for all of you out there about to have this surgery:

ask your ENT about the bleeding. my ent said slight bleeding is normal and to slowly sip ice water. however, i read some websites that ENT's have put up that say ANY bleeding at all is an emergency ... luckily, i didnt have to deal with that at all, but i was terribly afraid of it as my ENT says you can bleed anytime until 2 weeks post op. i obsessed about it...even walked around with a white kleenex i slobbered into to see if there was any blood.

also ask about gum chewing. alot of ENTs reccomend it highly, as does mine. from personal experience, i too highly reccomend it. it does two important things, it creates saliva, which makes your throat hurt a bit less, and it exercises your throat and jaw muscles. i chewed for 5 days, then stopped. the next morning i woke up and my jaw felt like it had been wired shut. the muscles all stiffened up, and it was a bit scary since i could barely open my mouth enough to sip broth off a spoon. i promptly started chewing again, and the stiffness disappeared the next day.

GITA.. wow, with kids that young, it's gonna be an adventure. you will definately need your mom for a few days. my "kids" are 21, 19 & 13, and only two live at home still...so i dont have any personal advice for you. however, keep it mind that you will feel all these things: nausea ( perhaps vomiting), tired, feverish, sore throat, "blue" feelings, then the dreaded ear pain, you wont be eating much so you wont have much energy, and if you take the pain meds - YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALONE WITH THOSE KIDS. Those meds are powerful and there's no way you could properly supervise children that young under the effects of those drugs. It's just not safe. I have read previous posts of how those drugs affect people, plus i took roxicet when i had a severly infected tooth, so i CAN tell you this - anyone taking those pain meds (roxicet, percoset, lortab) cannot take care of small children. It's good your mom can help you, imagine how bad you'd feel if one of your kids got hurt while you were knocked out cold from the meds.

Hi all. First time posting here so be gentle. I had a tonsillectomy on Dec. 6th and I'm 30 years old. My hubby took the week off to take care of our 21 month old daughter. I was incredibly nervous about the surgery itself before but it went really smoothly. Hubby and daughter dropped me off at the hospital Monday at 7 am then he went to go drop our daughter off at daycare and come back. I was originally scheduled for surgery at 8:30 but the child scheduled before me had some virus and couldn't have surgery. By the time DH got back at 8:15 they were telling him I was done and in initial recovery. I had some drugs for nausea and some more morphine before they moved me to the other recovery area. There I hung out with hubby and was doing incredibly well. I knew I was drugged by was amazed at how great I felt. I was given a big old jug of Roxicet and liquid zithromax and sent on my way by noon.

It's been downhill ever since! I count the minutes until my next pain med dose and I swear I'm going to run out. I laughed when we got it thinking I'd never touch that much. I drink plenty of water and more warm tea. Until my scabs started falling off I could eat popsicles and ice cream. Every night my dh has gone to Cold Stone Ice Creamery to get me a chocolate malt for dinner. I let it thaw quite a bit then can drink some of it. I tried some noodle soup tonight and am regretting it terribly. I know there's more scab to lose and am dreading it since it burns like heck when they fall off! I'm also taking celebrex for the pain as well. I know it will get better and reading this board makes me feel better knowing that it is going to get better. I just never dreamed it would suck this bad.

I hope I'm not frightening anyone with an upcoming surgery! I just want to know if anyone else is having it this rough. Please tell me I'm not alone!

Nikki

Hello everyone. Good luck to those having this surgery soon. I had my tonsillectomy done on Dec 6th. I'm still on a mostly liquid diet and am pretty weak and tired still but doing much better. I still have to limit the amount of time that I can talk or it gets pretty sore. I'm still on the pain medication but can go much longer between doses and have been able to lower the amount that I take. Sleeping is still the worst part of the pain even with a humidifier. The first 2 days after surgery weren't too bad and I thought "hey, I can handle this" before it all went downhill. Days 4-8 were the worst and it has been the worst pain of my life. In 2003 I went through 40 hours of labor before having a C-Section and I would rather go through that 3 times over than get my tonsils out again. I'm not saying that to scare anyone, just to tell you my expierence. I know a lot of people say to eat really cold things but I can't handle that since I lost the scabs. I drank a lot of warm tea and let ice cream mostly melt before I could eat it. I still can't handle noodles, mashed potatoes or applesauce though a lot of people handle those just fine. It's very hard to swallow with the pain and small sips are the way to go. I also started using chloroseptic spray to numb my throat and that helps. I didn't use it until after my scabs came off. Now I just have a few patches of thin white film in the back of my throat and my uvula is starting to shrink. I wasn't prepared for the skin to slough off the back of my tongue and that was a surprising thing so if it happens to you don't be worried. One last thing about the medication. I was/am on Roxicet and when maxing out the doses it became very difficult to urinate. Not painful or straining but rather just sitting there a long time waiting for it to happen. Nothing to worry about, just another twist I wasn't expecting.

All that said I do not regret having my tonsils out but wish to God that I could have been sedated completely to heal for about a week! I know a lot of people breeze through this and I hope that's the case for all of you. If it doesn't, just know that you're not alone and others have had a tough time too. It's not fun and I miss the holiday cookies and baked goods but am dying for a good cheeseburger or pizza!

Good Luck and fast recovery vibes to everyone!

Dixie, you're doctor is a sadist! I was on Roxicet which is a liquid Oxycodene and I still felt pain. A Lot of it! I was like some of the others that felt it wore off after 2 hours. I take Darvocet for occasional bad headaches and I don't think that would have been enough. I also don't react well with Tylenol 3. All of these meds are class 3 narcotic meds and all are codiene related. I wish your doctor would listen to you when you say that Darvocet isn't working well for you. I did have a mild drug dependency thing going with the Roxicet where I had one rough day of adjustment. I was on it for about 10 days and tapered off it and the first day of tapering I had some very mild shakes when I was well past my usual dosing time. They were gone the next day and I proceded to just use the Roxicet the next night.

My surgery was Dec. 6th and now I have very little scabbing in my throat. Like a really thin coating of white that's hardly there. It still gets sore and feels like a dry throat but the pain is managed by tylenol alone (which I call candy since it's not a great pain reliever for me). My only real complaint is that I don't have a normal sense of taste from the back of my tongue. It's torture to smell great food, know you can eat it and then have it taste Horrible!

I see my doc on Wed. and I'll let you guys know what she says about everything.