Sleep apnea and swollen glands and tonsils in young children

I hope I don't scare anyone with this advice but I've finally found the confidence to write it so I hope it helps any parents out there that may need it. 

I recently had a little bit of a scare with my four year old son, when he started school he was always going off sick with various illnesses most commonly coughs and colds.  However one day the school called me because they suspected that he may have German measles, I was very surprised because he had had his MMR jabs, anyway I took him to the doctors who advised me that the clinical diagnosis was German measles and they gave me antibiotics and told me to keep him off school.  Anyway he went back to school when he was well and then a few days later was ill again this time his lymph nodes had come up and were quite visible (under his ears)  so I took him to the doctors again who gave me some more antibiotics and told me to come back in two weeks if they hadn't gone down, at the time I didn't think they were serious because lymph nodes normally come up to combat infection and normally antibiotics help get rid of infection and so the lymph nodes generally go down again.  

Anyway took him to the doctors who then wanted him to have a blood test, but that came back ok.  So I carried on as normal until again he was ill this time the doctors decided to refer me to the peadatric unit of the hospital and there they did blood tests and xrays and said that his body was obviously fighting an infection of sorts (they weren't sure what infection it was) and they gave me more antibiotics and sent us home and told me to ask my doctor to refer us to the ENT dept of the hospital.  After the course of antibiotics was finished and he was better I went to ask for a referral to ENT at my doctors because the lymph nodes were still very large and having looked on the internet I know understood why the doctors were concerned about them, (there was the possible risk of cancer but without checking I would not know).  Now I know that lymph nodes are supposed to enlarge to fight of infections but the abnormal part about his lymph nodes was that they were 2cm in diameter and normally after antibiotics lymph nodes generally do get smaller even though they can still stay big at 1cm in diameter for 6 months or more. 

To cut a long story short eventually the ENT dept saw him and did an ultrasound scan and they decided to then do a biospy (to remove the biggest lymph node via an operation).  Anyway they asked me various questions one of them being did he have problems sleeping, now what 4 year old doesn't I thought, but there was a condition I wasn't even aware of something called sleep apnea.  Apparently it's a sleeping problem where you have one or more pauses (pauses can last from a few seconds to minutes)  in breathing while you sleep.  Commonly people who have this condition are overweight or people who have small airways in their noses or throats or small children who have enlarged tonsil tissues in the throat. 

Now my son has always had particularly large tonsils and that is quite common in children of his age but his tonsils were always healthy and so I didn't think this was an issue, however when I mentioned to the doctor that he did snore at night and did have pauses in his breathing (which I thought was just due to all his coughs and colds) the doctor said it was best to remove his tonsils and adenoids.  When the day of the operation arrived I was worried sick and I wasn't sure if the biospy would highlight any more problems.  The operation was over in a few hours but Daniel did not recover very well from it, because he would not eat or drink or take any medication orally they had to eventually put him on a drip and did everything intravenously.  Now I must add not all children react badly to this kind of operation, in fact another little girl in the ward who had the same operation was up chatting, eating and drinking. 

But the message I want to send especially to parents who might be in a dilemma with regards to this kind of operation is that even though at the time it wasn't easy it was the right decision for my son and he is sleeping and eating so much better now.  Now there are risks with any operation and the doctors will tell you all about them but you have to decide what is best for your child and I know that it is not an easy decision to make so I hope having been through this and having come out the other side this will help you make that decision.  Oh and by the way the biopsy results came back clear, hooray.