Worth it + much smoother than expected (27 F)
Been meaning to post for a while and add another positive story! As a disclaimer, my experience was shockingly good, and I want to share it to weigh out some of the horror stories, but I also fully acknowledge many people have worse experiences and still highly recommend you overprepare/plan for the worst as much as possible.
Some long background, feel free to skip: I’m about 4 months out from my surgery, and haven’t had any surgery-related pain/discomfort/feelings for 3-3.5 months. I had the surgery as a 27 year old woman. My surgeon and my GP who referred me had no concerns about my age, but both agreed that recovery would likely be tougher because of it and that if I was going to do it, better now than in a year, 2 years, 10 years etc (aka just make a decision). The main driving factors for me were tonsil stones and relatively frequent infections/tonsillitis (~3 a year, which put me right on the edge for whether it warranted surgery). The note from the operation said that both tonsils were normal sized and showed signs of frequent infection (whatever that means lol, made me feel vindicated).
Bottom line, I have zero regrets and am so happy to no longer have tonsils. Hard fact is that my tonsil stones are gone, which is such a relief. Also, not sure if these are just placebos, but I feel like I can breathe better and have less post nasal drip/sensation of something in the back of my throat, even though those weren’t things I thought of as tonsil-related problems.
Surgery and recovery details:
I did it as outpatient surgery (think this is normal). This was my second time under anesthesia (only other time was wisdom teeth). My mom came to stay with me for two weeks and also accompanied me after surgery. The whole process took a couple hours, the nurse gave me a popsicle after and also took my phone away when I started replying to work teams messages while coming up from anesthesia.
I felt great immediately after surgery and they let me take the bus home rather than a taxi since I felt fine and my mom was with me (I don’t have a car and my mom had flown in). We went grocery shopping and picked up my meds at a pharmacy, then bussed home. Didn’t start feeling uncomfortable until a few hours later when the surgery meds were wearing off, but at no point was it seriously painful.
I was prescribed paracetamol/tylenol in a regular otc dose 4 times a day, an ibuprofen-type pill once a day, and oxy as needed as oral pain meds, didn’t even think about taking the oxy. I was also prescribed txa in pill form (pro-clotting/anti-bleeding) which I took along with the Tylenol and ibuprofen for the first 10 days. I don’t think that’s common in the US, but it seems to be the standard in Norway where I live. Taking the txa did make me feel pretty confident that I wouldn’t hemorrhage, though the surgeon did still give me info on what to do if it happened.
I set alarms and was very dedicated about taking everything as prescribed through the first 10 days. I did notice increased pain sometimes as I got close to my next Tylenol dose or in the morning since night was when I went longest without a new dose, but my pain never got higher than a 5/10 and was probably steadily at like a 2-3. I honestly kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did. I definitely wasn’t 100% comfortable all the time, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I’ve been in way more discomfort from tonsillitis than from the tonsillectomy recovery.
I think the worst part was the end of day 0-day 1 when my uvula was swollen. It wasn’t painful, but it was uncomfortable and made it hard to talk. I didn’t experience any significant increase in pain around week 2/scabs falling off like some people talk about. I think my scabs just sort of steadily dissolved. Occasionally I’d notice some pinprick type pain or increased sensitivity when a new spot was uncovered, but I don’t think it was ever enough at a time to be bad.
I’m pretty sure I just got lucky with a smooth recovery, but some things that I did that I think may have helped, mostly advice from this subreddit and other people I knew who had the surgery as adults:
- drank a ton of water. Basically just constantly sipping ice water.
- slept sitting kind of up and with a humidifier in the room.
- took it very easy. Mostly hung out at home, started going for some short walks in week 2, but didn’t push it with exercise during the recovery period. It was also really nice having my mom come to stay with me (I normally live alone) because she kept me company and helped with things like getting groceries so I didn’t have to pre-stock everything, but I didn’t feel like I had to be «on» and hosting. Also nice to spend 2 weeks with my mom since it’s been a long time since I lived at home and we don’t normally get that much time together just to hang out😊
- Didn’t push it with food. I read conflicting things about when to start with hard or crunchy food, and my surgeon basically said to just follow what I can tolerate, so I erred on the soft side. I got sick of sweet foods fast, but stuck to soft things even when I went savory (mashed potatoes, blended soups, soft noodles) until at least day 10 or so.
- had a lot of protein. I bought a lot of protein milkshake things that I basically had 2+ times a day to make sure I was getting enough since most of the other food is as eating was light on protein.
- liquid Tylenol: this was the med I had most often throughout the day and I was glad my mom brought me the liquid form from the US. I did also take pills for my other meds and it was fine, but way easier to take liquid if you can.
- if you stress about things, have a plan. My mom flew in the day before my surgery and I was nervous about flight delays so my friend who is a stay at home mom offered to be on call in case I needed someone to pick me up from the hospital mid-day after my surgery & my other friend was prepped to stay the first night at mine in case. Everything worked out fine with flights, but it really relaxed me to have a backup plan in place.
Some things I noticed during recovery:
- the first couple days I had trouble swallowing without water going up my nose. Started to get better pretty quickly and by week 2 I was pretty much fine again. Your body has to relearn a little :)
- for a while I thought they had missed part because as the scab started to go away for days I could see there was one bit of flesh on one side that looked like it was still connected to another spot. Turns out that all that stuff is super stretchy and it was just attached by scab and when it finally let go it went back where it belonged and I can’t see any extra tonsil left behind!
- sneezing hurt, avoid if possible.
This was super long, but also happy to answer questions!!