoids are, you can do what I do and think of them as the mysterious nasal cousins of tonsils. That’s not exactly right. It’s a working definition. I’m not a doctor. I buy the popsicles. Then I buy the new popsicles when it turns out the first ones have a laxative effect on children.
“How did we get to this place?” is a question that’s been pumping through me like a heartbeat the past 11 days. Months ago, we casually requested a referral from our pediatrician to an ENT because we thought our son’s breathing sounded a little loud at night. He did this funny thing in his sleep, too, where he sort of threw back his head. Our friend told us her kid had the same thing and they were just going to give us some nose spray. He’d be fine.
Time passed. Out of nowhere, we realized that our referral was about to expire, that we’d been lousy parents and never bothered to set up the appointment and that hey, maybe our kid needed that spray.
He did not need the spray, said the ENT. He needed his tonsils and adenoids out. Badly. Words that were used to describe his tonsils were ones like “huge” and “unbelievable.” For his nose: “useless” and “not taking in oxygen.” By way of a bonus, there were massive buildups of fluid in both of his ears; had we ever suspected our child had hearing loss? Well, yes—only in our house we had termed it selective hearing. I could feel parental guilt ballooning in me like a swelling uvula.
My brother got his tonsils out at around this same age, and I can still remember his coming home: the dazed expression he wore on his face, how he didn’t want to eat anything for days. The not wanting to eat anything stands out most clearly in my mind, almost definitely because I knew I was going to poach all his treats. Other details are hazy. I asked my mom if she remembered his recovery time. She said he was better after about three days and that she couldn’t even remember having to give him pain medicine.
I called her on day eight of my son’s recovery and asked her why she had lied. “You definitely gave him pain meds,” I told her. “It was 25 years ago,” she replied. “I’m sure I probably did.”
My son suffered for this surgery, even if it has been for the best. Naturally, we only want what’s best for him. And sometimes, as our pediatrician let slip in a phone call to check in on us after the surgery, you put them through this whole rigmarole and don’t get results.
I demand results. No results is not an option here. Did you know a side effect of a tonsillectomy is that you contract rabies? Outwardly, it’s rabies. There’s a lot of froth and wild eyes; a lot of drool.
Before now, we’ve never had to give my son prescription-strength painkillers (though we’ve pumped through him fire hoses’ worth of antibiotics; see: ear tubes), and the warning labels are certainly enough to make you think twice. Dangers range from seeding an opioid addiction in your 4-year-old, to witnessing the cessation of lung function. “If he falls asleep on this stuff,” the ENT told us, “you sit and watch him breathe for the next four hours.”
He hasn’t wanted his medicine. He really needs to take his medicine. He gets upset about the medicine to the point of his face trying to turn itself inside out.
The only way my son is his old self is the way he insists he can still eat. He definitely can’t, but it’s not stopping him from trying to suck down popcorn, dry cereals and crackers. It pains him to eat these foods. We know when he’s found them on the high shelves in cupboards because he moans as he eats them. Everything we’d read had said he wouldn’t want to eat hard foods, that his body would know instinctively to avoid them. Now, there is no truth. No day, no night. Who can we trust? We are living in the trenches.
Snapple fact about tonsils: They can grow back. Like a starfish’s arm, or the tail on a lizard.
Try not to throw up your popsicle.
A thing that can’t grow back: your appendix. That’s the only significant surgery I’ve had, and the recovery didn’t come close to touching this. The whole episode, start to end, was pretty straightforward: I went to the doctor. I said, “I can’t stand up straight. My side hurts. Could I have appendicitis?” “You could not,” they told me. “You definitely could,” said the ER staff, 24 hours later. “Let’s pop that on out for you.”
Appendicitis was not a walk in the park. But at least I knew what to expect: good pain medication, a one-week recovery period, nervous phone calls from the office that had misdiagnosed me to check in on how I felt, from a scale of 1 to litigious.
In fairness to my mom’s memory lapse, no one tells you the truth about kids. With regard to their surgeries, with regard to anything. For one thing, the veterans are all too tired to remember. For another, try telling a pregnant first-time mom what she’s in for: Just try. You can’t do it. You can’t sledgehammer whatever delusions she’s harboring of a newborn who sleeps, who breastfeeds with ease, who does not projectile-launch fluids from both ends with the force of twin Super Soakers. “Enjoy every moment,” is the worst thing you can say to a new mother, and for that, at least, I am grateful: No one’s trying to foist this tonsillectomy off as something that should be in any parts enjoyed.
Google “tonsillectomy recovery time,” and the first result that pops up says to expect a recovery time of seven to 10 days. Scroll down a little and it increases to a possible 10 to 14 days. Scroll further, and the truth outs: Two to three weeks can be a normal recovery time for children. “Give it time” is a thing I’ve been hearing a lot lately, and also the last thing I want to hear. Be specific. Be honest. Be brutal. Be generous with ice cream and chocolate-pudding Snack Packs. Like a child suffering illness, or one recovering from oral surgery, I both want your love and I want to push it away.
This is what we’re supposed to say: that we’d do it all over again, that we wouldn’t think twice. But there are some things I would change. Maybe we have our son in the future, when we can genetically predispose him toward having small tonsils. Maybe we time-travel ahead one week to find my son no longer afflicted with rabies.
When this is behind us—and it’s a big when—his memory of it will fade. So will mine. And, God willing, 30 years from now, when his son needs his tonsils out, I won’t even remember that thing with the popsicles.