I took girl1 to the ENT doctor today.

So okay, I've known a long time that there was going to have to be medical intervention to deal with her sleep apnea (she stops breathing for like ten seconds at a time multiple times a night) and her mouth breathing.

I was a mouth breather, too.

But you know, it wasn't until the doctor peered into her mouth and showed me how her TONSILS TOUCH that I realized the breathing difficulties she must have been having her entire life.

And because I cope by researching things to death, I know how symptoms of this can include weight gain, inability to pay attention, irritability, and emotional problems.

And my darling, darling, daughter, who loves studying Japanese characters and is trying her hardest to learn to read English, too (learning to read in Japanese is easier because it's phonetic) has persevered even with her oxygen deprived little brain.

And it makes me want to cry. Because she is still one of the best behaved and smartest girls of her age category that I know, and because when the doctor told me he wanted to operate I wanted to snatch her away and hug her and say :

"keep your hands off my daughter"

She's only five.

And yes, I know tonsilectomy isn't a big deal and people do it every day and its twenty times better to do it now than when she's an adult, but...

she's my baby. And they want to cut bits of her off. And I'm going to have to be there and pretend not to be scared or nervous or upset because she can read me like a book.

And despite all the novels and movies, I didn't know. Nobody told me about how when the nurses are holding your daughter down to draw blood for bloodwork and she's screaming at the top of her lungs in fear that you'll wish you could tear your own heart out and offer it up instead of making your daughter go through surgery, even for something as common and noninvasive as tonsilectomy.

I didn't know.