Tonsillectomy Recovery Day by Day
Day 7
A collection of various experiences of adult tonsillectomy patients on their seventh day of tonsillectomy healing
I have assembled a sampling of various accounts and impressions of tonsillectomy recovery for each day. Below I share comments about tonsillectomy day 7. These comments are taken from tonsillectomy patients who were kind enough to share their experiences to help others as they navigate the bumpy road of tonsillectomy recovery.
Please feel free to add your own experience with tonsillectomy day 7.
Tonsillectomy Healing Day 7 Recovery : Light? At the end of the tunnel?
- Tonsillectomy Day 7 :Breakdown. Crying, laughing, sucked into YouTube. Is there no end?
- During the night I noticed a weird sensation in my ears. It was a hollow feeling, kind of like I have water in my ears and they tend to pop really severely when I swallow. Other than the ears, the throat isn’t bad. I tried eating blueberry pancakes for breakfast and I was able to get a few pieces down, but then it was uncomfortable, so I stopped. The last thing I want to do is rush myself. I’ve made it this far, I don’t want to do anything that will negatively affect my progress. The swelling is finally gone – I think. My tongue and the scabs used to be white – or so I was told – but now my tongue is like a grayish color. If that is normal, I’m not sure, but I’m not that worried about it. I know I’m still recovering, but I noticed a weird feeling when I was swallowing today. The water just kind of flows down my throat now; before it used to touch my tonsils. I know I don’t have tonsils anymore and that’s why; I’m just curious if it is something I will have to adapt to once I’m fully healed. I guess I’ll have to wait and see. My ear pain is still there but it is definitely not as bad as it was from days 3-5.
- It’s been one full week as of today that I had my tonsils removed. I saw the ENT yesterday and he said I was healing very slowly. The scabs still have not come off and every day seems to hurt more than the previous day. This morning has been almost completely unbearable. I don’t understand how some of you say you eat toast. How do you choke that down? Everything hurts! Warm, cold, it doesn’t matter it feels like swallowing knives.
- Day 7 you did it! I mean I could barely stand due to the pain. Trying to coat my stomach with Ensure that morning so I could take my pain meds was like aggressively shaving my throat with a million shards of glass. And the ears! Not the ears!
- day 7 post-op and am doing amazingly well. I thought I would share my tips to help some of you out! It really is important to drink, drink, drink! Every time I woke up from my sleep I would be in such enormous pain because my throat had dried out. Every time I wake up during the night I take a sip of water which I found has helped. Twice a day I have done a saltwater gargle with a teaspoon of salt in 500ml of water for 30 seconds. This apparently removes the bacteria and the salt is good for healing. The day after my surgery I had a tiny little bit of toast.Are you concerned about pain medicine addiction? Read more…
>> Next – Day 8 >>>
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Ok, so today I decided I was going to tough it out. I concluded (on the basis of no evidence) that my vomiting on Day 6 was probably due to taking the oxycodone on an empty stomach. Today I’d fill the stomach AND stop the oxy. I could do it! I could conquer the WORLD!!!
This actually worked quite well during the day. I was able to eat some mashed vegetables with gravy and some scrambled eggs, AND keep them down! I even slept a little, in a very bizarre restful sleep.
Sometime late in the day I realised that anytime I tried to swallow (ANY TIME… saliva, water, anything!) was like pouring hot acid into an open wound. 🙁 At first I thought it was just that I was due the soluble paracetamol (a GOD SEND, if you ask me). That only lasted about 30 mins 🙁
I went to bed and managed to fall asleep without any more pain killers. I was woken around midnight by some knives in my right ear and the acid bath in my throat (which is technically Day 8 I suppose). I’m sitting here in tears wondering whether to eat something and take the oxy or go straight to the hospital. (‘Go to Jail. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.’)
I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!!!!
Take the oxy for 1 or 2 more days, the pain starts to subside day 8. Eat Jello or instant pudding before taking the oxy, and ask your doctor for an anti-nausea med. Also, if you feel up to it, taking a short light walk can help with stomach pain. I thought my mom was crazy when she made me walk to reduce my nausea, but it worked! Also make sure you’re taking a laxative since the oxy stops that all from working properly. If you really don’t wanna do the oxy anymore, extra strenght Tylenol worked pretty well. Good luck!
Also, put heat pads on your ears, it will help.
Thanks sweet_nothing. I took the oxy and the anti-nausea med, still threw up but the pain was a little less this afternoon. I am hoping like anything that means I’ve broken the worst of it. I tell you, if I knew it would be this bad, I’m not sure I’d have done it! Sigh.
Heat to the ears is a good tip, I’ve been doing that for a couple of days. Just pressing your hand to the ears works well, too. It’s only one ear, for me, funnily enough the one that gave me most grief when I still had the tonsils. :S
Thanks again for your advice. Fingers crossed for all of us struggling with this that we break it soon. 🙂
Well I was actually on here reading this when my tragedy struck. My day was starting out already kinda bad because it was a bad pain morning and I knew i’d have to take Roxicet every 6 hours versus every 8 or so. Well I took my dose at 11:30 and it made me cough, not even a lot, but the slight burn it gave still had me cough. Now i’d been slowly clearing my throat more and more each day with all the mucus that had started up, so it hurt a bit but I figured thats because i had coughed when there was a strange warmth at the back of my throat.
I was gushing blood heavily down my throat at this point so I called my dad and he hurried home, and we went to the closest ER, even though thats not where my ENT surgeon had rights because closer is better at least at first. Well the entire time home i’d swallowed the blood mostly and was spitting it up while in the ER with their little bucket for me. They eventually told me as long as it stopped and clotted itself, I was golden and wouldnt need it recauterized. Well it did stop, then 10 minutes later it started again, but only bled for like 5-10 minutes before stopping again. Thinking we could go home now the ER doctor was signing my stuff and saying after talking to my ENT surgeon that if there was anymore longer bleeding to go straight to a different hospital 20 minutes further south where he did have rights, and I started bleeding again only as hard as the first time. So we rushed towards the different hospital that was warned we were coming, and i had a clean bucket having filled 1 already. Finally arriving there about 2:30 i will still bleeding strong and the nurses got me in pretty quick, the only problem was now the decision came. Cauterize in the room without any anesthesia or go into full surgery whenever my ENT could get there to perform it. They ended up not giving me fluids because of the thought that I would be leaving for surgery any moment. only for my blood pressure to crash and my entire body to begin going downhill from no water since 11:30a.m. and losing blood pretty constantly since then too. So it ended with me crying on the bed laying back with huge stomach pains from the TON of my own blood i’d been swallowing between trying to spit it out, and that i’d lost a totally of 4 cups of blood they’d calculated, and never been on an IV. 4 nurses had to rush in and put two IV’s into me, each hooked up to two fluid bags, to make me feel good and finally get my blood pressure from 72/33 up to 115/65 which is much more normal for me.
Well they’ve gotten a hold of my ENT and he wants to try and just have the ENT specialist and his residents in the hospital cauterize it in my room IF they think the blood clot that formed when I crashed wont hold. They examine it and decide it’s not looking too strong so they get the things to cauterize me. The way they explained it to me the little sticks that had the chemicals on it to cauterize would sting, but they’d only use one or two so it would be quick and all would be good.
Everyone keeps thinking this is a small bleeding point until they go in and see it’s a good chunk of my throat thats needing tending to. I took twelve of those suckers, while their tongue depressors were pressing INTO my other scab/scar and causing pain, and choking me with the suction. They couldnt get it and everyone told me I was such a strong girl for dealing with this but they were just going to put me under and do the surgery again. Well just as I was about to go, the nausea started again real bad and they didn’t get me any nausea meds till I was in the OR waiting room where I could see my Dad again. But it did help a lot. My surgeon told me this is a 1 in 100 happenstance but to still be careful and such. Everyone thought i’d eaten something crunchy or hard to cause this, and when I told them they were shocked because they didnt know just how strong the coughs could be. Well surgery went fine and the angels above had them pump my stomach free of the blood so I wasn’t nauseous again until the car ride home but that was fine. I left finally at 8:15 that night and got home at 9:30.
It was such a crazy ride and i just was and am a bit terrified every time i have to clear my throat a bit, but it’s just as safe as before i took the scab off. Just be careful whenever you cough, try not to, but if you can try not to do it as hard and all should be good but this was really a terrifying experience.
Oh my goodness Saera! That’s awful. I’m so sorry to hear that you went through this. Glad you’re ok. Thank you for sharing.
Chewing gum helps to not cough. Sorry this happened to you!
thank you i havent started any gum afraid some of the flavor may burn, but i think i’ll take that advice
Mint gum burned. Watermelon gum was good and did not burn. I literally was chewing watermelon gum non-stop for like 4 days to stop the urge to cough, and it worked! I would recommend to start with half a piece and just see how that goes.
Hey Everyone! Let me just start off by saying that this site has been a HUGE help throughout my dark days! I am 17 years old and I got my tonsils removed on the 27th of July. So its officially one week today !!! I made finally made it! Before my tonsillectomy I had a lot of strep throat and tonsillitis. I also had huge tonsils and I would get tonsil stones ALL THE TIME ! talk about smelly… and I also had little “homes” in my tonsils. There were deep deep holes everywhere so the stones had a nice, warm, and comfy place to sleep….grrrrrrr.
Day 1 of surgery: So the surgery went great. I’m not sure what method was performed on mine. When I woke up from the anesthesia, all I could remember was the feeling of my tongue. It felt soooo swollen and it hurt worse than my tonsils. The nurse tried to get me to eat jello which hurt like heck and sip water which was like acid down my throat. (Note: surgery was performed at about 1pm and I got home around 6pm) When I got home the first thing I did was take my medicine 15ml of liquid hydrocodone every 4 hours. It made the pain tolerable which was nice. Woke up in the middle of the night like my throat was literally on fire. I wasn’t aware that I had to drink water throughout the night! I learned fast though!! I took my medicine and I was good. Pain was about a 6/10
Day 2: The pain started setting in. I couldn’t open my mouth for the life of me but I eventually got it to open wide enough to look in the back of my throat. White scabs and my uvula was about the size of my throat and it was longer than where my tongue was. Not comfortable whatsoever. My tongue was also pure white! I hated the way jello felt going down my throat. I stayed away from the dairy cause I definitely did not need anything else to block my throat (mucus). I resorted to apple sauce. I USED TO HATE APPLESAUCE WITH A PASSION. but now its like my best friend. That day pain was about a 6/10.
Day 3: This is when I researched and researched and researched. I needed to know of any home remedies or anything that could help me out with this recovery process ! this is where this site comes in to play (: . I bought a humidifier ASAP!!!!! and made sure I drunk water throughout the night about every hour. That helped SOOOOO MUCH! That day I ate more apple sauce but the nausea started to kick in. That hard medicine on an empty stomach is not okay. luckily my doctor prescribed me with some ant nausea tablets. I also started sucking on ice chips which helped the swelling go down. That night I managed to eat some mashed potatoes and gravy with a little meat loaf. MANN ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT GOOOOOOD! haha I love to eat so this experience has been very difficult. Pain was about a 5/10
Day 4: Woke up at about 3am in sooooo much pain!!!!! My earls felt like they were going to explode. They were pounding like drums ! And the medicine was starting to wear off in 2-3 hours. I was exhausted. I really just wanted to sleep and never wake up. I had mucus stuck in my throat from lord knows what. My throat didn’t hurt as bad as my ears and jaws. My tongue was still swollen. I did not want to eat that day but I forced my self to because I refused to throw up! I was not about to delay this recovery or make it even worse! Towards that afternoon it got better. I ate more mashed potatoes, gravy, and meatloaf. I also had my applesauce(: but I can only eat so much before my throat is uncomfortable.
Day 5: I SAAWWW THE LIGHT! It finally started to ease up a bit. I did not have to take my medicine every 4 hours. I could make it for about 5-6. That morning I managed to get down a little bit of hashbrown potatoes and scrambled eggs. The nausea was kind of messing with me so I stopped. Felt like I had to puke out my guts but the pills prevented that. I also looked at my throat and my scabs were falling off! I had a little left on the left side and a piece hanging on the right. For dinner I had some creamy chicken rice casserole. DELICIOUS!! and a little piece of fried chicken…which I know I should not have eaten but it was calling my name, I made sure I chewed up til it was really really really mushy. Pain that day was about a 4/10
Day 6: I woke up a little better. Still the same ear ache and dry throat. I did not eat much that morning besides applesauce so I could take my meds. But that night I ate two slices of cheeseburger deluxe pizza!!!! It felt soooo good to finally eat a little more! But it kind of started aching afterwards but it was worth it. I started talking too! Even though I sound really ridiculous! My friends couldn’t help but laugh at me. Pain was about a 3/10.
Day 7: Did not go to sleep til about 3:30 am on the 6th day and woke up at 7 for medicine. Yeah I was in pain but it wasn’t tooo bad. Today I didn’t eat or drink anything. I just felt yuuckkkkyyy. My throat was really dry but I didn’t care. Big mistake. I haven’t took my meds all day. not to mention the breath !!!! PEEEEEYYYUUUUU ! Swallowing is a little more tender today probably because my scabs are like all gone except this one that is hanging on its last limb! Pain today about a 2/10
I thought this was the worse experience of my life in the beginning! But now I see its worth it. I haven’t had any complications so far (knock on wood) . I miss food A LOT but I have a feeling that I wont eat as much as I used to . I also miss dance practice A LOT. its my life. My doctor told me I have to stay away for two weeks. I’ve been dancing since I was 3 and never have I ever stayed away from dance for TWO WEEKS . Im dying here ! My mother helped me a little through this recovery. She had her procedure when she was in her 20’s and she failed to mention to me all this CRAP I should have known. but she’s like Bio woman, nothing hurts her!!! My grandma has been the most help. She was like my own personal nurse from filling up my water to changing the humidifier to fixing me whatever she thought I could eat to waking me up every hour during the night to sip water. She even laid in the bed with me to make sure I was okay every night . Shes my super woman (: and I appreciate it. Comment if you have any questions about my recovery!
Thank you for sharing this! Best of luck to you!
Hey I’m a 17 year old who just had her tonsils taken out aug 7th and it is a week today. I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain around 3 am and it was so bad I had to take some pain medicine. this afternoon it feels somewhat better but I don’t know about the whole scabbing thing. Does it hurt when it comes off? Do you feel it? When the scabs come off does it feel better then? I’m nervous. Please reply back with info. You are the only one close to my age that I’ve seen has had one of these surgeries.
Well I’m 25 and did *not* have an issue with the scabs, so I’m sure you will be just fine 🙂 Around day 10 I could sense they were coming off after I was done eating. The sensation only lasted a few minutes and was not bad. It is nothing to worry about at all. It’s more itchy than anything else. I just drank a ton of water to stop the itch and they were gone in no time.
Day 7 of my coblation tonsillectomy started with a little more pain than I have been used to this week (5 out of 10), but only because I slept through my alarm for more drugs. Was bound to happen at some point I guess. Things are still well overall. My stomach hurt more than my throat. Getting anxious to be fully recovered. Lack of food and the duration of this recovery is the worst part. But, still happy I had it done of course.
So first off I have to say that your blog and all of your experiences have made this TORTUOUS experience much more bearable knowing that you have all felt or are feeling exactly what I am now….THANK YOU!!!!!!
I’m on day 7, my surgery was a week ago today, and today is by far the worst morning I’ve had :(. I didn’t sleep much as my ears felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to them as of 3am this morning. I think this has been the worst part for me, and I’m not that good with pain as it is!! My tongue is still super swollen and when I do try to eat my new diet of mashed potatoes and matzoh ball soup my whole mouth hurts sooooo badly!!! Anyone know when my tongue will go back to normal??
I had a full on breakdown on Day 5, having had enough of the no sleep, no eating and constant pain, started stomping my feet like a 3 year old does when you take away his/her toy and yelling at my mom who has been taking such good care of me. The yelling wasn’t the smartest thing as I paid for that the rest of the day but I did feel better oddly after I was done.
I’m just hoping that this is the turning point, I have to go back to work next week and am not sure how I can do that giving I can’t function normally right now!!
I am also dreaming about food like I’ve never eaten!! I have a list in my head of all the things I want to gorge on and I’ve prepared my friends for an all out food binge when this is finally over…when will that be exactly??????