Tonsillectomy Recovery Day by Day
Day 8
A collection of various experiences of adult tonsillectomy patients on their eighth day of recovery
Check out our new tonsillectomy recovery video- Caution: Not always pretty
Please feel free to add your own experience with tonsillectomy day 8.
-Greg Tooke My short bio
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Crying. Just… Crying
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : So I woke up this morning with a dry throat. I wasn’t able to sleep more than 30 minutes at a time without coughing. Even while drinking water, my throat has been so dry, it’s like it just isn’t staying moist. I got so fed up, I asked my mom to go buy me a humidifier today. I know I’m a little late, I should have had it from the beginning, but I guess I thought I really didn’t need it. My post-op appointment is in 1 week and I really can’t wait. I definitely have a few questions to ask him! So, I finally got the nerve up to look into my throat, and even though it was a little hard to see, I do see a lot of gray areas. I thought I lost more scabs than I see in my throat, so I was wondering whether or not all of the gray areas are scabs, or if some of it is not scabs. I was told that it is all scabs, so I guess the scabs are going to take longer to fall off than I thought. So, I thought I was doing really well today and then all of a sudden my throat started squeezing really tightly when I swallowed. I slept for about an hour and woke up and it was gone. After talking to my dad who has dealt with panic attacks his whole life, he confirmed that he has had the same thing before and it is in fact mini panic attacks. Great, panic attacks – that’s all I need! I had one in the afternoon and then another one at night. The best way for me to deal with it is to sleep through it.
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : day 8..I thought someone had tried to bite off the back of my tongue and tried to scrape the white spots off with a nail filer…Also my feet were swelling, and I began to have a migraine and vomit, I was afraid i was going to rip my stitches..they had become so big me and my bf had named them “shrek ” feet
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : day 8 today and I felt terrible when I woke up! The pain was like a bruised/burning pain. I also feel like I have hay fever(which I don’t). However it’s now lunchtime and I feel considerably better. It feels like day 7 which I can cope with. Hoping day 10 will be the major turnaround day. I swear this feels like the longest recovery!
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Day 8. 33 yrs old. Thanks for the info on the swollen tongue and the marks on it from my teeth. That makes total sense!! My throat feels much better, but the difficulty in eating seems to be coming from the underside of my tongue and my jaw. I will continue to take it easy in hopes that everything will continue to heal up. Im down 12 pounds. Its going to be hard not to put all of the weight back on. I’m starving!! lol
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Days 8 – today – Pain has slowly begun to decrease, however, it’s remained at about a 3/4 for the last two days. However, my body has slowly begun to feel better. I feel like a human again. That’s a refreshing feeling.
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Days 8-10–able to eat a little bit more everyday, but it was different every day. Pudding and mac & cheese were good one day, bad the next. Chicken noodle soup was also good, couldn’t eat anymore jello 😛 Throat still sore, still doing the Advil/Tylenol rotation. Waiting for scabs to fall off, but throat still all white.
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Day 8, Ok I am feeling much better. Last night was rough. I had taken my pain meds around 11:30 PM , and around 12:15 my earache was unbearable. I had a problem eating yesterday. I just wanted to eat a Popsicle. I got down on my knees and prayed to God to let the pain go away so i could eat. A few minutes later, the pain in my ears subsided (Thanks God!). I ate 2 Popsicles.
Tonsillectomy Day 8 :Day 8- while I felt really crappy all day long I stayed home all day & rested and this evening I feel just a lil better.
Tonsillectomy Day 8 : Recovery Day 8 (post-op day 9):
Had another relapse of pain today on my right side and into my right ear. At this point I am just so exhausted from lack of sleep and lack of proper food. I had my post-op appointment with my surgeon today. He said i still have a ways to go but it is beginning to heal. He said my tonsils were extremely large and that the tonsil beds (where the tonsils were) that are now left behind are so massive that it will take extra time to heal since there is so much damaged tissue back there from the cauterization. I was able to eat some of a baked potato today with cheese and bacon.
I can’t believe how rough this is! Reading the other comments helps me realize that most adults have a long hard recovery. I thought my dr was being dramatic when he said I would need two weeks off of work I only took 4 days off including the day I had them removed. The first few days were easier because I was resting, the past two have been horrible. I have two kids and I’m working. It’s frustrating not being able to eat real food, I tried a scrambled egg last night and could only eat a few small bites. Water and Popsicles help.
Hi Karmen,
Sorry you’re having a rough time. The good news is that day 8 is usually about the worst of it. You should start feel ing better soon. Keep drinking. Best of luck to you!
my experience of day 8 is so much different, I can’t believe all the posts here! I took the painkillers for the first three days, and strictly no more, they made me feel dizzy and gave some sort of their own unhealthy feeling. And every time I feel pain increasing I take a cup of lukewarm tea (my doctor said absolutely NO to cold drinks or such); plenty of fluids after tonsillectomy means really plenty, i.e. about 10-15 cups per day! It really helped me; with the painkillers you might just forget your condition, but it doesn’t mean it’s gone. You just can’t eat spicy and sour food, no vinegar, no fresh fruits. Two weeks until healing is not such a long time. Good luck.
Thanks “R!” Hope you continue to do well
After day 8 in the books, I’m pain med free now 2 days, I ate about a half pound of pasta. This was the first solid food I could tolerate. I kept the ice on my neck any time I felt the “razors” in there. Ate a lot of ice, drank a lot of water and did so even through the pain because of how important everyone agreed it is to do. Rightfully so as well because there is mostly pink flesh showing through the area where the surgery was done. Great blog Greg. This has been extremely helpful. I hope everyone else keeps fighting through. It’s so much more intense than people think. Especially those people who never did it.
Day 8: Husband is at work and kids are at camp again so it is just me alone for the day with my pain. They hydrocodone does nothing at this point to help with the pain, but I still take it every 3 hours just hoping that maybe it will. It hurts to swallow so I find myself sitting around with a mouthful of saliva until I finally force myself to swallow. Funny how something we normally do without thinking is now forced.
My tongue hurts so bad. It hurts at the back where it attaches to the floor of my mouth and it hurts on the sides where it rubs against my teeth. I really can’t move my tongue around in my mouth at all. If I am eating something and food gets in between my lips and my gums, I realized that normally our tongue just naturally sweeps it out. But I can’t. I actually have to take my finger and do it.
My back molars have gotten incredibly sensitive to cold. I have never really had a problem with this before, but now, just drinking ice water is so painful I can’t do it anymore. I can still eat cold things like sorbet because it tends to just go straight down, but if I drink ice water, it floods my mouth and hurts those teeth. It’s sad because the ice water felt so good on my throat.
I had to pick my kids up from camp and take them to a babysitter so I had to hold off on the hydrocodone long enough to be able to drive. While I was out, I ran a couple extra errands including a stop at Costco. I had my first moment of eating something I probably shouldn’t have. The stupid thing was…it was a taste of triple cream brie. Served at the correct temperature, this would not have been an issue, but it was refrigerator cold. It stuck to my teeth and the rind was hard to swallow. I don’t think it caused any bleeding (I couldn’t exactly check), but boy did it hurt!
By the time I got back home it had been more than 5 hours since my last dose of meds and I was hurting. I had picked up a 5 meat pizza for my husband and was so sad to not be able to eat any. I ended up having a huge meltdown before bed. I’m so tired of being in pain and feeling like crap.
It is day 8 and this morning was bad, but so is every morning. It seems like it takes about 30-40 mins of icing my neck and sucking on ice cubes for the ear pain to subside and to be able to swallow with LESS pain. Ice cold water in the morning is rough, but it’s the best thing to numb the throat before taking pain meds. Gosh I love the medication; I revel in the sweet nectar slipping down my throat, choking on its’ analgesic splendor. 🙂 My scabs have gradually sloughed off but are still there and yes, I taste the acidic, sour, like you’re sucking on a rotten penny taste in the back of my mouth. However awful all of this is, it’s worth it to have these puppies out. I got mine yanked because of tonsil stones and I am happy I did it. I think I have had an easier recovery than most, but I have a 5 month-old also and that adds much more to this whole process. I also think I almost O.D’d on water: this is KEY to an EASIER recovery…so is icing the outside of the neck until you can’t feel anything anymore 🙂