Tonsillectomy Follow Up

It's been more than two months since my boys got their tonsils taken out. They've healed up well in spite of Adam getting strep a few weeks after surgery. Crossing fingers and toes that it will take care of all of the sickness we endured this past year and I've already seen a huge change in Adam "condition".

I've been thinking about writing this post for some time now but I've got to admit I was a little nervous to do so. I'm hoping that by me sharing our experiences someone will be helped. I'm talking about bed wetting people! More correctly known as nocturnal enuresis. We've lived with and battled with it for 8 years now. Let me start from the beginning...

Adam is our first child so naturally we experimented on him. When it came time to potty train I read all of the books, bought the "fun" potty and cute under ware. I was prepared!! Day time potty training went fairly well, but night time was a different story. After a week of wet sheets I gave up and bought the night time under ware/pull ups. We still worked with him but it didn't matter what approach we took he was always wet in the morning. When our second son was ready to potty train I was amazed at how quickly he was able to stay dry over night. I knew then that it wasn't something we'd done wrong but that something was different with Adam.

Over the years we consulted doctors, read books, asked friends and studied online forums. We've tried everything that was suggested...limiting fluids, waking him every few hours, bribery, reward charts, moisture alarm, chiropractic treatments, homeopathic treatments, prescribed medications...you name it...we did it. Nothing helped. It made me feel like a failure as a mother and him feel like there was something wrong with him. We'd go periods of time where we just ignored the problem and he wore Goodnites (overnight under ware) every night. Every time I talked to the doctors about it I got the same response, "We don't know why. He'll out grow it eventually." It was so frustrating!! It made me mad to think of all the advances in medicine why hadn't someone come up with something to treat this?!?

It wasn't until this past spring that I was given a glimmer of hope. My sister took her son to the dentist for a cleaning. While there he mentioned to her how large her son's tonsils were and that was most likely the reason that he would grind his teeth at night. She was given an article about 'Sleep Apena & Airway Management in Children'. She passed it on to me. I can remember reading the article and tears running down my cheeks as I read about children that had the same symptoms as Adam and that after a tonsillectomy the symptoms vanished and they were dry all night. I knew we were on to something! I scheduled a well child visit for Adam and discussed it with his doctor. He didn't have any experience with the things the article mentioned but he said he had no problem referring us to an ENT. We saw the ENT and he agreed that Adam did have abnormally large tonsils and they probably should be removed but he just shrugged his shoulders when I asked him if he thought it would help with the bed wetting. I felt we should go through with it anyways.

On July 26 both Adam and Carson had their tonsils and adenoids removed (Carson for a different reason). A few weeks later Adam ran out of Goodnites so we left him in underwear and hoped for the best. To our delight he was dry in the morning, and the next day we got the same results. In fact he's been dry every night with the exception of a few nights where he wasn't careful about the amount of liquid he drank. It has been a great confidence booster for him and a great blessing in our life.

Adam is sleeping much better, we don't have the usual night terrors and sleep walking/talking, that he used to have. I've always thought that his bed wetting was directly related to his sleep cycles. I now know that his enlarged tonsils and adenoids were inhibiting the amount of oxygen he was getting at night and therefore not allowing him to have good sleep cycles. When his sleep cycles improved so did the bed wetting.

My goal is to let people know that there is hope and they don't have to settle with the old "they'll out grow it". I'm not going to say that this would work for every child but if everything else has failed isn't it worth looking in to? I am happy to talk to or email anyone who wants to know more as well as share the article that put me on this path. Good luck to every family that is dealing with this, it will get better.