Mikaela’s Throat Procedure

I figured that this was the most efficient way to update everyone about Mikaela’s throat procedure at Children’s Mercy Hospital yesterday. First, the quick summary – the procedure went well and Mikaela is doing fine. Now the details:

We got to Children’s Mercy by 7:15 a.m. to check-in and take care of the preliminary matters. The person scheduled to go just before us didn’t show, so they bumped us up on the schedule and got us in early. Mikaela did fine at first. She had her doll with her, and when Mikaela changed clothes and put on a hospital gown, the doll got a hospital gown. When Mikaela got her ID bracelet, the doll got an ID bracelet. It was all great until time to take vital signs. As soon as the nurse tried to put the pulse-oxygen monitor on her finger, Mikaela went into hospital panic mode. She wouldn’t sit still long enough to get either a blood pressure reading or the monitor attached. So we moved to Plan B.

The nurse gave her a dose of Versed that she already had orders for (we had discussed this possibility with the doctor at the pre-op appointment on Monday). Once she had the Versed in her system, Mikaela was happy and relaxed (now I know why this stuff isn’t available over the counter)! Blood pressure and monitor readings were good, so they moved her right along into surgery and sent Miriam and I to the waiting room.

The procedure itself went quickly – probably no more than 1/2 hour. Dr. Bruegger came out to the waiting room, showed Miriam and I the pictures of Mikaela’s throat (I didn’t post them – someone might read this while eating) and pointed out that everything looks healthy. There was no scar tissue, nodules, lesions or other structural defects of any kind. He measured the size of her throat, and it checked out as normal. He even looked for signs of reflux disorder (which can also contribute to frequent croup) and found no physical evidence of GERD (and no reason to do further, more invasive, testing with regard to GERD). They went ahead and gave Mikaela a breathing treatment and a dose of steroids while she was still under the anaesthetic to help combat the tendency to come out of this procedure with croup-like symptoms from throat irritation.

The first thing Mikaela did when she woke up was to call for her Mommy, so they came and got us in the waiting room and we spent some time with her in recovery waiting for her to show that she could keep some clear liquid down. Mikaela insisted on feeding the orange jello to herself, so there was jello everywhere – but at least some made it into her mouth and she didn’t have any problem keeping it down, so they let us go home. We were home before noon. The rest of the day was spent mostly lounging around the house and watching lots of Sesame Street (thank God for TiVo)!!!! Mikaela drifted back and forth between periods of pent-up-energy activity and napping. She was pretty cranky and whiny, but you would be too if someone spent a half-hour sticking cameras and tubes down your throat!

She went to bed at her normal 8:30 p.m. bedtime, and drifted off to sleep quickly. She slept great, until the storm woke her at about 4:30 a.m. But Miriam curled up with Mikaela on the couch and they went back to sleep until about 7:00 a.m. Bottom line – everyone is happy and healthy, if a bit tired still. And the news that there’s no structural issue with Mikaela’s throat allows to relax just a teeny bit about the upcoming heart surgery in October.