Adenotonsillectomy

[mdpis3]

Has your child had it? How was their recovery? What was the main reason to go ahead? Recurrent infection? Sleep apnoea?

Did anyone reading this decide to withhold from doing the surgery? If so, did your child eventually "grow out of" it?

I, myself, had my tonsils removed at 11 but now I am making the decision for my DD it is a whole lot harder

My DD had it 3 weeks ago, plus grommets. Went really well - she was eating crisps (her choice) next day!

She couldn't breath through her nose & had massive tonsils when she didn't have tonsillitis. And sleep apnea.

Very glad we had it done

Dd had it when she was 3. Recurrent infections and sleep apnoea and also feeding problems.
Th op was hard on dd. It was a full 2 weeks before she was back to herself. But, absolutely no regrets. She sleeps so peacefully now, and is so much healthier now. I don't think she's had an antibiotic since (5 years on)

Hi OP

My DD (now age 7) has had grommets (twice), adenoids removed (at the same time as the second set of grommets) and tonsils removed (in a separate op). So three ops in total over a period of more than a year. Recovery from the first two was very quick, longer for the third one (tonsils are trickier). She missed two weeks of school after the op (one week for the first two) and was in some pain, didn't want to eat etc.

The reason for the grommets ops was hearing loss. Apparently it's standard to remove adenoids the second time you put in grommets. The tonsils were very swollen (one of them looked like a golf ball in her mouth!), although she didn't get obvious infections. She was a snorer too, and at that point I just thought 'let's get rid of them!'.

The last op was more than a year ago and she hasn't looked back. If they're bothering your DC I'm in favour of getting them out. My cousin recently had his out as an adult - he could have been saved years of infections, and the op is harder to recover from as an adult too.

Good luck!

Ds2 had it done in July.
He was 5.
The reason was recurrent severe tonsillitis. His school attendance was down to 78% last year :(
They didn't know whether they would do his adenoids but when the surgeon looked they were very large apparently.
He was in some pain when he came round after the op and had to have morphine.
He came home after a night in hospital, but he only stayed in because his op was late afternoon - it's usually a day case.
We were quarantined for 2 weeks at home (in case of infection) and we were warned to keep on top of his pain relief for at least 5 days every 3 hours day and night.
So we set the alarm and woke him to give pain meds at night too.
This seemed to work and he was always able to eat things like toast, sweets (:)) and fruit.
Day 5 and day 10 can be painful (something to do with the healing process)
Up to now he hasn't had a sore throat since - he was having infections every 4-6 weeks prior to the op.
We are glad we did it.

DS1 had this at 2 years old his tonsils were huge and he was on antibiotics every couple of weeks, and his adenoids were enlarged, poor sleep etc. I won't lie the recovery was not nice as he was so young it was hard to get pain relief into him....BUT, now I am so glad he had it done, like a different child health wise, very rarely gets sick, put on weight, sleeps better. Good luck with your decision.