Surgery that just keeps on giving
I took the boys to see The Lorax with my mom. My wife was away and often when that happens, I take the time to spend a little time with my parents – in other words I make my mom do all the work while I take two naps a day.
The minute we step in the theatre – K says, “daddy it’s too loud”. I shake off my wife’s voice in my head “don’t forget the earplugs” and come to a solution. “If you just sit down (and shut up) I’ll block your ears and you can have a twizzler”. That works pretty well, and we exchange between him blocking both his ears, him blocking one ear and me the other (him eating a twizzler with the other hand), and me blocking both his ears (him holding a cup of popcorn and eating it). K’s aversion to loud noise has been a recent development we’ve had to get used to. We cannot take him to kid concerts or any other loud events and forget about taking him to a wedding or reception – he freaks out and my wife and I spend the majority of the time slowly getting drunk as we take turns bringing each other drinks to the foyer area. You might think that this would annoy us – but then I remember that the poor little runt spent the first 3.5 years of his life 30 percent deaf.
You see, K had the classic triple surgery. He had his tonsils and adenoids taken out and he had ear tubes put in. He needed to get it done – here is how we knew:
*He had major blockage in his ears and was partially deaf
*Everyone has seen how some people sleep on an airplane with their head back and their mouth gapping open – well, that’s how K slept ALL the time.
*If you looked at the back of his throat, it looked like he had two giant boobs – I swear, I didn’t know whether to be upset or think of Pamela Anderson.
The best part of surgery day was seeing K all hopped up on Valium. Ever seen a 3 year drunk? If you haven’t, you gotta try it. It’s hilarious. K was stammering and wobbling around talking nonsense and contemplating life. He tells my wife all slurred up “mommy, you are the best mommy I like”. He tells me “daddy, I like you but not as much as mommy”. I was like, yeah, what else is new?
The fun stopped just as quickly as it came – the doctor came in, grunted something and then slung K over the shoulder and said “ok, say bye to mommy and daddy” and walked off way too fast for it to register. The worst part of surgery day was everything that happened after. Kirin was so angry that we couldn’t contain him, I never realized how strong he was – the little hercules not only ripped off his IV from his arm (which we couldn’t get back in until about 60 minutes later when he passed out) but he was so angry that he kept wailing on anyone (except for my wife of course) who tried to touch him. He smacked the nurse a few times, and one of the doctors, but most of all, he just loved taking a beating on his dear old dad. His little fists of fury just pounded away as I held him, if there was a child services equivalent called “father services” I probably would have called them on him. My poor baby would calm down, plead with my wife to walk closer to me and start wailing on me as soon as I got within striking distance. He recovered fairly quickly but along with the surgery we also got a bonus – an uncommon but known (however undisclosed) side effect of anesthesia. For the next few months Kirin would wake up a random times during the night in vicious and very scary night terrors. He would curl up into a ball and scream for 15 – 40 minutes. He’d start his business and then J would get so freaked out that he’d also start screaming and crying at the top of his lungs “stop yelling K, why are you doing this K? I don’t like you K”. It was like we had two monkeys screaming and howling in their cages and we had a nightly showing. So, we moved K to our bed for a while. I didn’t want to, I figured if we put blankets under the door and put on some background noise we could just sleep right through the planet of the apes show our boys were putting on. I got overruled and 2 or 3 times a night we’d wake up to the sound of K screaming in a random direction but not allowing us to touch him or try to make him feel better. Gosh it was freaky but as with most things, it passed with time. One year later – the only thing K remembers about the surgery is that we let him start chewing gum – at the advise of a nurse to help with the healing.
Anyway back to the movie – so K tells me that it’s still too loud. I feel bad and hand him off to his Grandma and tell him I’ll be right back. I walk out of the theatre and spot a CVS way down the road, so I run to the CVS, run back and walk back to the theatre. I walk to our seats and tell Kirin “look, daddy got you some earplugs”. I’m expecting him to be happy, excited, grateful, or at least say thank you – but instead he doesn’t look away from the movie and says “daddy, you took long”. I start to tell him that the CVS was far and he cuts in and says “be quiet daddy, I can’t hear the movie”.
mydarlingdevils 