Bouncing Back

She’s on the mend.

I don’t want to jinx it but five days out from surgery and Olivia seems to be doing pretty well. There’s still pain. She doesn’t want to open her mouth too wide for fear of ‘breaking her jaw bone’. That’s a direct quote from her.

But other than that fear, O seems to be adjusting to being tonsil-less pretty well. She’s eating better than Alyssa did and she’s drinking a lot. So much, in fact, that I’ve had to change the sheets on her bed twice in the past two days.

And, best of all, she’s slept through the night the last two nights. Whoohoo!!

I mentioned casually to Tom yesterday, after night of uninterrupted sleep, that perhaps we should consider weaning O off the prescription pain medication and see how she does with OTC stuff.

He quickly countered with the fact that we’d been given a HUGE bottle of the stuff, that she was still very obviously in pain and we should just give it to her until it’s gone. Because, well, you see, they wouldn’t have given us so much if they thought she wouldn’t need it five days after surgery.

I shrugged and went about the day. I mean…whatever. It’s not like we’re giving her morphine. I wasn’t going to fight with him about what we gave her to help her with the pain.

Then! (Yes, there’s a then.) This morning, he mentioned in passing that he’d read over the medication schedule we’d been given by the surgery center and perhaps we should consider trying to give her just the OTC stuff to see how she does. I tilted my head and blinked at him several times to see if it would trigger the memory my saying pretty much EXACTLY that about twenty-four hours previously.

Instead of acknowledging that he’d just repeated my suggestion from the day before, he then asked me if the surgery center or the nurse or doctor had mentioned how long her pain should last.

I reminded him that they’d said the most likely time for a tonsil bleed was between days seven and ten after surgery, so we should expect her pain to continue for several more days.

But, he wanted to know, had the doctor given me a specific timeline for her pain?

I patiently explained that, no, the doctor hadn’t given a specific timeline for Olivia, that instead, he spoke in generalities and told me to make our decisions based on her specific behavior and pain level.

Sometimes…yeah. Anyway.

I told him that since he was the parent at home today, he could make whatever decision he felt was right for Olivia and her pain meds. Though I did still write out the schedule he should use if he chooses to give her the prescription medication. He’s a good dad, he’ll make sure she gets whatever medicine she needs to continue to heal just like I do when I’m there.