I Love Drool!

Ainsley has been in a lot of pain as is evidenced by the copious amounts of drool that stream from her mouth all day long.

This is despite being on a 3 hour alternating schedule of Tylenol and Ibuprofen since the surgery. We had to stop giving Oxycodone because she had a bowel impaction (since it caused the problem). Which has been no fun for either of us. After 3 days of trying to break it up I finally ran to the Bartell's yesterday for a child's edema kit (I didn't know they sold such things), which thankfully worked. I won't go into more detail, but will just say it's good we got it out! She will be a lot more comfortable and thankfully we avoided a trip to the ER. 

Back to drool. I am hating it. But I love what it tells me, which is that she swallows her saliva.  A lot of SN kids have trouble with this. She would sometimes drool but not often or very much and now I can see the difference quite clearly. This is great to know that she has control over this function! Especially since the recent FEES and prior VSS's showed she is at risk for micro aspiration. Aspiration causes lung damage. I find it very curious that despite the test results Ainsley can swallow her saliva all day. And drink her blenderized food (or formula) and seems not to aspirate. There would be evidence of aspiration in her trach secretions. Or she would get sick with pneumonia. Her muscles aren't strong enough to consume all the food she needs orally. She requires about 1300 calories per day (That's 6 cans of formula - a lot for a 5 year old).

I'm hopeful that getting the tonsils out of her throat will help improve her swallow and I can't wait to get back to trying oral eating.  Since she's still obviously in a lot of pain I think it will be at least another week before she'll want to swallow. The pain is supposed to get worse as the scabs start to fall off. So I know to expect that.

She had a fever for days after the surgery and her neck was swollen. So I'm relieved that we are past that. We go pick Evie up from camp today. Adrian's baseball day camp all week. It really helped to have the big kids occupied because this surgery was far more difficult a recovery than the adenoidectomy in 2009. I'm hoping now that this is over we can relax and have a bit of summer fun.