Tonsillectomy Complications Bleeding and Pain

Twenty Five Year Old Tonsillectomy Recovery

I’m a 25yo male and got my tonsils out 8 days ago on the 19th of December (tis the season for tonsillectomies it looks like). My first surgery under general anesthetic so I was leery but the procedure was easy and I had very little pain afterwards. Immediately once I got home I had a McDonalds meal and pretty much ate as normal with really not much difficulty at all. Even had a couple cheeky cigarettes that night and basically felt like I usually did save for some pain when swallowing and a hugely inflamed uvula that gagged me a bit. Waking up at night was occasionally quite painful but I stayed hydrated and didn’t have very many issues for the first four days. Was smoking regularly (and feeling guilty about it), my diet had not changed at all and I was even singing quite a bit around the house. Probably should have gone easier on it but the pain was low and I felt quite blessed to have such a good recovery. I was given 10mg morphine during the surgery and 10mg after but my guts can’t tolerate opioids very well so after that I stuck to paracetamol (acetaminophen) which has done the trick.

Bit personal and gross here but I have some physiological issues with my bowels and do daily douche enemas so the daily #2 is a time of pretty reasonable physical exertion as well as very sensitive privacy and embarrassment, so I’ve been worried about triggering a bleed during those times (I also have a lot of anxiety around these normal human acts, so the idea of being in an ambulance-worthy situation during such a private affair has been scary). Basically this sort of happened on Friday ( the fourth day) when I had a significant bleed on one side. Got a cup out and probably bled about 100ml (3oz) of blood from my mouth. Was preparing to go to hospital but by the time my ride arrived the bleeding had stopped. Had a cigarette and went about my day with no issue.

Bleeding

The Saturday was fine, the pain had been getting worse very slightly but was never less than manageable up to this point outside of maybe in the early mornings before I got up (stabbing pains in the neck, probably from a dry throat – water sorted them out – and LOTS of referred pain in the eardrums). Saturday night/Sunday morning (aka Christmas Eve & Christmas… happy holidays huh) woke up to take a piss at about 3am and hoiked into the toilet bowl, saw that I’d been spitting pure blood but in my half-asleep state was like “ain’t got time for this” so just swilled some water and went back to sleep. Luckily that bleed wasn’t very intense so I got to sleep fine, though Christmas itself was a pretty painful day and the first one so far that felt like what everyone else complains about. Lots of banging, throbbing referred pain in the ears and around the back of the jaw (though actually not very much pain in the throat itself). Parents roped me out for Xmas dinner so I ate quite a bunch, had a beer and a few cig’s and got home full and tired with my throat and ears hurting quite a lot, hoping that the process was hurrying up and my scabs were starting to fall off (though I couldn’t notice much difference)

The Honeymoon Ends: Tonsillectomy Complications

Went to sleep around 10:30pm on the Sunday and woke up dazed and confused an hour later feeling like I had to spit real bad, so I went to the bathroom and promptly started hemorrhaging,(bleeding), violently – much worse than the bleed on Friday (which could have been a ‘heralding bleed’, though it was on the opposite side of the Sunday bleeding …hmm…). Both super tired and super scared I called up my mother to ask for a ride to the hospital while alternately spitting up blood and drinking cold water to try to stem the bleeding, which didn’t stop. I started spitting/gushing into a measuring cup, trying hard not to swallow much blood as I’d been told it would make you vomit, though at this point doing that was somewhat unavoidable so I was gagging heaps as well. Eventually the bleeding appeared to stop so I lit up a cig to quell my anxiety considering it didn’t restart the bleeding on Friday (bad idea) – immediately the bleeding started again, even worse. By this point I’d bled about 500ml (1 pint) and a lot of the blood in my mouth and throat had started clotting, making it harder to breathe without gagging. Ambulance came, took me to the hospital looking like Texas chainsaw massacre, didn’t stop bleeding from around 11:30 to 1am or even later. Vomited a few times as well, thick black-red stuff, having swallowed a fair amount of blood accidentally. They gave me some anti-nausea stuff at the time apparently, though it must have been intravenous. Was put on a drip of tranexamic acid and saline to encourage my blood to thicken and clot faster and to replace my lost fluid, and had an on-call ENT guy stab me in the throat with a bit of adrenaline-soaked gauze on a stick (after spraying my throat with xylocaine, which tastes fucking disgusting). Luckily my heart rate and blood pressure didn’t vary much over this time (except when I was vomiting at which point it got up to 110 bpm), to the doctors’ surprise because all up I lost about 2 liters (4.2 pints) of blood by the time the bleeding finally stopped in earnest. I begged the doctors to let me go home to sleep a few hours before I’d wake up considering my anxiety surrounding my bathroom routines, but they put their foot down and as a compromise offered to admit me to a private room with its own bathroom, which I accepted with major reservations but by that point it was about 5am and I desperately needed to sleep.Throughout this entire drama I had little to no pain.

Anyway, I woke up after three hours, still on a tranexamic acid drip. Was on nil by mouth but I was stressing out about the impending bathroom odyssey so kept taking sneaky gulps of water. Was severely constipated from the anti-nausea meds/vomiting so the bathroom experience was apocalyptic and I had an anxiety attack, which they gave me diazepam for. This just made me grumpier and more alert, which I think was the opposite of the intended effect, though at least I stopped crying. The ENT came back and (as he should have been lol) was very judgmental and stern about the smoking etc and wanted to keep me for another 24 hours though I was desperate to sleep in my own bed that night after the terrible hospital experience and anxiety-inducing upheaval to my routines. I managed to strike a deal with him that if I didn’t bleed by 6pm I could get discharged, with the room kept for me til the morning if I relapsed while at home. He made a point of noting how pissed off he’d be if it happened again once I got home so I was immediately paranoid about setting off another bleed. My discharge papers noted that a large amount of the eschar/scab was missing from the left tonsil bed after the bleed, though there’s quite a large clotlike feature there now so I can’t really tell. I picked up prescriptions for tranexamic acid tablets, amoxicillin+clavulanic acid antibiotics and got some 3% hydrogen peroxide for good measure as I’d heard h2o2 gargles can help stem bleeds.

It’s Tuesday now, 24 hours since I was discharged and I haven’t bled since. Today in fact I’ve had absolutely no pain – nothing – which has made me a bit suspicious. Basically just feel an inflammation in my throat which is slightly uncomfortable but even yawning doesn’t hurt today. Have been trying not to speak too much or move too quickly and have given my cigs and wallet to my parents so I’m not tempted to smoke for the coming week until most or all of the scabs are off and I’m out of the woods-bleeding wise. Now that I can’t smoke I’m just tempted to eat more so I’m trying to restrain myself. Deathly scared of another bleed happening as I don’t want to repeat the process again. So anyway, 8 days in, hardly any pain or change to lifestyle though 2 bleeds, one potentially life-threatening. So my recovery’s been a mixed bag I guess. The scabs still look reasonably thick, can only see pink through some spots. The ENT said my healing was going a lot slower than it would have been had I not been smoking.

I realize that most people don’t post back once they’ve recovered so this site is basically a catalogue of tortured souls frozen for eternity in the depths of their worst pain… which hasn’t helped my paranoia because if anyone judged from the comments left on here adults with tonsillectomies would never recover. But I guess it’s gotta happen someday so I just hope it’s soon – guess I don’t have too much to worry about as I’ve experienced a fraction of the pain most have but I’m just scared of having another significant bleed (and getting yelled at by the ENT if I have to go back in).