Tonsillectomy Recovery Time
After a lifetime of tonsillitis, it was time. I made the appointment. Was I scared? Yes. Was I prepared for tonsillectomy recovery? NO. Can you be? YES!
Planning for and recovering from a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy procedure, (often referred to as T & A Surgery), can be daunting experiences. The days leading up to your surgery can be frightening. If you haven’t read up yet, you can find information on tonsillectomy methods, risks, costs, adult tonsillectomy, sleep apnea, and numerous tips for tonsillectomy recovery on the other pages of this site. I’ve even added pictures of a post tonsillectomy throat by each day. Study, talk with your doctor and consult with your friends about the decision to undergo tonsillectomy and adenoid surgery. Explore the pages created here to aid in your journey.
If you should decide to have tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, let us help you through the entire process. Whether due to problems with sleep apnea, chronic tonsillitis and strep throat, tonsil stones, trouble swallowing, or a combination thereof, you can benefit from the experience of others. My own experience taught me that, as patients, we need to advocate for ourselves. Ear, nose, and throat doctors are, by and large, extremely talented individuals. However, very few of them have experienced an adult tonsillectomy, and the subsequent recovery. I have. Many others have too. We share our experiences here at the adult tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy recovery resource center. As you’ll read in the tonsillectomy recovery forum, everyone’s experience is unique. There are many factors that influence the level of pain you experience, as well as the length of time required during recovery. The method, and skill of your surgeon can have an affect, but there are also many things within your control that will reduce pain and recovery time. I’ve tried to include as many helpful tips as possible within the pages of this online resource. Tonsillectomy recovery can be pretty rough, especially if you are unlucky enough to be an adult! It takes longer for an adult to recover from most things. Tonsillectomy is no exception. There are many things you can do to make it go more smoothly. I’ve published numerous tips here on various pages. I encourage you to read up BEFORE you are in the throws of tonsillectomy recovery.
Talk with your doctor, friends, family, and work as you prepare. You are not alone in this. Like you and like me, many others are facing or have faced a tonsillectomy recovery. I created this forum for you. The community of adults or parents of patients will amaze you and warm your heart. I read these comments every day and every day I am humbled by everyone’s story and their compassion for others in the midst of recovery, or the anxiety that often precedes a tonsillectomy. Please join in. Hundreds of other people, perhaps in your same situation, have shared their wisdom, concerns, tips, and questions about tonsillectomy, as well as their tonsillectomy recovery.
-Greg My short bio
Don’t take too much ibruprofen, it can cause bleeding, internally too.
I was prescribed it due to my swollen uvula (only just finished my dose), however they gave me something called Lansoprazole to counter that, don’t take ibruprofen routinely without it while you’re healing, no matter how bad you feel.
Try and sleep as much as possible, but keep hyrdrated, Amy seems to be doing well with her tactic of waking up every couple of hours to have a sip of water.
Hopefully you can get some stronger painkillers, other than that keep hydrated, get rest, cancel all your work and assignments and all that. You’re going to have another couple of days of severe pain before it starts wearing off, but it WILL end, it will start to get better after that, likely around day 8-9 if you’ve kept hydrated, ate toast when you can, etc. I found sucking an ice cube before bed soothed it a bit as it cooled my throat down and numbed the raw burning sensation. Gargling salt water in the mornings help a lil too to soothe it slightly and get rid of the aweful taste when my mouth was all gunky.
Unfortunately everyone REALLY underestimates how much going through that early period of recovery utterly destroys you, and those who aren’t going through it think it’s just a “sore throat”.
Also let me be clear on my pattern. I don’t sleep only to wake up and drink some water and everything’s good. I don’t focus on sleeping at regular times at all. What I focus on is drinking liquids, for me that drinking warm tea, warm broth, popsicles, and icewater. If I’m awake I’m drink/sucking on one of these things constantly. If I get hungry I start trying to eat baby food, pudding, yogurt along with drinking the things I already mentioned. It takes me a good long while to get through a tiny jar of baby food. I don’t force myself to swallow quickly, the idea is to swallow without choking and make sure everything is washed down after each bite.
My medication is to take a dose every 4-6 hours, I’m a baby when it comes to pain and am watching the clock for hour 4 to get there. I take the medicine (it’s a liquid) and continue drinking one or more of the things I mentioned before. Within a half hour the med starts making me fall asleep. In that half hour time I make sure my nose is clear so I DO NOT breathe thru my mouth at all while sleeping. I sleep sitting up, I cannot sleep lying down yet as the swollen uvula cuts off my airway when I lay down and aren’t thinking about keeping my airway open. (I tend to lay down when I’m awake to give my back a break) I sleep until I wake up, sometimes that’s 20 min, sometimes 1 1/2 hours. When I wake up I immediately start with the liquids again, sometimes it’s excruciating for a few minutes to get back to a manageable level of pain.
I occupy my time online mostly, or playing computer games whilst still drinking one of the liquids or popsicle. Again if I get hungry I eat something soft. Sometimes I get tired before it’s time to take my meds again so I make sure my nose is clear sleep (sitting up) making sure to wake in time for the meds. Then force more liquids. I do this until it’s time to take my meds again. I just keep repeating this pattern day and night. I’m tired quite a bit but I have no problems falling asleep if I need to and the pain stays at a manageable level.
Above all I focus on taking care of me, soft socks, warm blankie or coat (for the fever), favorite games, doing things that make me happy within reason.
Hope the clarification helps, if you have questions about how I do things, please ask me and I’ll respond pretty quickly.
Yup, seems you have it pretty much worked out. I’m happy for you as I think it would be much worse otherwise.
I hope others in trouble can try your methods and have it work for them too.
Btw if you’re a PC gamer, what sort of stuff do you play? 🙂 I’ve only just started again, wish I could have earlier in my recovery but the sharpness of the keyboard noise made my ears throb heh.
Hmm, well my operation was on the 4th–I just come back on to help…1st take your opiates until you can do w/o them, as yes you guessed it— they are addictive…my nurse was happy I stopped at day four….drink twice the liquids you think you need…even when you think well, I’m not very thirsty….eat when you can….remember opiates stop NUMBER 2….think when did you last go and use stool softeners or fleet as needed 🙂 ….day five was when I used one…..don’t lift/ bend over if you can have anyone else do it for you….think 3 years old…….watch for side effects–mine was extremely swelled tongue….don’t drive on opiates–they tend to alter your abilities…don’t drink beer, (my doctor said yes that is a good idea)—melted my scabs off…see Jan 4th as a bunch of ideas started at that time………and WORLD OF TANKS BOB.. 🙂 . And lastly, when you have a sore throat/tongue/mouth with red bumps accompanying the white, then you probably have thrush. Call your doctor for a gargle…..good luck ——- as per habit—bad joke/ and or quote time—–remember your flux capacitor people so you can relive this wonderful time…. 🙂 .
Well I set an alarm to drink and take more pills and during this time I’ve honestly been reduced to tears. I am a broken man and it has me beaten. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever experienced (even kidney stones/renal colic didn’t feel this bad). The new pain today is a constant never fading ache in the lower throat. I’ve had my pathetic dose of paracetamol and even went for the ibuprofen based solely on a spoonful of ice cream to try and make a difference, no luck.
Been awake 2 hours now, don’t want to go back to sleep but staying awake seems equally pointless. I’ve managed to ease the ache a tiny bit by rubbing Voltarol gel on my neck and chin (it has diclofenac in it, although very weak). It seems to have helped a tiny bit. Swallowing is still agony but I can deal with that easier without the non-stop pain breaking me down.
I’m honestly at my wits end. Going to call my doctor today as I simply can’t handle this.
Wow Ben, if it’s really that bad, I would encourage you to talk to your doctor. It’s possible there is something else going on internally that we are unaware of. I’d hate to sit here and keep reading that you aren’t doing this or that, if it isn’t working for you to relieve the pain at ALL, then it isn’t working and it’s time to try something else. Perhaps your doctor can prescribe a painkiller in liquid form instead of pills (liquid is what I have, Hydrocodone w/ Acetaminophen), i can’t help but think all the pills your forcing down are damaging something and can’t be good. If not liquid then maybe chop the pills into smaller bits? idk, just trying to help…
I’m not going to lie.. the pain is so unbearable a lot of the time but I have to force myself not to cry literally. I’ve just found a few things that feel like it’s helping reduce pain or add comfort (ie, your rubbing voltarel gel on) and keep doing those things within reason. There is no one recipe for all, I was told don’t have warm liquids but for me this is one of the only things that help me….warm broth or warm tea alternated with ice water is like heaven to me and it promotes healing and not bleeding.
Be kind to yourself, if you’re certain something will hurt or does hurt once… don’t keep doing it just because someone told you it helps, you feel the pain, you know it’s not helping. And definitely call your doctor, he/she can help you through this as they can see you and make sure there isn’t something else potentially going wrong. Take care and keep us posted! (hugs)
Days 5-7 are the worst for the pain unfortunately. This is the advice I got from the hospital and what I went through too.
KEEP HYRDRATED is the main advice I can give, sip water almost constantly, and nibble what toast you can, this scratches of the scabs and is necessary.
I started feeling better around day 9. I’ve now finished Day 12 and only need to take my painkillers before sleeping and sometimes eating. It does get better, but you’re going to be bad for another couple of days until it starts picking up, hang in there!
I had my tonsils removed on January 23, 2013 and today is the 5th day and I feel like I’m dying everything hurts my painkillers are not working at all, nothing is working for me, I cannot even swallow water, my ears hurt, my tongue hurts OMG this is so painful
End of day 4. The hunger has definitely increased but my condition hasn’t. So I started looking around online for soft things to eat that were more substantial than pudding. I found scrambled eggs, smelled glorious cooking! I think I cooked them a little too long, they were not as squishy as I was hoping but I did manage to eat about 1 1/2 eggs without any damage to my throat, but it wasn’t that pleasant, they were kind of difficult to swallow…drank lots of water with them. Later I decided on overly cooked ramen noodles, chicken flavor. This was delightful and filled my tummy. It had the salty, warm, soothingness of broth, but with more substantial volume. The noodles were starting to disintegrate so they went down easier than even the pudding. very very nice 🙂
Pain has been a little worse today over all. I found myself cuddling up in a ball against the pain before I was even 2 hrs from having taken my pain meds. I just kinda stay like that until I fell asleep. I dozed in and out at 20 min increments most of the day but at least my tummy was satisfied. Just woke up from a nap and am treating myself to a popsicle to stay the pain and swelling I feel coming on.
My fever has stay consistantly between 98.9F and 99.4F all day. I was a little worried since the end of day one I was hovering between 101F-102F. Days 2 and 3 I was between 99F-100.5F… so things are improving with the fever. Tho today I woke up once sweaty and shakey, not sure if maybe my fever spiked and then broke before I woke or what?
Went outside twice today since it was nice, with the dog. This included me stepping about 10 feet outside the front door with leash in hand and I just stood there in the sunlight while the dog explored around in a big circle around me. Other than that, my butt was pretty much in one place in the living room.
Oh and I did have a little mishap late last night. My teeth were getting scuzzy so I decided to brush them. I figured if I took my time and was very careful not to go near the sore area I would be ok…and for the most part I was. The problem arose when I went to lean forward to spit gently, my swollen uvula decided swing backward right as my muscle tightened a bit for the spitting… trapping the uvula pinched between the sore area on one side and it own swelling. It hurt so bad I nearly lost vision and my heart raced, and then there was blood. When I got over the panic I realized it was only a small amount of blood and it went away quickly enough with a couple swallows of ice water. Nevermind that I stabbed one of the sores on my lower lip with the toothbrush in my panic causing more pain than necessary. So I’m not sure if the increased pain today was because of that incident or if it’s just part of the healing.