Hi, I am on day 15 of recovery. I am a 49 year old male living in the UK.
I have as most others suffered with sore throats all my life and over the last 15 years a consistently large inflamed right tonsil. I had been told by everyone it’s not a nice operation for an adult and recovery would be painful. For once all those “expert novice Surgeons” were correct and it’s been a tough ride.
Days 1 to 4, actually were not that bad although drinking any kind of fluid was very painful and eating was liquid or soft food only. Stock up on ice lollies as they will be your friend along with your pain releif.
Days 5 to 10, where do I start. The pain is beyond what I had prepared myself for and there were tears on a few occasions as even drinking anything was beyond comprehension. Knowing I was dehydrating you realise you must drink but every part of your body is dreading every sip. The other thing is the taste in your mouth, yuck. No matter how many times you brush your teeth it remains. Perhaps a personal issue as many people talk about the tiredness but I was the opposite caused but the painkillers. Over a 6 day window I had 4 hours sleep. This was hard as the pain never goes away and your always thinking about it in addition to overnight TV being terrible.
Days 10 to 15, constipation is now my enemy as I realise I have not visited the toilet for over two weeks due to the medication. It competes for my attention now along with the pain from my throat. Now eating normal food is possible I suddenly have no appetite as everything still tastes yuck. The pain in my throats is going away and every so often I can feel the fluff coming off the scars.
Do –
Stock up on water based ice lollies, soup, ice cream and painkillers as you will need them all.
Try to sleep upright where you can as it helps.
Get up and move around, sitting for two weeks in one place only brings other problems.
Pre prepare some movies, music or books to keep to entertained, you find the people around you are great for the first few days but as time goes on they become less tolerant of your woes.
Don’t –
Drink fruit based smoothies thinking they have lots of goodness inside them and they will substitute food, they hurt like hell to swallow due to the acidic fruit content. Orange juice is horrific and is nippy.
Don’t listen to those who say it can’t be that sore, it is!
Don’t think you will be back at work in a few days, I am fit, active and in good health yet this has floored me for over two weeks.
The constipation is awful. I had it too. I stopped all pain medication by around Day 8 as I realized it was causing me to be severely constipated. Just sorting that out was a project! LOL. I know that the pain is awful but I always advise people to keep eating and swallowing as often as possible. You have to push through the pain and realize that the pain is the healing! It’s not something to fear. The more you swallow foods and water, the faster the throat heals. I had it done at 42 and dreaded it. When I was getting checked in and the nurses were going over my check-in procedure and they realized I was there for a tonsillectomy, they all looked at me with pitiful faces and said, “this is NOT going to be fun for you as an adult!” I got the impression they saw very few adult tonsillectomy patients! I’m glad you’re doing okay. At the two week mark things rapidly improve! I found I was pretty much completely normal by end of week 3. Good luck!