Matthew and Robotty Go Under the Knife

Two weeks ago, Matthew got a second set of tubes put in his ears, and his adenoids and tonsils removed. The tubes were put in to drain out all the fluid trapped behind his eardrums. He had enlarged adenoids, so they were taken out to hopefully help his ears drain better and prevent the necessity for more tubes in the future. He also happened to have LARGE tonsils and so they were removed as well...why not?
My tactic going into this was to make the experience as fun as possible. At the surgical center in Ogden, where Matthew had the first set of tubes put in, they gave Matthew a stuffed animal to take with him, and he loved that. The surgical center in Orem wasn't as kid friendly, so I took Matthew to the store and let him pick out a stuffed toy to take with him into surgery. He picked a robot and named him Robotty. The day of surgery, Matthew was really excited. He loves attention, especially from adults, so he was basically in heaven with all the nurses and doctors hovering over him. He wasn't scared at all, and walked off to surgery like a champ. Everything went well, and as he started to wake up, the nurses came to get me to be with him.
He was SO disoriented. As he was waking up, he tried to leap off the bed, the whole time moaning and crying. He had absolutely no idea who I was, and kept flailing and thrashing around. It took a lot of strength to hold him down and I was afraid to leave him there by himself while I went to get help. All I could do was hope that a nurse would come in to check on us. At one point, he pulled his IV part-way out, and blood got all over the bed and all over him. Luckily, a nurse finally came in and was able to put the IV back and get him cleaned up. Then she helped move him from the bed to my lap so that I could help calm him down.
After a few minutes, Matthew came-to a little more and stopped crying. We had to stay there for a little while so that they could monitor him, but then we went home. I ran to the store and stocked up on ice cream, popsicles, juice, soup-at-hand, yogurt, mac and cheese, popsicles, and gum. Matthew loved it. I never let them chew gum, but it helps keep the mouth and throat moist, so he got to chew it whenever he wanted. In fact, he got to have whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He kept saying that it was the best time of his life. We were lucky, he recovered fairly easily. Aside from a few nights where he woke up crying because his throat was hurting, he didn't have too hard of a time. The hardest part of the whole recovery for him was missing almost two weeks of school. But, other than missing school, he was sad when his two week recovery period was over.
He misses eating ice cream for dinner. :)