Denise and I have met parents who are so scared of putting their child through surgery to remove tonsils that they overlook how awful things are for their chid without the surgery. So, we see kids who desperately need their tonsils removed and whose parents, with the best of intentions, have convinced themselves that a tonsillectomy is worse than disrupted sleep, fatigue, failure to thrive, repeated bouts of infection and subsequent antibiotics, etc. This is a case of the devil you know not being as bad as the one that you don't know.
Trixie, of course, is not one of these parents. When her darling son had his second bout of strep throat and Trixie performed a complicated medical procedure called"looking at the back of his throat with a flash light" and saw that her DS's tonsils were the size of small plums, she pleaded with her pediatrician to consider tonsillectomy. After six more bout of strep, one of which migrated to Trixie herself, she scored a visit to the otorhinolaryngologist or ear' nose and throat doc. Thinking that she had finally found an advocate, since this man presumably feeds his children by removing the tonsils of other children, Trixie was shocked when the surgeon suggested that"we do not remove tonsils because they are large". The poor little darling had to get strep yet again to be taken seriously.
So, what am I talking about? Well, two things, I think. One is that, if your child has a chronic condition that is affecting his or her sleep, then get the problem fixed. The effects of long term insufficient sleep in a child is very serious and, if the cause is big tonsils, then resolving the issue is relatively simple.
The second is that sometimes you really need to be an advocate for your child and that may mean ditching Miss Manners and being downright pushy.
My Mother's Eulogy
3 years ago
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