Apologies for the delay in communicating, but my non-cyber life has been quite full recently. We took Cotter in for his procedure on Thursday and to be succinct, everything went well. Without being too graphic, I'll relate to you that the doc thought Cotter's troubles are definitely allergy-related. Sooooo...we will meet with a new allergist, and also with a dietician in the next two weeks.
The procedure was quite painless for Cotter. In fact, before it all began, the anesthesiologist gave him a tranquilizer through some cough syrup. This is where we entered into the "yes, I'm laughing at my drugged-up son" phase. I really didn't want to laugh at him, but he was so loopy that it was impossible not to laugh. About ten minutes after he downed the medicine, his legs got wobbly. Then he started to reach for things that simply didn't exist beyond his altered mind's imagination. Then, after a brief lull where we thought he was going to drop off to sleep, he broke into a goofy grin and said quite sincerely (and slurringly), "Momma, it looks like you've got four eyes."
The procedure itself only took about 10 minutes, I suppose because he's just a little guy. He took an additional 20 minutes to come out of the anesthesia, and he was altogether unhappy that we aroused him from his deep slumber. But on the way home, he piped up and said, "Hey! I thought they were going to stick a camera down my throat and take pictures." We informed him that they already did, and his reply was a very understated, "Oh. Can I have Baskin Robbins now?"
When we arrived at Kelli's folks house about 30 minutes after it was all said and done, he slept for another two hours, and when he awoke, you never would have known that he had given the first half of his day to drugs, scopes, and recovery.
Thanks everyone (and you, too, Ms. Shirley!) for your prayers. The presence of the Holy Spirit was a comfort to us during the day, calming our worries and protecting our son.