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How long does it take to recover after tonsillectomy?
Tonsillectomy recovery time is unique for each patient. The recovery timeline for children is much shorter than for adults, with seemingly less pain. My own eight year old son was back to his old self in less than a week after his tonsils taken out. This may have fanned the flames of my unreasonable expectations of my own recovery time as an adult. His was fairly typical of a child his age. Children’s bodies heal faster than adults’ do.
Tonsillectomy Recovery Time
What to expect after tonsil surgery
The timeline for recovery for an adult is a different story. Age matters. In fact, it appears that the older an adult is at the time of their tonsillectomy, the longer the recovery is, in general. Based on my own adult tonsillectomy recovery, and the stories of thousands of my readers, I’d put the average adult tonsillectomy recovery time at approximately 10.43 days. Yes, I’m that good!
Humor aside, ten days seems to be pretty typical. I added the .43 because so many people, myself included, thought they had it licked and went back to work around day ten, only to find they weren’t quite ready. As scabs slough off in second week of recovery, many adults experience a bit of a pain relapse, just as they thought they were almost recovered. This is a really tough period for many. They’ve spent almost two weeks with minimal sleep, minimal nourishment, minimal activity, and lots of pain medicine. It can be downright depressing for adults recovering in this second week.
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I do hear from many adults whose recovery times are closer to a week – perhaps due to my good advice, perhaps due to genetics. It’s hard to say why some adults’ recovery timelines are shorter, and their experiences less traumatic. There are also cases that drag out further. If you’re one of a small minority that requires re-cauterization for bleeding, or don’t take the proper precautions, (many of these are outlined here and in my book), your tonsillectomy recovery time may be as much as three or four weeks. I want to make an important point here- one that I cannot overemphasis: Stay hydrated! Keep drinking fluids! Dehydration is the worst enemy of the tonsillectomy patient.
My advice: ask your employer, your family, your friends, and the rest of the world to give you two weeks for your adult tonsillectomy. You may surprise them, hopefully for the better.
Recovery is unique to each individual- sure. We know that recovery time for adults is longer, and maybe harder, than for children. I remember my own son bouncing back in less than a week! My own experience taught me that ten days off from a job that required lots of talking was a bit light. I generally advise two weeks. As I’ve said, most employers will let you come back early. That’s easier than asking for more time after the fact. I’ve read the accounts of thousands of tonsillectomy patients- most of them adults. I’ve learned that the time required varies. I wonder though, how many tonsillectomy patients never really post about their experience.
Are you one of those quiet ones lying in the weeds? I’d like to get a better feel for the average adult tonsillectomy recovery time. Please take a moment and share your own experience in recovering from tonsillectomy surgery. You can help us all!I’ve put together a collection of items that I think would be helpful, if not essential, to making tonsillectomy recovery a little more pleasant. Check out the Tonsillectomy General Store.
-Greg Tooke My short bio
I’m a 19 year old female. I had my tonsillectomy 12/12. It has been about 3 weeks. I stopped taking narcotics last week sometime, but Tylenol itself is not enough to help with my pain. My scabs started to fall off around day 8, but it just gets raw and rescabs. I still have scabs. I only stopped taking the narcotics because I had to be able to function as a human… drive and go to work mostly. I’ve been eating “solid” food, and by that I mean soft solids like burritos, for about a week. I had pizza the other night at work (I’m a nanny) because they didn’t have other options and I cried. The pizza sauce burned in my open wounds.
I generally heal quickly (from like burns, cuts, normal injury) and I also tend to have a high tolerance for pain (I have 2 large tattoos, one on my rib cage and one on my lower stomach toward my hip) and neither caused pain, despite sitting in the chair for 9 hours between the two. I mean one time I burned my arm on a hot pan and didn’t notice until the skin was boiling and charred. I was definitely not expecting to have a hard time with this given those things. However, this is really kicking my butt.
I came to this site wondering really what “recovery time” meant. Should I still have open wounds after 3 weeks?
Note that I had my tonsils removed because of an infection I’d had since August so my immune system is probably sub-par, and my doctor cauterized rather than stitches
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 anaesthetic 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.
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 cigs 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)
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 haemorrhaging 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 bleed…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 heartrate and blood pressure didn’t vary much over this time (except when I was vomiting at which point it got up to 110bpm), to the doctors’ surprise because all up I lost about 2 litres (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 realise 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).
Prayers and thoughts are with You –
God Bless You Sir.
I am an 18 year old female, and I am on day 7 after my surgery, I can see improvement but I feel like I keep getting worse when it comes to drinking anything. Everything stings really bad and the only thing I can really drink/eat is chicken broth. Cold things aren’t really soothing my pain and I am worried I won’t recover in another week.
I am a 45 year old female, and had my tonsils and adenoids out a week ago today. The day of surgery and the day after were a breeze for me. Day 3 the swelling started and it has gone downhill from there. Every day since day 4 I have been saying was the worst day so far. Yesterday was Christmas, and I cried all day. It hurts to talk, swallow, laugh, brush my teeth… and forget eating because I just can’t do it. The last 48 hours have been straight popsicles and room temperature water only. I have done everything I was instructed to do. I drink a LOT of water, stay beside my humidifier, and set my phone alarm to take my hydrocodone every 4 hours, and ibuprofen in between. I despise depending in these pain meds, but if I miss that 4 hour window by more than a few minutes, I pay for it for hours. As of last night, there seems to be much less scabbing in my throat, so maybe that is why my pain is increasing. I am utterly miserable. I have had 2 children, and would rather go through childbirth 10 days in a row than recover from this surgery. I know I will be glad that is did it at some point, but right now I am just getting through each hour and praying for the pain to start decreasing.
I really feel for you. I was feeling like you not to long ago. I felt literally at rock bottom… sleep deprivation, lack of food, constant pain and being high on medication broke me. One day in particular I pretty much cried all day and it hurt to cry, then I’d cry even more because of the pain and frustration!
Anyway today is exactly 2 weeks since my op and yesterday afternoon was the first time I managed to finish a plate of dinner and have a pudding! Today I’m pretty much eating as normal albeit a slight bit of pain but no where near as bad as it was.
Reading your comment made me chuckle a little with your giving birth 10 times remark as that was exactly the same thing I said to my husband.
It’s tough but in a few more days you should start feeling a bit better.
Best wishes!
Thank you so much. It’s nice that you understand, as some of my friends must think I am exaggerating, because I “should” be feeling so much better by now, they say. Until you go through it, you have absolutely no idea how intense it is!
I’m 19 years old and had my tonsillectomy a week ago today so Friday dec 16th. I suffer from reoccurring several times a year severe swollen throats that are always just “viral” and occasionally strep. Today is day 8 and I’m just wondering when this pain is going to end…I’ve lost 8lbs so far from not being able to eat and the pain has gotten worse yesterday/today…what day did you notice a large difference in pain going away??? I almost regret this surgery… This is getting really old 🙁