Tonsillectomy and beyond…
In 2008, at the age of 44, I underwent tonsillectomy surgery. As I struggled to prepare for the surgery and recover from it, I was frustrated by the lack of quality content available on the internet for tonsillectomy patients. I was also frustrated by the general public’s assumptions about adult tonsillectomy surgery, and the lack of compassion from my health care providers. I was ill-prepared and struggled through recovery with minimal support. For this reason, I created a website to provide information to adults considering or recovering from tonsillectomy. It was called, “My Big Fat Tonsillectomy.” I later added a forum where other patients could share their experiences, questions, pain, and compassion.
Since then I’ve learned a great deal about tonsillectomy, and also about web design and search engine optimization. After reading thousands and thousands of posts to the forum, I have amassed a fortune in knowledge and insight into the experience of adult tonsillectomy. I’ve learned even more about the beauty and resilience of the human spirit.
This new site is intended to be a place where people considering or recovering from tonsillectomy can arm themselves with information and become their own best advocates. But it’s also a community. Every page allows comments and questions. The tonsillectomy forum is pure, free form venting, asking, crying, sharing, and mingling.
I read every single comment left on the site. (over 20,000 so far!) Responding to each one has become increasing difficult. My goal is to respond to EVERY comment on THIS page.
Keeping the site going is a labor of love to be sure. In addition to time, it does cost money. If you’d like to help keep the site going for others, please consider making a donation of any amount.
Thank you!
Greg Tooke
Author, advocate, webmaster
My Profile
Hi Everyone,
I am a mother of 2 and 33 years old, I had my tonsils out 3 weeks this coming Wednesday – I am fine and happily back looking after my children and back to work.
It wasn’t enjoyable two weeks but its fine and most definitely manageable – always think positive.
My reason for having them out is for years I was getting tonsillitis after a stressful time at work or two late nights in a row – which is silly for a healthy person, the doctors didn’t want me to have them taken out, kept putting me off, until I got what I called a lump on one tonsil, they called in asymmetrical, I went to see my doctor, he said come back in a week and lets decide what to do, I went back, it had grown so I booked a private appointment so I could be seen the next day and he booked me in for surgery the following week to do a biopsy. Which has come back all fine!
I just want to give people pre op a little hope and I didn’t have a great experience but after reading so much it was never as bad as I thought it was going to be. I have used this site and many others so only feel it fair to give something back if it makes one person feel better about what’s ahead then I am happy.
I have rubbish pain threshold, I have epidurals for both my children but I also hate taking drugs so I was adamant that I was only going to take paracetamol and ibuprofen – I was given codine but never touched it.
So surgery (my first time going under) was fine, everyone was brilliant, I woke up fine, chatting and just needing a glass of water, I went back to the ward, ate Jelly & Ice-cream – I was never asked to eat toast like you hear and I was discharged 8 hours after my op.
First 2 days I couldn’t work out what the fuss was about, I wasn’t really in a lot of pain, I was eating and drinking, sore but fine no worse than having tonsillitis.
THE BLEED! It started at 6pm but I stopped it with ice cubes, then it happened with a lot more blood at 10pm so we went to my parents local small hospital (by then I was v nervous) but it stopped in the waiting room, I got checked over and sent home – now at this point thinking back I should of gone straight to the hospital where I had the op and they would probably of put me on the ward, given me this foul tasting mouth wash that prevents bleeds and maybe I would have been ok…I went home, nervously went to sleep and woke up bleeding, got ambulanced in and filled 4 bowls of blood and it wasn’t a great time. In the ambulance (I took a huge bag of ice) this I believe stopped the bleed after bleeding for half a hour, on arrival it just stopped but I wasn’t in a great way, they checked my blood count and luckily I didn’t need a transfusion! After a long night in A&E I saw an ENT doctor in told me I had an infection and that’s why I had the bleed, he quickly got me on antibiotics via a drip and I was ok, I was in for two nights, which I was pleased as I felt in safe hands IF it was to happen again. It didn’t – phew. I went home and spent the next 7 days in bed, taking my drugs and sipping warm drinks, cold was worse for me, ear pain wasn’t nice, but I used to heat a wheat bag around my ears and it soon went away, I felt weak as I wasn’t eating but I eventually managed some meal replacement drinks and I soon had more energy and started to feel human again!
I lost about a stone, but in the last 5 days have nearly put it back on again which is good as I didn’t need to loose any, being that skinny made me look more ill!
Sleep – I know people say you cant sleep, but I did always got 3/4 hours at a time, when I needed some drugs I would take them and read till I dropped off again…
Even with the bleed, I never thought I cant cope, I was scared that night but that was short lived, day 19 now I feel SO good, just a sore throat, nearly all the scabs have gone just a tiny bit left. I also feel so happy that my awful tonsils are gone and can no longer poison my body! woohoo.
Don’t read too much, I did and it wasn’t as bad as most of the reviews I read, the pain isn’t that bad just always take each day as it comes, people tell you the worst days, but boy the pain may spike up a bit on one day but you will deal with it and carry on….happy thoughts!
Good luck, its so worth it, you will never look back x
Thanks for sharing Caroline- glad your doing well!
Quick question about the numbering of each day:
Does day 1 correlate to day of the operation? And day 7 to 6 days after?
Or does day 1 correlate to 24 hours after the operation?
Hi Michael- I can’t speak for how others number their days of recovery, but for me day 1 was day of surgery. Take care!
On day 6 of recovery, it was fascinating reading experiences by so many other people. Thanks for collecting these!
Hi Michael- Glad you’ve enjoyed our collection of experiences. Days 6 and 7 are no picnic but it will get better soon. Hang in there!
Hello I’m 16 years old and on day 11 with tonsils and adenoids out and it has been a pain. I powered through and only took my pain medicine (lortab) twice and that was on day 2 and 3. Today I have managed to eat 2 pieces of cheese pizza and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But from day 1-10 it was pudding, applesauce, and ice cream every now and then. The scabs in the back are 80% of the way off. On day 9 I decide to cough kinda hard and knocked of a huge chunk of them followed by 5-6 tablespoons of blood. Then took a trip to ER. They stopped bleeding and sent me home. All they used was ice cold water.
Hi Noah- That sounds scary- Glad you’re ok. Thanks for posting and hang in there!
This website has been sooo helpful, but I have to ask, where is day 10? 😉 It goes from Day 9 to Day 11 and Beyond. 🙂 I’m on day 9…where will I go tomorrow?