Tonsillectomy for 4 year old

[Loobylou2929]

My DD is 4 in one month, and having a tonsillectomy with Adenoids shaved off in 3 weeks.

She has a chesty cough atm, I think she’s at the end of a germ. So Im wondering if I go to the doctors with her tomorrow, will they give us some antibiotics to prevent it being a chest infection?

I desperately need her to have this operation as we’ve waited months! She has sleep apnea and catches any illness going!

Is it ok to have antibiotics this close to surgery?

Im also going to isolate her with me for the next 3 weeks so she doesn’t catch anything else. ( Tips to stop me going insane also greatly appreciated )

Also if anyone has has experienced this with their child, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

my son was on preventative antibiotics for 12 weeks leading up to his surgery (in Feb this year), he was 4.5 at time of the op. When he had grommets the year before, he finished a normal course of antibiotics the day before surgery and that was fine too :)

antibiotics won't make any difference if she has a viral illness and if she has 3 weeks to recover it'll most likely be fine. If she needs antibiotics because she has a bacterial infection and is unwell then that is different, but then the surgery would usually need to be deferred to recover properly and reduce the surgical and anaesthetic risk. This is a fairly common scenario on paed tonsil lists - the surgeon and anaesthetist will be used to making common sense decisions about whether the benefits outweigh the risks on that day if someone's at the end of an illness.

Thankyou both for your responses. We went to the Doctors today to be on the safe side. He said she doesn’t need antibiotics 🙌 and should be absolutely fine in 3 weeks. Now to keep her busy and isolated for awhile 😮‍💨🤓

Also any advice to keep my nerves calm and stop stressing myself out about it would be helpful 🙏🏻

Honestly we worried ourselves sick about it, our little boy had the more intense procedure not the one they trim them back and we were told a lot of pain for two weeks, he is also non verbal autistic with extremely limited understanding. It was honestly totally fine, we just followed the pain meds schedule they gave us and he was fine from the next day, we had no day 5 pain increase or anything and no bleeds. He ate and drank pretty well immediately which apparently makes all the difference, we just got in loads of his fave foods like crisps and frankfurters. Best of luck and honestly it’s so worth it!

Thanks for the reply. DD is desperate to have this so that reassures me 🙂.