A collection of various experiences of adult tonsillectomy patients on their ninth day of recovery
From thousands of post comments to the tonsillectomy recovery forum, I have assembled a sampling of various accounts and impressions of tonsillectomy recovery for each day. Below I share comments about tonsillectomy day 9. 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.
Many will experience depression toward the end of of their tonsillectomy recovery.
Depression After Tonsillectomy?
Please feel free to add your own experience with tonsillectomy day 9.
-Greg Tooke My short bio
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : Pain hasn’t changed, but something’s different. I’m going walking-So Day 9 was overall much better than any day so far of this recovery. But the pain came back tonight in force. Urgh. Back to the painkillers and junk TV.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : My throat felt a lot better last night, it was moister and clearer than it has been in a few days. THANK YOU HUMIDIFIER!! The Tylenol I’m slowly easing off of, and the pain is almost gone in my throat. My ears still hurt, but definitely not that bad. I didn’t eat much today because of the panic attacks again, but I kept drinking through them because I know I need to keep a moist throat. I actually went out today!! I went to the mall with my mom which felt very liberating after spending so much time confined to my house. The only semi-new symptom is stinging in my throat. Every time I drink water it stings a lot and I’m not sure why. It could be because it’s healing and still raw; but I’m not really concerned. My dad looked in my throat today and he said almost all of the scabs are gone. He did see a few small red bumps in my throat, but I’m not quite sure what they are (another question to ask my doctor about)! Otherwise I’m feeling okay today.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : day 9 and today I was able to talk a bit without pain. I haven’t napped at all today and am fading fast. It was nice to have friends visit me but also exhausting.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : day 9 (today i feel better again)I had bled quite a bit last night before I went to bed which scared me a lot because it was more than a tablespoon, however I kept rinsing my mouth with ice water and sucking a piece of ice and after 5 minutes it stopped.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : Day 9 – hallelujah… feeling so much better in myself. My throat still feels sore and im still on my meds., but I find I’m not willing for the 4th hour to come to pop more in. It’s also a little easier to talk today (something I have not done for the past 8 day’s and believe me it’s been hard having 2 son’s 5 & 2yrs) I went to the doctors yesterday to make sure thing’s where as they should and all is well.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : Day 9/10 is slightly better than the last couple of days. The white in the back of my throat looks a bit more transparent, so I think it’s slowly sloughing off. There’s a red rim where it used to be. Everything is still sore, but not as bad. However, my right ear and the area behind my right jaw are KILLING me. It feels more like an ear infection than referred ear pain, but my temp is normal, so I’ll wait to bring it up at my post op on Monday
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : first day I’ve spent most of the day alone. No much to report, but that is a good thing. My appetite is returning a little bit. I had some chicken noodle soup last night, and tried some mac n’ cheese for dinner tonight. It was a little painful getting tonight’s dinner down, but not to bad. Pain levels are still about the same. I tried talking in a fairly normal voice for a little bit today, but didn’t maintain it very long, it did get a bit painful. In the interest of tracking my recovery and health i will share the following story. Had my first BM in a week yesterday, was fairly constipated.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 : Day 9 and I am waking with a bit more energy.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 :Day 9: The skies opened, and the angels sang! I felt good! (by good, I mean much better than the previous 8 days, but not “back to normal”) I could eat, with some pain, but actually consumed a breakfast, lunch and dinner. I stopped taking Lortab and haven’t been back. This helped get my head cleared up, and also helped with my extended absence from the bathroom, if ya know what I mean 😉 I was able to do some work (from home) and really started to feel like myself again.
Tonsillectomy Day 9 :Recovery Day 9 (post-op day 10):
I have lost the majority of the scabbing on my right tonsil bed but my left side still have massive scabs. my uvula was so huge it was resting on the back of my tongue but it seems to finally be starting to shrink a bit but when i do talk it makes me sound a bit slurred. Pain today is not nearly as bad as it was during the first 8 days. Was able to eat 2 over easy eggs today
Tonsillectomy
390 comments
This is kind of a novel, but here’s my story! There’s a list of tips at the end if you’d just like to skip to that part!
I am on day 9 of recovery, and I only discovered this blog yesterday. I SO wish I had discovered it sooner. I think it is absolutely ridiculous how much medical workers and the general public (bosses, family) underestimate the pain and the recovery time for this procedure. My ENT said, “The surgery is super easy and quick, and you’ll be home before you know it. However, you’re going to hate me for about 10 days.” I was given a list of tips for recovery, but I feel like they missed a LOT of things that would ease patients’ minds–I was not informed of the huge, swollen ovula post surgery, that my tongue would be completely white and that’s normal, and that the pain really kicks in on day 4 or 5 due to the scabs. When I woke up from surgery, I was in no pain due to the anesthesia, but then it slowly creeped up. They gave me pain meds through the IV and monitored my breathing until they took me to recovery where I met my mom and grandma. I was doing great! They asked if I wanted my first dose of pain medicine before I left, and I said yes. They made me eat a popsicle first and had me wait 30 minutes after taking it before I could leave. I was a little unbalanced getting dressed, and overall just felt kinda drunk. My mom and grandma were hungry, so we stopped at BK so they could get food. I went in so I could get a smoothie. Looking back, that was the worst decision. I ended up going back to the car after being on my feet for about 5 minutes, and the drive away from BK made me so nauseous that my mom had to pull over so I could throw up. When we got home, I felt fine and just slept. My mom went and filled my prescriptions. I was prescribed amoxicillin (antibiotic), hydrocodone/acetaminophen (narcotic pain killer/Tylenol), and Nucynta (narcotic pain killer) to take in between the hydrocodone doses in case it wasn’t cutting it or it made me sick. I was relieved because I had heard horror stories from friends and family who had just been given Tylenol basically or were not given enough meds and when they ran out were told to just use Tylenol. Tylenol generally does not work for me very well, and I always use ibuprofen for fevers and pain. I was really bummed to hear that I couldn’t use ibuprofen for 2 weeks post surgery because it could increase bleeding.
I thought that if I just kept my pain under control and religiously took the medicine (like I do when I get strep and tonsilitis all the time) it would not be a big deal. I would just be in a sedative comfy state all week. The worst part for me when I do get strep is the fever. I am a HUGE baby when I get a fever, and they are always high with that type of infection. Well, without the fever, I was doing great! The first couple days were so easy, and I was talking and eating things like macaroni and cheese. The only issue is that I did get a really bad stomach ache on night 2 and it wasn’t relieved until I threw up (which was only dry heaving/gagging thank goodness). We think it was a combination of the anesthesia wearing off and the hydrocodone.
Day 3 got worse, day 4 even worse, and day 5-6 were the worst. I got very nauseous the night of day 4, so I missed a dose of pain meds. I also slept for about 7 hours, so my mouth and throat were so dry that I thought I might pass out just from sipping some water. I never even thought about inhaling some warm steam to moisten the throat for a bit until I read someone’s comments on this blog! I had to take more mg of pain meds the next round so I could catch up to the pain because it was SO bad and thankfully I didn’t get nauseous. I forgot to mention that my excitement that I had seemed to be taken care of well in the medicine area faded when my insurance wouldn’t cover the Nucynta. The hydrocone wouldn’t last 4 hours before I was in severe pain again, because I was supposed to take between 15-30 mg with each dose and could only do 15 mg due to nausea. I started taking the 15 mg every 2 hours since that would be equivalent to the 30 mg every 4 hours. This was working wonderfully until I ran out of medicine. This happened on a Saturday, and luckily the on-call doctor at my surgery center faxed a prescription for acetaminophen/codeine. This did not make me nauseous at all, which was a plus, but it definitely wasn’t as strong and I was in a lot of pain. My mom is a medical aid so she knows a lot about medicine, and she knows what you can interact and not and strengths and everything (I have no clue). To be quite honest, I was lent some other strong pain medicine by a family member to take in between acetaminophen/codeine doses. I just could not bear the pain. When the acetaminophen/codeine ran out (seriously, do they not get that you take this stuff religiously??), this was a life saver because then it was the only thing I had to take and I was NOT ready to just start taking Tylenol (this happened yesterday).
Last night I was doing great, but when my alarm went off overnight to take medicine I fell back asleep since I wasn’t in pain/immediate need to get up and take it. When I woke up this morning I felt like I was back to day 7. The dry throat makes things so much worse! I inhaled some steam and started sipping on water right away. It hurts so much, but it’s relieved fairly quickly as soon as it gets moist. I am still taking strong pain meds, but I have to go back to work tomorrow so I will need to switch over to over-the-counter stuff. I admit that I did take ibuprofen a few times in between doses yesterday and the day before to reduce tongue swelling and so I could eat something. I haven’t bled one bit the whole time, so I figured a couple times wouldn’t be a big deal (would have been more of a big deal on day 5 or 6 when the scabs are falling off more), and it helped so much.
TIPS:
*I’ve noticed a lot of people get on here and are like, “This is not bad at all!” but they are on day 1-3. Trust me. The real pain does not set in until after the first few days.
*When you are in that state of, “Oh I could totally do this for a whole week” during the calm before the storm (days 1-3ish), eat as much as you can! It won’t be long before you don’t eat at all basically and you will be hungry.
*Cold and numbing is amazing for the first 4-6 days. After that, it starts to just sting and luke warm/neutral temperatures seem to be best. Today I started doing a little warmer (day 9) because the risk of bleeding is way lessened and it’s soothing on my throat that just feels raw and dry at this point.
*Take sips of water as much as you can. I would drink as much as physically possible right after I took my pain meds when my throat didn’t hurt as much so I could get it really moist and try to keep it up after the meds wore off until the next dose. This also helped with nausea since there was no food in my stomach.
*Get nutritional drinks like protein shakes with vitamins and stuff. I was getting hunger pains on day 5 that just made everything even worse. The milkiness can increase phlegm, but I found that it also coated my throat more going down so it felt good. I would follow up with water and spit out the extra mucous when I was done drinking it. When cold didn’t feel good anymore, lukewarm milk went down the same way. I did have to spit out extra gunk in the back of my mouth a few times after, but then I followed up with water and it seemed to not last too long.
*Make sure someone is there to take care of you for at least a week. Take AT LEAST 10 days off work, and do not let anyone tell you different. If you don’t need it, great. But you probably will.
*Get a humidifier. Dry throat=everything is 23849734 times worse. I regret not getting one.
*For wisdom teeth removal, I lived on smoothies. I couldn’t do that with this because the juice is so acidic. I wish I would have gotten Gatorade, more nutrition shakes, and more mashed potatoes and gravy because that’s all I could really eat at all the whole time. Yogurt was an occasional treat when my throat was doing well.
* I didn’t use numbing throat spray (Chloraseptic), but I read on here a lot of people did. Would have been a great idea to use right after waking up while trying to choke down water when your throat is on fire.
*DO NOT MISS PAIN DOSES. Set alarms.
*They told me ice pack would be okay to use on my neck/jaw, but might not help much. USE ICE PACKS. It helped me so much. I had two. I would fall asleep with one on my face and then put it on the floor because I didn’t feel like getting up. The next time I needed one, there was one still frozen and I could bring the other one back to the freezer.
*When the ear pain settles in, it’s terrible. Microwave that ice pack (make sure you have the kind where you can do that) and use heat on the ear. Helps a lot!
*Talking can be very painful. I was talking great sometimes right after I took pain meds, but I think it made my throat worse later. Just try not to talk. My family got used to hand gestures and only asking yes/no questions. My mom also had to call me into work today because I didn’t take enough time off and call the doctor for me to get more pain medicine. However, moving your jaw muscles, like chewing can help so your jaw isn’t so sore.
*Wake up frequently to drink water. If you don’t, you’ll regret sleeping at all. You will be tired, yes. But it’s worth it. You’re on the couch doing nothing but resting for 10 days anyway, so it’s not a huge deal.
*I planned on binge watching Netflix. I didn’t even feel like doing that and sometimes I was in too much pain to follow a TV show. I mostly Facebooked or texted friends and family because I felt like I needed to communicate to the outside world while I was stuck at home in hell. I also downloaded a few games on my phone for mindless distraction.
*White tongue is normal. White throat is normal. Swollen ovula is normal (mine was HUGE).
Hope this helps! GOOD LUCK to anyone doing this. It really is hell, but the more prepared you are the better off you will be. And eventually, there IS a light at the end of the tunnel and it will all be worth it!!
Thank you so much I’m on day 5 and it’s so painful but I’ve just got ear ace and doing exactly what you said but inset a hot water bottle on my ear! It’s working ! Thank you I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel ‘
I’m on day 9 of my recovery and am feeling so good compared to the first few days. Day 8 I was able to eat normal food (yay!) and I feel as if it was the right decision to try it out. I had chicken nuggets and french fries. As long as you chew it up pretty well, you’re good to go. I still have some scabs that are coming off, but nothing terrible and my throat is a little sore when I swallow. I’ve also had no noticeable bleeding at all through the process. Overall, my experience was smooth sailing with some pain, but not as much as you would expect!
I am now on day 9 of recovery and for me it is awful! I have had approx. 30 mins sleep last night and the pain is increasing every day. My ears are really sore and my throat is burning. I don’t have any pain relief, not had any for a week, as doctor wont give me any and i can’t afford to buy any….not having a good time!!
I’m on day 8. I haven’t experienced any scabs falling off? I just want everything to go back to normal. I drink lots of water, well I try to.my throat is really dry during the night so it does tend to hurt. Does anybody anybody know when things will go back to normal. I know it will be worth it in the long run,but the pain is real.
This is kind of a novel, but here’s my story! There’s a list of tips at the end if you’d just like to skip to that part!
I am on day 9 of recovery, and I only discovered this blog yesterday. I SO wish I had discovered it sooner. I think it is absolutely ridiculous how much medical workers and the general public (bosses, family) underestimate the pain and the recovery time for this procedure. My ENT said, “The surgery is super easy and quick, and you’ll be home before you know it. However, you’re going to hate me for about 10 days.” I was given a list of tips for recovery, but I feel like they missed a LOT of things that would ease patients’ minds–I was not informed of the huge, swollen ovula post surgery, that my tongue would be completely white and that’s normal, and that the pain really kicks in on day 4 or 5 due to the scabs. When I woke up from surgery, I was in no pain due to the anesthesia, but then it slowly creeped up. They gave me pain meds through the IV and monitored my breathing until they took me to recovery where I met my mom and grandma. I was doing great! They asked if I wanted my first dose of pain medicine before I left, and I said yes. They made me eat a popsicle first and had me wait 30 minutes after taking it before I could leave. I was a little unbalanced getting dressed, and overall just felt kinda drunk. My mom and grandma were hungry, so we stopped at BK so they could get food. I went in so I could get a smoothie. Looking back, that was the worst decision. I ended up going back to the car after being on my feet for about 5 minutes, and the drive away from BK made me so nauseous that my mom had to pull over so I could throw up. When we got home, I felt fine and just slept. My mom went and filled my prescriptions. I was prescribed amoxicillin (antibiotic), hydrocodone/acetaminophen (narcotic pain killer/Tylenol), and Nucynta (narcotic pain killer) to take in between the hydrocodone doses in case it wasn’t cutting it or it made me sick. I was relieved because I had heard horror stories from friends and family who had just been given Tylenol basically or were not given enough meds and when they ran out were told to just use Tylenol. Tylenol generally does not work for me very well, and I always use ibuprofen for fevers and pain. I was really bummed to hear that I couldn’t use ibuprofen for 2 weeks post surgery because it could increase bleeding.
I thought that if I just kept my pain under control and religiously took the medicine (like I do when I get strep and tonsilitis all the time) it would not be a big deal. I would just be in a sedative comfy state all week. The worst part for me when I do get strep is the fever. I am a HUGE baby when I get a fever, and they are always high with that type of infection. Well, without the fever, I was doing great! The first couple days were so easy, and I was talking and eating things like macaroni and cheese. The only issue is that I did get a really bad stomach ache on night 2 and it wasn’t relieved until I threw up (which was only dry heaving/gagging thank goodness). We think it was a combination of the anesthesia wearing off and the hydrocodone.
Day 3 got worse, day 4 even worse, and day 5-6 were the worst. I got very nauseous the night of day 4, so I missed a dose of pain meds. I also slept for about 7 hours, so my mouth and throat were so dry that I thought I might pass out just from sipping some water. I never even thought about inhaling some warm steam to moisten the throat for a bit until I read someone’s comments on this blog! I had to take more mg of pain meds the next round so I could catch up to the pain because it was SO bad and thankfully I didn’t get nauseous. I forgot to mention that my excitement that I had seemed to be taken care of well in the medicine area faded when my insurance wouldn’t cover the Nucynta. The hydrocone wouldn’t last 4 hours before I was in severe pain again, because I was supposed to take between 15-30 mg with each dose and could only do 15 mg due to nausea. I started taking the 15 mg every 2 hours since that would be equivalent to the 30 mg every 4 hours. This was working wonderfully until I ran out of medicine. This happened on a Saturday, and luckily the on-call doctor at my surgery center faxed a prescription for acetaminophen/codeine. This did not make me nauseous at all, which was a plus, but it definitely wasn’t as strong and I was in a lot of pain. My mom is a medical aid so she knows a lot about medicine, and she knows what you can interact and not and strengths and everything (I have no clue). To be quite honest, I was lent some other strong pain medicine by a family member to take in between acetaminophen/codeine doses. I just could not bear the pain. When the acetaminophen/codeine ran out (seriously, do they not get that you take this stuff religiously??), this was a life saver because then it was the only thing I had to take and I was NOT ready to just start taking Tylenol (this happened yesterday).
Last night I was doing great, but when my alarm went off overnight to take medicine I fell back asleep since I wasn’t in pain/immediate need to get up and take it. When I woke up this morning I felt like I was back to day 7. The dry throat makes things so much worse! I inhaled some steam and started sipping on water right away. It hurts so much, but it’s relieved fairly quickly as soon as it gets moist. I am still taking strong pain meds, but I have to go back to work tomorrow so I will need to switch over to over-the-counter stuff. I admit that I did take ibuprofen a few times in between doses yesterday and the day before to reduce tongue swelling and so I could eat something. I haven’t bled one bit the whole time, so I figured a couple times wouldn’t be a big deal (would have been more of a big deal on day 5 or 6 when the scabs are falling off more), and it helped so much.
TIPS:
*I’ve noticed a lot of people get on here and are like, “This is not bad at all!” but they are on day 1-3. Trust me. The real pain does not set in until after the first few days.
*When you are in that state of, “Oh I could totally do this for a whole week” during the calm before the storm (days 1-3ish), eat as much as you can! It won’t be long before you don’t eat at all basically and you will be hungry.
*Cold and numbing is amazing for the first 4-6 days. After that, it starts to just sting and luke warm/neutral temperatures seem to be best. Today I started doing a little warmer (day 9) because the risk of bleeding is way lessened and it’s soothing on my throat that just feels raw and dry at this point.
*Take sips of water as much as you can. I would drink as much as physically possible right after I took my pain meds when my throat didn’t hurt as much so I could get it really moist and try to keep it up after the meds wore off until the next dose. This also helped with nausea since there was no food in my stomach.
*Get nutritional drinks like protein shakes with vitamins and stuff. I was getting hunger pains on day 5 that just made everything even worse. The milkiness can increase phlegm, but I found that it also coated my throat more going down so it felt good. I would follow up with water and spit out the extra mucous when I was done drinking it. When cold didn’t feel good anymore, lukewarm milk went down the same way. I did have to spit out extra gunk in the back of my mouth a few times after, but then I followed up with water and it seemed to not last too long.
*Make sure someone is there to take care of you for at least a week. Take AT LEAST 10 days off work, and do not let anyone tell you different. If you don’t need it, great. But you probably will.
*Get a humidifier. Dry throat=everything is 23849734 times worse. I regret not getting one.
*For wisdom teeth removal, I lived on smoothies. I couldn’t do that with this because the juice is so acidic. I wish I would have gotten Gatorade, more nutrition shakes, and more mashed potatoes and gravy because that’s all I could really eat at all the whole time. Yogurt was an occasional treat when my throat was doing well.
* I didn’t use numbing throat spray (Chloraseptic), but I read on here a lot of people did. Would have been a great idea to use right after waking up while trying to choke down water when your throat is on fire.
*DO NOT MISS PAIN DOSES. Set alarms.
*They told me ice pack would be okay to use on my neck/jaw, but might not help much. USE ICE PACKS. It helped me so much. I had two. I would fall asleep with one on my face and then put it on the floor because I didn’t feel like getting up. The next time I needed one, there was one still frozen and I could bring the other one back to the freezer.
*When the ear pain settles in, it’s terrible. Microwave that ice pack (make sure you have the kind where you can do that) and use heat on the ear. Helps a lot!
*Talking can be very painful. I was talking great sometimes right after I took pain meds, but I think it made my throat worse later. Just try not to talk. My family got used to hand gestures and only asking yes/no questions. My mom also had to call me into work today because I didn’t take enough time off and call the doctor for me to get more pain medicine. However, moving your jaw muscles, like chewing can help so your jaw isn’t so sore.
*Wake up frequently to drink water. If you don’t, you’ll regret sleeping at all. You will be tired, yes. But it’s worth it. You’re on the couch doing nothing but resting for 10 days anyway, so it’s not a huge deal.
*I planned on binge watching Netflix. I didn’t even feel like doing that and sometimes I was in too much pain to follow a TV show. I mostly Facebooked or texted friends and family because I felt like I needed to communicate to the outside world while I was stuck at home in hell. I also downloaded a few games on my phone for mindless distraction.
*White tongue is normal. White throat is normal. Swollen ovula is normal (mine was HUGE).
Hope this helps! GOOD LUCK to anyone doing this. It really is hell, but the more prepared you are the better off you will be. And eventually, there IS a light at the end of the tunnel and it will all be worth it!!
This is a GREAT share Stephanie- Thank you! I wish you the best of health. Please stay in touch!
Thank you so much I’m on day 5 and it’s so painful but I’ve just got ear ace and doing exactly what you said but inset a hot water bottle on my ear! It’s working ! Thank you I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel ‘
I’m on day 9 of my recovery and am feeling so good compared to the first few days. Day 8 I was able to eat normal food (yay!) and I feel as if it was the right decision to try it out. I had chicken nuggets and french fries. As long as you chew it up pretty well, you’re good to go. I still have some scabs that are coming off, but nothing terrible and my throat is a little sore when I swallow. I’ve also had no noticeable bleeding at all through the process. Overall, my experience was smooth sailing with some pain, but not as much as you would expect!
Hi Kaitlyn! Thanks for sharing that- It’s nice to hear from folks who have somewhat smoother recoveries. Glad things are going along ok. Tak care!
I am now on day 9 of recovery and for me it is awful! I have had approx. 30 mins sleep last night and the pain is increasing every day. My ears are really sore and my throat is burning. I don’t have any pain relief, not had any for a week, as doctor wont give me any and i can’t afford to buy any….not having a good time!!
Today is day 9 and I’m still in lot of pain, the white scabs have been falling a little but I don’t know if that’s because of my age 52
I’m on day 8. I haven’t experienced any scabs falling off? I just want everything to go back to normal. I drink lots of water, well I try to.my throat is really dry during the night so it does tend to hurt. Does anybody anybody know when things will go back to normal. I know it will be worth it in the long run,but the pain is real.