Pain after tonsillectomy is inevitable. Tips for easier tonsillectomy recovery from patients who have been through it. What to eat, dealing with scabs and bleeding, managing pain, and shortening recovery time.
Tonsillectomy and its subsequent recovery is no picnic, especially for an adult. Welcome to Tonsillectomy Recovery Resources. Whether you’re considering, planning, or recovering from the procedure, you’ll find all the information you will need to make the best decision about tonsil surgery. You’ll also learn how to get the best care after tonsillectomy. I’ll also help you prepare for your tonsillectomy by laying out simple steps that will make the day of surgery easier and help you to be more comfortable as you recover.
Together we are stronger. Share your experience. Read about why I got my tonsils out and what I learned
Top 10 Tonsillectomy Recovery Tips
Though I’ve added to the initial 10, these are my top tips for anyone preparing for, or recovering from tonsillectomy surgery:
- Drink cold fluids
- Continue to drink cold fluids
- Drink more cold fluids! This is perhaps the single most important tip to make life easier while speeding up your recovery period.
- Get a good cool air humidifier and run it all the time in the room you’re in. Consider having more than one for the primary rooms you’ll be spending time in. To monitor humidity levels pick up one of these. Enter the code: TONSIL for a 25% discount! Humidity Station
- Don’t worry about sleep. Forget the normal time convention. Sleep for short intervals, preferably in a recliner. Sleep can be your worst enemy. Sleeping a few hours in a bed usually results in a dry throat that hurts like crazy. It can take almost an hour to get the pain back under control.
- Keep a written log of your medications as you take them. It’s easy to forget what you’ve taken and when. If you would have problems that require help from the doctor, it can come in handy.
- Read about others’ experiences and share your own. (Check out the tonsillectomy forum)
- Plan ahead! Stock up on items you’ll need ahead of time.
- Take something with your pain medicine. Carnation Instant Breakfast or Ensure will at least provide a base in your stomach and reduce nausea.
- Drink ice cold liquids!
A few bonus tips- read on>>>>
A few bonus tips for a better recovery:
- Plan some minor events. Even a simple event like a walk or a bath can take your mind off the discomfort and help your mindset during tonsillectomy recovery
- Chew sugarless gum. When pain gets referred to the ears, and it often does, chewing gum can ease the ear pain. It also keeps the swallowing process active, which many believe aids in tonsillectomy recovery. A warm compress on the area can also relieve ear pain.
- Ice! Whether it’s a high-tech ice bag or a bag of frozen peas, applying ice directly to the throat and neck is a great way to reduce inflammation and take the edge off of break-through pain. (thanks Kate!)
- Those are my top tonsillectomy tips. For a detailed daily checklist, check out my upcoming book.
I’ve put together a collection of items that I think would be helpful, if not essential, to making tonsillectomy recovery a little more pleasant. Check out the General Store.
Some Extra Tips – After Tonsils are Removed:
- It’s REALLY important that you drink. I know it’s almost impossible at times, but you must. A trick I used was to use Cloraseptic (sp?) numbing spray. (There’s also a lollipop your doc or pharmacist might know of)- to numb the throat a bit. Then I’d take the medicine. Once the meds kicked in (1/2 hour?), then I’d try to eat. My favorite foods at first were Jell-o and creamed soups. (sweet potato or broccoli by V-8 were good)
- You must keep drinking. It helps your throat heal and keeps you hydrated. One reader, a nurse, said she went to an emergency room and demanded IV fluids. Wow! Maybe not such a bad idea!
About the author
My name is Greg Tooke and I’m a tonsillectomy patient myself. For most of my life I lived with huge tonsils with craters that the Ear Nose and Throat doctor called, “cryptic.” I got tonsillitis and strep throat several times every year. I snored at night and woke suddenly, catching my breath. Like many people, I had sleep apnea and didn’t even know it. Speaking of breath, tonsil stones were making my breath smell awful at times. I’d heard horror stories about adult tonsillectomy , tonsils that grow back, bleeding, excruciating pain, and even death. I was afraid.
Finally, with the advice of my doctor and a resolve to improve the quality of my life, I scheduled my tonsillectomy for the day after Thanksgiving. (a last meal??) You can read all about my tonsillectomy story in the pages that follow.
Greg
Hi, I’m 22 and had my tonsils removed yesterday, I felt fine and managed food and speaking after surgery, just felt very tired and dizzy from the anaesthetic, waking this morning was hard as I was in quite a lot of discomfort and pain as my mouth felt very dry and I was very groggy! However I have managed to eat, I am on ibruprofen suspension which is a lot easier than tablets and cocodamol soluble tablets… I have found food like noodles easier to eat and I have been using difflam spray and soothers (hard boiled sweets) to keep pain at bay while waiting for next pain relief… dreading day five after what I’ve heard 🙁
I had my tonsillectomy on 8 July 2014 so this is day 5 of my recovery. I was hoping that by now I would be feeling better but I do not yet. After reading many of the comments here though I feel my recovery is normal. So far I do not eat much because the salt burns (including ice cream). I am also getting sick of sweet stuff like puddings and pop cycles. I am still constipated and have bad ear pain in addition to the throat pain. Fortunately I have been drinking a lot of cold water so I am well hydrated. I can’t wait to eat a steak. By the way, hiccups suck.
Hey James. Thanks for posting! Try chewing gum for that ear pain.
I just had my tonsils removed on 7/7 and recovery so far seems long and painful. I have learned that it is easiest to eat and drink liquids right after I take my medicine and chloraseptic spray. The colder my drinks/food are… the better, so I’ve been living off of ice water, frozen jello cups, italian ice, sorbet, tapioca, and cold applesauce. Using ice packs on my neck defiantly relieves some pain, and chewing at least one stick of gum each day (although painful at first) has been making my jaw feel less sore because sometimes I feel like I can barely open my mouth to let food in. Today I feel like I was able to take a step forward because I was able to eat cold crushed watermelon. The hardest part would be getting through the pain at night and I’m hoping that starts to get better over the next couple of days.
I am three weeks out from my tonsillectomy and wanted to post a summary. I also wanted to thank Greg for making this website – as others have said, it has so many great tips and provides so much more practical information than you get from your doctor or standard medical websites. Sorry for the long post but wanted to capture it all at once.
So here goes:
The Background. As a child, I got strep throat and ear infections all the time, but I grew up in the 1970s, when it was out of fashion to put in tubes and take out tonsils. I continued to get ear infections until I was in my mid-20s, and I continued to get both strep and viral tonsillitis all through college and into my 20s. In retrospect, I clearly should have had my tonsils and adenoids removed and tubes put in my ears; instead, I had a zillion rounds of antibiotics. I started to get tonsil stones in my 30s, and I’d still get tonsillitis regularly. One tonsil was especially large. The tonsil stones weren’t enough to make me consider a tonsillectomy. But this past year, I got strep three times in six months, and that’s what finally did it. The third time came just three weeks after the second time. I happened to be on my first day of vacation and tried to ride it out – took a ton of Advil and Tylenol, but didn’t go to the doctor. After I came back from vacation, everything got worse, and I was miserable. I went to an ENT this time, and she diagnosed strep plus a peritonsillar abscess, and I had to go on clindamycin, which is a harder-core, broad-spectrum antibiotic that can give you c.diff. She also said the tonsils needed to come out, so I scheduled surgery six weeks out from then to give me time to get well. Other than the random strep attacks, I was a very healthy, fit 42-year-old.
Pre-Surgery. I got a cold about 10 days before surgery and was worried I’d have to cancel. I’m passing this along in case it happens to you. At my pre-op appointments, the surgeon and anesthesiologist both said it should be OK – they said they’d advise you to cancel surgery if you were really ill or if you were just in the “coming down with something” phase since they’d worry that they weren’t sure how sick you’d get. Since I was in the “picking up the pieces” stage by the time surgery rolled around, they thought it would be fine, and it was.
The Surgery. I had a coblation tonsillectomy, which you may have read about. It uses ionized saline to detach the tonsils, and my ENT feels it’s a less brutal method – no burning of surrounding tissue, etc. The recovery wasn’t easy, but it was perhaps easier than electrocautery. I had a 7:30am surgery scheduled and arrived at the surgery center at about 6:30am. By about 7am, I was in the holding area of the OR with an IV, giving my medical history and listening to the woman next to me (who was in for knee surgery) joke about how much easier that would be than a tonsillectomy. By 7:25, I was on the OR table, getting Versed through the IV to calm me down, then propofol to knock me out. By 8:30, I was waking up in the recovery area. They had added Tylenol to the IV. My throat hurt, but I felt OK overall, and was able to leave by about 10.
The Meds. My doctor prohibited ibuprofen and steroids because of risk of bleeding, and boy, did I wish I had them (ibuprofen is magical to me). She instructed me to use Tylenol and oxycodone, and I also got Zofran and phenergan because of past issues with nausea. I ended up taking the oxycodone for four or five days before I could no longer deal with the nausea and the constipation from the zofran to help with the nausea. Zofran constipation is BAD, people – like nothing you’ve ever experienced. I took it while I was pregnant but had forgotten just how much it grinds everything to a halt. My doctor had mentioned that people sometimes have a bleed in their tonsil area from straining too hard from a BM, so I was freaked out about that as well. So starting on day 4 or 5, it was only Tylenol for me. It was a fair trade.
The Summary. I didn’t leave my house for a week and was in bed a LOT of the time, but then my energy came back, and then my throat gradually improved. This was the most unpleasant recovery from anything I’ve ever had. I got lucky and never had ear pain, though, so I would still consider some other things to have been more painful, at least in an acute sense, like a tailbone injury, a herniated disc in my back, and endometriosis. This was worse in that it’s a constant pain for a long time – to me, it felt like untreated strep throat combined with other nasty bonus items. Other things I got lucky on: no bleeding, no changes to taste, and no scabs ending up in my mouth.
The Best Tips. I highly recommend the Honeywell humidifier and the Hamilton Beach ice shaver in Greg’s Amazon store. The humidifier is very good (be warned, though: it’s a large item), and the ice shaver is fabulous. I had so much shaved ice. One tip: add Gatorade or Honest Tea as the liquid in the machine – mild and refreshing. I also really appreciated the guidance that you should just forget about normal sleep timing – wake up regularly, drink, and don’t stress about it. You’re not using your brain this week anyway. I also wish I’d heeded the advice that you will get sick of the sweet stuff – by day 5 or so, I was so tired of popsicles and pudding.
The Arrangements. My husband was between jobs, so he was around but was taking care of the kids, so I had my parents come in as well. That helped. So did Google Shopping Express. Have a plan for what’s going to happen if you have to go to the ER in the middle of the night. My insomniac neighbor offered to take me, so that was our plan.
The Early Days. As I read from others, the first couple of days are not great but not really that bad, either. Knowing this, I tried to get some more substantial food down – mashed potatoes, etc. Somehow, I read accounts that your uvula gets swollen without really realizing that this means YOUR UVULA IS GOING TO TRY TO KILL YOU the first few days. You can’t lie on your back because your uvula will completely block your airway, and you will shoot up awake in a total panic. It hurt to talk. I watched a lot of the World Cup. Day 1 is OK. Day 2, everything swells up and the scabs form. They’re disgusting.
Days 3-6. These days were not great. I had a hard time getting down the 64 oz of water/Gatorade that my doctor recommended. Didn’t eat much. Mouth tasted unbelievably disgusting – sour, goopy, YUCK. I brushed my teeth and tongue often. Continued watching the World Cup. I didn’t even have enough mental energy to watch, like, a Netflix series. As I mentioned, I was having a hard time with the constipation and nausea and went off the oxycodone so that I could poop. It was worth it. I made a couple of mistakes in this phase by trying to eat something rougher than I should have for dinner and then had pain all night long.
Day 7-10. Day 7 is when I started feeling a little better each day, even if some individual thing would get worse. I started having more throat pain in the mornings – kind of that strep throat feeling. But by day 8, I was eager to leave the house and finally did. My ENT had strictly prohibited exercise, but I eased back into walks and errands. By day 11 or so, I was ready to go back to work, even though it meant I would miss my first World Cup game. My voice tired out easily and my throat still hurt quite a bit, but I was just ready to be back doing stuff and felt good otherwise. One good food tip: overbake a potato and eat it with sour cream or cottage cheese or hummus. It feels like real food. Don’t eat the peel.
Day 11-22. The scabs have slowly disintegrated. I could eat anything (nuts, chips, etc) by day 15 or so. I had my post-op appointment today, and the ENT said I look 90% healed. She said there’s no risk of bleeding at this point. She told me each tonsil had had 8-9 tonsil stones in it, and each was inflamed, but the pathology report was fine (ie, no cancer or anything). She said 8-9 stones was a much higher count than usual when she does the surgery. The only issues I still have are some numbness on the side of my tongue, which she thought would gradually go away, and some weirdness with swallowing (if I drink too fast, liquid goes up my nose, and I can’t quite swallow things like salad without chasing it with a drink), which she said would go away as my throat builds up muscle tone without the tonsils there.
I’m hoping not to get sick as much this coming year, obviously, but I’m already so happy not to have the tonsil stones! Big immediate bonus. No smelly breath, no feeling of huge bloated tonsils in my throat. I’m so grateful to this site, to Greg, and to everyone here for posting – together, we are definitely stronger. Good luck, everyone!
Sarah this is a WONDERFUL summary! Thank you so much for taking the time to post it. Your experience sounds similar to mine in many ways.
I wonder: would you mind if I copied your post and created a permanent page for future readers? I and others would greatly appreciate it.
Hope you continue to feel better every day. (Wow at that rate imagine how good you’d feel a year from now! Ha ha)
Take care. 🙂
Greg, definitely feel free to use anything that you think would be helpful. I wanted to add a couple of key things — one, I chewed a LOT of Dentyne Ice, and I think it really helped. Two, about 5 days in, I figured out that I could freeze bottles of water each day and then take them out before bedtime. I’d drink from those overnight – they stayed cold because they were gradually thawing. This was better than having lukewarm water by the bed in terms of helping with the pain. Thanks again for the great site and advice!!
Hello! Yesterday was my eight day after I had my tonsillectomy. My throat was really hurting, but I drank 6 glasses of water throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, while I was leaning over something slightly, I felt a trickle of liquid push up my throat and almost into my nose. I quickly stood up, and the trickling continued down my throat. I felt like I constantly had to swallow. Looking in the mirror with a flashlight shining into my mouth, I noticed that the white patches in my throat had turned dark red, and the red was almost dripping as it fell down my throat. I supposed it was my scab bleeding and falling off. The dripping continued for about thirty minutes. I gargled with ice water and then spit out onto a plate in the sink. My saliva was normal colored, but at the end of each spit was a little glob of blood. I did this at least a dozen times. After gargling, the dripping was almost nonexistent, but my throat still felt strange. About a half hour later, my throat once again had white scabs, like nothing had ever happened. Has anyone else had a similar experience?