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
Day 8 (9 including op day) Im up and about. Officially folded up the fold out couch in my living room, did some cleaning, working on my pickup, running errands. Ive taken half a pill of Norco this morning at 7 when i woke up, pain was maybe a 2-3. I slept 9 hours! No pain at all right now, just discomfort and soreness when i swallow. Feeling great. Not looking forward to the withdrawls when i stop my pain meds altogether, its something I have been through before though, so I know what to expect. Still of course cant eat normal, still a lot of scabs back there, but everything else is back to normal for me. Im overjoyed that this has gone smoothly ::knock on wood:: still not quite out of the woods but so close. I will post again when I have my appointment with my ENT on monday to see if I am able to go back to work (I work on the North Slope, very remote, so he will need to see enough improvement that he doesnt think it would be possible for me to bleed and need an OR to re cauterize) I think I will be good to go. Best of luck to all of you going through this or about to take the plunge, for me, it wasnt bad at all! Hope that posting my experience has given some of you hope.
in response to: On June 19, 2013 at 9:08 pm sweet_nothing said:””
Again my respond button doesnt work and it really sucks, i would like to respond and ask question to a lot of posts. Sweet_nothing, vicodens ineffective 5-500 has never done anything for me. I am in pretty good shape at 5’8″, 200 lbs, probably 11% body fat (actually im probably down to about 190 since surgery) I have a raging metabolism and actually discussed this before my surgery with my ENT, knowing that i have a high tolerance to pain meds. Also when i do take them for extended periods I have found that I do build tolerance fairly quickly. After I physically went in to request a new script it was clear that a nurse aid had called in that script for the vicoden, for convenience (i guess they can only call in certain scripts, and anything stronger needs a physical script slip) and she wasnt aware of my specific situation.
Day 7 (8 including op day) I think that I have already turned the corner. Looking back there i can see probably 30% of my scabs have already come off, its looking a lot better back there. I took my last pain meds this morning at 5 am, and its now noon and my pain is probably a 1-2, more discomfort than anything. Still a pretty good sore feeling when i swallow, but I really feel like im on the downhill side of this. I slept for the first consecutive 5 hours last night since surgery. I ate some oatmeal this morning which went down well, and helped clear some of the scabs (i looked back there before and after) I think I can attribute most of this smooth recovery to my ENT and the coblation method he used. Of course there are a lot of other variables, but i would strongly suggest doing your homework and finding an ENT that has good references and lots of experience, and above all uses the coblation method. Now im sure there are people who had coblation and had horrible recoveries, like i said, there are lots of variables, i think one of which is another very important one being how well you can take pain medication. If it makes you nauseous or upsets your stomach and you dont stay ahead of the pain, and this causes you to not hydrate properly and eat, it puts you way behind the power curve. Hope that my experience can give some of you hope that it is possible to come out of this with a smooth not so horrible recovery =)
I am very happy to read this, and I’m so glad your recovery has been overall pretty good. I hope that people reading this will take their choice in method of tonsillectomy seriously.
Hope you keep feeling better and better eachday 🙂
I am 19. Got my tonsils out on June 12th so it’s day 9 for me (including surgery day). The only time I felt ok to eat was after surgery when I had no pain only some discomfort swallowing. I felt like I was going to choke on my Uvula because it swelled so much. Day 2-4 I only ate a few ice pops so i had something in my stomach when i took my medicine. Tried mashed potatoes too but those burned and cause horrible pain so i stopped eating those. The pain on the sides and back of my tongue appeared as well. Jaw started feeling sore. Day 4-9(today) has been absolutely horrible. Haven’t eaten anything in days, I sip water, hot tea or Gatorade every now and then to help hydrate but even that is a challenge. Nonstop pain even when I take my Lortab every 4 hours. I was switching between Lortab and Advil every 3 hours but found out that is bad for bleeding. So i went back to just Lortab. Last night I thought I was finally getting somewhere when my throat felt ok when I swallowed and thought maybe my scabs were coming off causing some relief? Then I woke up this morning in some of the worst pain I have had yet. The Lortab burns to take so I mixed it with 15mL water and that helps with the burning significantly. I am really hoping I can get enough pain relief to be able to eat and drink soon. I regret the surgery right now but I’m sure when I’m feeling better and never get another case of Strept Throat I’ll be more than happy. I’m having a tough time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel right now though. I feel like it’s never going to end! So glad I found this thread and all the others, it helps get me through a little easier!
day 6 (7 including op day) Yesterday I was going to go in and ask for a different script, and decided to just see how it went. So that I didn’t ingest 6,000 mgs of acetaminophen in the script they gave me, i had to space out two pills every 6 hours… this was a mistake, and i paid for it with a healthy dose of pain. If you don’t stay on top of it it can get pretty bad. I fell sleep around noon and woke up in so much pain I was shaking and couldn’t get a pill down. Luckily I still have some liquid Lortab, and 30 minutes after a dose of that was able to swallow two more pills. Still the Vicoden 5-500 was NOT working at all, and today I went in and he gave me a Norco 10-325 script. (10mg hydrocodone, 325 acetaminophen) This is working much better, one every 4 hours, and still leaves me a little bit of wiggle room to take an OTC if my pain peaks before the 4th hour, still staying under the 3,000 mg acetaminophen max in a 24 hour period. That’s said my pain when I’m on my meds is still only a 2-3, when I missed my meds on day 5 it shot up to an easy 7. Pain is usually worse in the morning, around a 4-5, and that is not from longer periods between pain meds, the pain or my alarm wakes me up to take meds on time. I use an ice pack and sip ice cold water in the morning to get the pain back down. Ice packs are a God SENT! Really help with the pain. My advice on pain meds would be to not try and tough it out, or save the “strong stuff” for when it gets bad, just take what you are prescribed and stay ahead of it. If it isn’t managing the pain, ask for something stronger, there is no reason they should not give it to you, this can be very serious pain. Other than that everything has been good, staying hydrated, eating mostly soup and mashed potatoes. If anyone has some insight on when to start eating things like bread to help remove the scabs… im a little hesitant on this because i don’t want to scrape off the crabs too early and start bleeding.