Hailey's Tonsils

Cody teases me that Hailey is my clone in every way.  And while that's "mostly" true, it's not all good.  She got a lot of good AND bad from me, and one of the bad things is my throat.  She has kind of deep throaty voice like I did as a kid and she also has my tonsils.  I was sick with tonsillitis all the time as a kid, teenager, young adult, all the way until I was thirty years old and decided I'd had enough.  I was sick of always being sick, so I had my tonsils removed.  It was horrible, I won't lie.  But it was oh so worth it!!  

Hailey has gone down the exact same road as me, and rather than have her be sick for the rest of her life and the have a tonsillectomy as an adult (which is 1,000% worse on an adult than a kid her age) we thought it was time to see an ENT.  At her well child check up last week Dr. Ward said he tonsils were huge and after explaining her history to him, he said a tonsillectomy sounded like a no-brainer.

A few days ago we went to see Dr. Child who is the same doctor who did Devin's tubes almost three years ago.  He had also done a lot of the surgery on our beloved Dr. Allred during his battle with cancer.  I thought he had retired, but found out that he hadn't after all!  It was a nice surprise and it relieved some of my stress hunting down a good ENT.  That appointment was horrible because it was 5:00 and the three younger kids were bahving sooooo badly!  It wasn't my choice of an appointment time, but it's all that was available for a new patient consult.  But Hailey was awesome and Dr. Child came to the same conclusion that her tonsils should come out.

He said they grade tonsils in size on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being gigantic like walnuts.  Hailey's were between a 3 and a 4....and the picture below is HEALTHY tonsils.  Yikes.  You can't really see because it's blurry, but her tonsils take up the entire back of her throat.  No wonder they are so susceptible to infection.  And if they are this big UN-infected, I hate to think of what they feel like when she's sick.  Poor girl.  But her surgery is scheduled for March 22nd.  It's a week before they go off track again, so worse case scenario she misses five days of school.  And it's nine days before Easter, so hopefully she'll be feeling well enough for some egg dying and hunting...and maybe a little bit of chocolate sucking.  The girl is super excited to have her surgery and has been telling all her friends about it.  I really hope that recovery is much easier on her little body than it was on mine!