Nasal polyp surgery – diary of a kid’s day at the hospital

At the beginning of the week, Victoria was scheduled for a nasal polyp surgery. A common surgery to remove the polyps when they block too much of the airway and therefore cause snoring (and bad sleep) and frequent colds.

As this was the first time for one of our children to get a surgery, we (concerned parents)were both present and definitly were more stressed than our brave girl. For her all this was an adventure and she was very curious abour everything.

Here’s a little summary of the day:

9h30 – After not eating or drinking anything we check-in at the hospital and Victoria got dressed in the typical (kid size) hospital shirt. Doesn’t she look great!

10h30 – We’re all watching cartoons while waiting for her surgery. I guess at this point she must have been in heaven as we don’t have a TV at home and she got to zapp on whatever cartoon channel she wanted.

11h00 Off we go for the surgery. After a little chat with our nice doctor, a nurse takes Victoria in her arms and she gets to wave goodbye a last time and then she’s gone.  But even before we get to finish our coffee in the waiting room, we’re called back in as the surgery was over.  I didn’t check the time, but would be surpirsed if the surgery took more than 10 minutes.

11h30 – Now the harder part comes, when Victoria tried to wake up from the narcotics ( she had full anesthesia). Because she is confused and in pain, she cries and despite our efforts there was not much we could do to confort her. She only calmed down and fell back into sleep after the nurses gave her some pink painkiller sirop. She doesn’t remember any of this now, but this is where it got hard on us, the parents.

12h00 – By this time she was sleeping and all 3 got back to our hospital room and had a restfull and relaxed 45min. In this time we got a visit from our doctor that reassured us that all went well and that our little girl will feel better when she’ll wake up.

13h00 Victoria is fully awake. When we asked her how was the surgery, she looked at us with surprise. “Surgery? Who had surgery? ” She smiles, feels good and doesn’t even remember waving to us when she was taken into the surgery area.  She is very happy to eat her icecream (the first meal of the day for her) – the only proof left of the surgery is the needle that sticks out of her arm.

14h00 She drank, she ate and she peed. 3 times tick in the box so we can go home. In our concern about the pain she would go through, we had bought her a bag of candies (our kids usually don’t get much of those, so it is very special for her). In the end we feel like we’ve gone through more pain than she did, but we give her the candies anyway 🙂

(By the way, it was a pleasure to hear her sleeping some nights later without making a single noise. Gone is the noisy snoring.)

Big thanks for Dr Peter Iwens for the surgery and the before and after care and to Victoria for being such a brave girl!