The recovery

Recovery IS a little painful… and it IS difficult to eat. It is also a little paradoxical as you feel better much faster if you eat more solid foods (not too scratchy/ acidic/ spicy/ hot) but solid. Eating harder foods helps the tissue not to scar too tightly and gets the scabs off faster. I think that the old advice was to eat soft foods like ice cream but today (and what my doctor told me), the advice is to start to eat as normally as possible, as soon as possible. I was sad as I thought I would be able to eat only ice cream for a solid 2 weeks.

Food
It is also important to eat a good diet whilst you are recovering as it is the nutrients you are taking in that will allow your body to make the repairs it needs to! Also if you are taking codeine for the pain, you will need to eat some foods that are high in fibre (such as cereal, fruit, veggies or nuts) to avoid getting a little blocked up (as codeine can cause constipation). Also, even late in the recovery things might taste a little weird and tasteless.

So basically, yes to solid foods and keep the diet balanced and you probably want to eat some fibre. Do avoid spicy/ acidic/ hot foods though!

Cleaning
You also want to make sure that you wash the food off your tonsil holes after eating in my opinion, otherwise it hurts and gets really smelly*. You can use salt water (by adding a few tablespoons of salt to a cup of water) to gargle (or maybe your doctor will prescribe a hydrogen peroxide mouthwash – basically really weak bleach although don’t use bleach obviously)! It is really difficult to gargle but it does make it feel better afterwards.
You can shower like normal 🙂 It doesn’t hurt… if anything the humidity is nice.

*Note: It gets really smelly. People will tell you that you smell a lot. The bad breath is not nice. I couldn’t smell it myself but apparently it is sort of ‘eggy’.

Sleep
WOW! Sleep is without doubt the hardest thing. GET A HUMIDIFIER! When you sleep, your mouth/ throat gets dry and that is when it gets really painful to swallow. If you use a humidifier and when you wake up in the night/ morning drink some sips of water each time (keep a bottle by the bed), it will feel a little better.
In general you probably want to keep water around at all times. It is so much nicer if you keep it moist (I hate that word) and cold water will help to keep swelling down just like sucking on ice.

Drink lots and keep a dose of painkillers for just before bed.

Pain
Take the drugs your doctor prescribes and keep on top of them for the first few days. I was prescribed 60mg codeine, 400mg paracetamol and 400mg ibuprofen as well as a spray containing antiseptic and local anesthetic called ‘Difflam Spray’ (TM). After something like 6 days you probably won’t need these anymore but take them as often as prescribed at the start. It is important that you eat well and to do that you need to be as comfortable as possible.

Take the medicine exactly as your doctor tells you for pain.

Problems
I had no problems really. A very slight amount of blood in the gunk you might spit up is fine but if you get any more than that you need to go to A&E although the occurrences of this are very rare. You may notice bleeding because you spit up a lot of blood but another way you might notice it could be if you throw up because you have been bleeding and swallowing it which irritates the stomach. A friend of mine had a slow bleed which ended up with a little projectile vomiting…
Also you have to watch out for infections. You will be advised to stay away from any groups of people etc to avoid breathing in anything that might get your tonsil holes infected. I don’t know anyone who has had this problem but again you have to go and get medical help for that.
There will be loads of other information given to you by the hospital

My Tonsil Holes

Now I will share my recovery for 15 days following surgery with you and show you some beautiful pictures of my tonsil holes so you can see what you might expect each day:

Day 1

Pain: The first day was not bad in terms of pain at all. It felt really weird though. My whole mouth felt difficult to move. I could talk without much problem and only really mild pain.

Eating: My main problem was eating but this was not due to pain but because my *uvula (the dangly thing at the back of my throat) had swollen up and it just didn’t feel like my mouth was working and things kept getting stuck. I managed to eat a sandwich at the hospital about 3 hours after the operation as I was advised to do this in case it made it bleed. That way it could be fixed at the hospital rather than having to rush back to A&E if the bleeding happened at home.
The bread from the sandwich got really stuck! I would definitely recommend taking white bread rather than granary bread as the seeds were a big problem as they got stuck everywhere.
When I got home I managed to eat a small bowl of ravioli with tomato sauce which was really quite easy to eat and I would recommend. Perhaps with cheese sauce instead as the tomato was a little acidic. I also ate a few sweets.

*Note: Apparently it is totally normal for the uvula to swell up because of the heat used in your mouth during the operation. Also, the tongue sometimes feels swollen on one side because they use a metal thing to clamp it out of the way during the operation.

Day 2

Pain: The night between day 1 and day 2 was horrible! I woke up every two hours with my throat feeling really dry causing a sharp pain. It went away quickly when I had a drink and went to the bathroom to spit though. I also had to prop myself almost upright to sleep as my uvula was really swollen and it felt as though it was blocking my airway if I lay down. I used a humidifier but I think it was a little too far away from my bed so my throat kept getting dry whilst I was asleep which I think is what causes the really bad pain.
Throughout the day, once I had some water in the morning, the pain was pretty much fine. I had few problems eating/ talking/ cleaning. If any of my friends asked how I was I was still telling them (truthfully) that I have had periods that caused worse pain than day 2.


Eating: There still wasn’t much pain eating. The bigger problem was that food (and pills) were getting stuck in my tonsil holes! I tried to choose foods that wouldn’t be too sticky.
Today I had a smoothie and glass of orange juice at breakfast (painful because of the acid). At lunch I ate McDonalds (sorry to my body and any doctors who might stumble upon my blog but I was hungry and was craving one despite not having had one for over a year)! It actually slipped down really really easily. For dinner I ate some tinned noodle soup. I think I could have handled something more solid but that is what was at home.

I would actually recommend more solid things for the first couple of days though, not only for the medical reasons the doctors told me, but also because they were actually easier to swallow and didn’t get as stuck. The McDonalds was much easier to eat than the noodle soup!

Day 3

Pain: For me I think this was my worst day in terms of pain… although many people report that their pain gets worse until day 5 or even 7.
I only slept for about 2 hours during the night between day 2 and 3 and lay awake listening to podcasts the rest of the time. Every time I fell asleep for 15 mins or so, I woke up with my throat feeling unbearably dry and painful and a lot of dribble. The only comfort was that the swelling of my uvula had gone down completely so I could breathe normally again.
In the day the pain was much more bearable but still very bad.

Eating: Things started to taste really weird today. I couldn’t drink smoothie or orange juice today because it hurt too much. I ate some chicken soup at lunchtime but it tasted awful and was really tricky to eat. For dinner, I forced myself to eat something more solid so I had half a mini pizza and half a packet of crisps. I physically couldn’t continue swallowing at the end. I am still glad that I tried eating the solid food though.

Day 4

Pain: The pain was slightly less than day 3 but still much worse than the first two days. I still needed all of my pain medication and eating was difficult although I managed more than day 3. Talking was also uncomfortable sometimes. Sleeping on night 3-4 was similar to night 2-3.

Eating: I struggled to eat a little again today (although it was better than day 3). I couldn’t drink smoothie or orange juice for breakfast because they were too acidic although I was trying to force myself to in order to keep up my vitamins and fibre.
I tried very hard to eat a sausage sandwich at lunchtime because everyone else in the house was (and I was jealous) but I only managed half a sausage and 2 bites of plain brown bread.
In the evening, I forced myself to drink one glass of smoothie, a handful of mashed potato, 6 olives and 2 bites of lamb. The lamb was weirdly the easiest thing to eat.

Also today the scab started to come off the tiniest bit! I was pleased to see this although my throat was itchy so I was coughing quite a lot which was like a thousand tiny paper cuts in my throat. Above is a disgusting picture of the scab that came off.

Day 5

I felt so much better on day 5! Everything felt better! I have read a lot of other reports from people who have done the surgery and I think I started to feel better a day earlier than most people do (so good for me but don’t be too surprised if it takes an extra day or two).


Pain: I noticed that whilst on the previous days ibuprofen had made more of a difference to the pain I felt, on day 5, paracetamol started to have a greater effect. I assume that as ibuprofen works to relieve swelling and paracetamol does not, that this meant that most of the swelling had gone down now.
I slept so much better during the night from day 4 to 5 than any of the nights up until now. I slept for around 8 hours and only woke up once. I think this might have partly been due to the fact that I moved my humidifier closer to the bed so my mouth didn’t get so dry but also hopefully due to healing!!!!


Eating: I ate a great breakfast on day 5. It didn’t quite taste normal yet but I ate a ‘pain au raisin’, a chocolate digestive, a glass of orange juice and a glass of smoothie. It didn’t hurt too much although it wasn’t quite enjoyable to eat yet.
For lunch I ate…

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12 – 15

How long it took me to get back to:

Eating: 3 hours (lol) I was told it would speed up the recovery if I ate well and I wanted to repair my tonsil holes as soon as possible.

Socialising: I wasn’t feeling very social even on social media for the first few days. I just wanted to revise/ watch TV. I didn’t meet up with anyone for 2 weeks after the surgery to avoid the risk of infection of my tonsil holes but I think I would have physically felt well enough to go out with friends on about day 8.

Exercise: 2 weeks. I went for a light dog walk on day 9 actually (although that is sort of against the advice of doctors as it increases the risk of bleeding from the tonsil holes). After the recommended 2 weeks I was quite ready to get back to the gym. I didn’t want to swim though. I don’t think I will swim for about 6 weeks just because it worries me a little.

Work: I was able to do work on my laptop even the day after surgery… although it was uncomfortable and as I was sometimes really hungry, concentrating was difficult. If I had to go back to any sort of strenuous job or job that involved much talking, I don’t think it would have been very sensible to go back until after day 12 at the earliest and preferably not until day 14.