Kaylyn's Surgery

Today Kaylyn had her scheduled surgery at Children's hospital to scope her Airway to find out why she was getting croup so often and so severely.

It seems as though every time Kaylyn so much as gets a runny nose, within hours we are off to the ER to get her medicine to open up her airway so she can breath. After several episodes within a short period of a few months, her ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) Dr. recommended that we have her scoped to see what was going on.

So today was the day. Her surgery was not scheduled until 4pm, which made for a very long day of her not eating or drinking anything prior to the surgery. We thought it was cruel for her to see Kylee eat anything, so Keith took Kylee out to get her some food, and I kept Kaylyn busy. Although she did very well throughout the morning, and was in very good spirits, by early afternoon she knew she was hungry and was asking for food. It is awful to have to tell your hungry child that she cannot have anything to eat.

We had to get there by 2 to get checked in. By 3 we met with the Dr's and anesthesiologist and they took her back. Within 10 minutes the Dr came back with a picture and told us that they found multiple cysts in her airway (the culprit of the croup!), and they wanted our consent to take care of them. Of course we consented. The Dr explained that they scrape them off, and suck them out. There were 4 in all. The entire procedure lasted a little over an hour, and the Dr came out and talked with us when it was over to reassure us that everything went great.

The Dr explained to us that there is a possibility that the cysts can return, so she will have to follow up with her again in May to check her progress and we may have to repeat this surgical procedure up to 3 times. More than likely the cysts are a result of Kaylyn being intubated for 2 weeks when she was born.

Kaylyn spent about an hour in recovery. She was a little grumpy at first (understandably so), but as soon as they brought her a Popsicle she cheered up quite a bit. We were then clear to go home. More than anything I think she was happy to be reunited with Kylee!

As scary as it was to have Kaylyn go through this procedure, it is very comforting to finally have some answers. We have been dealing with Croup for almost a year and a half now and instead of it getting better, it was seemingly getting worse. Hopefully this will solve that problem, and we have seen the last of the croup!!

Here is a picture of her Airway. Those Bumps that you see are the Cysts, and have since been removed.