EPTTonsillitis at 21/22 is some of the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced. I've broken bones, been beaten up, sliced my toes and leg open, fallen straight on my head from 12 feet up, etc. nothing compared to this.
Its like I had firey needles/blades being tightened around my throat, neck, skull, and jaw. In every muscle or movement the pain throbbed. I tried to illustrate the pain to someone and used Jesus' crown of thorns as a reference (which didn't really do justice to describe it). I envisioned myself jumping away from my body when I closed my eyes for a second, but the moment was fleeting.
I had been taking 200mg Ibuprofens at first every 5 hours or so, then I started to take them more frequently as the pain started seeping back into my reality. I couldn't sleep. I eventually got down to every 2 hours until they started to wear off almost as soon as I had taken them after 30 minutes. So I had to go to the hospital at this point.
Every time I swallowed (Saliva even) it took every ounce of effort to force down and demanded full courage to brace myself for it. I ate little if anything at all. I must've lost 15~ pounds that month. I couldn't hardly talk and resorted to writing everything down on a notepad (especially the day before surgery when it was at its peak).
They told me not to eat before it in case of nausea from the drugs (lol, like I could eat in the first place). Morphiene really does hit you right in the stomache though- auto puke if I had some food in there. The whole night in the Hospital I couldn't sleep and my mouth and throat were so dry but I wasn't allowed to drink. The best the beautiful african american nurse could do was give me a warm wash cloth to leave on/in my mouth.
I had already received the limit for morphine IV allowances and the night nurse was even nice enough to slip me 1 or 2 more so I could actually fall asleep for an hour. Jesus, she was nice. I must've been calling her in there every 15 minutes all night. I think I even gave her a hug when I left (my head was really fuzzy, haha).
Come day of the surgery I was feeling a bit better from the antibiotics. But still pretty horrible; fatigued, hungry, and in pain. The ENT doctor came in and sat me up on the bed with his nurse. He explained the whole procedure in detail when the whole time all I could think about was that there was a mirror behind him and I was gonna watch the whole thing go down and that my mom and her BF were just gonna stand there gawking through the entirety.
The doctor started by dosing me with some morphine or something to numb my pain in my IV.
Instantly I felt its punch in the gut. After a few minutes he began by grabbing, squeezing, and wiggling my tonsils in various places with mosquito grip pliers. Holy shit, the pain was brutal, just brutal. I struggled to keep still while sitting straight up and not pulling away. He must've seen the look of terror in my eye every time he pulled away and gave me a second to recoup before he grabbed it again.
Eventually he grabbed a firm hold of one spot and used a scalpel to slice some tissue out/open. When he moved away after this, I nearly puked. I put my hand on his arm and gave this 'omfg ' look and barely managed to mumble out 'ithinkimmapuke' (the mirror wasn't helping).
The feeling passed and he then took a syringe and began sucking the goo out of me, every time that needle pulled I felt relief. The pressure release was awesome.
Where previously my throat felt like the thickness of a sharpie, it now felt like it was back to the size of a quarter, albeit the soreness and pain.
He must've pulled out 2-6 oz of blood/pus every time and I spat out another few oz after every one. We had a bed pan that I was spitting in. Makes you wonder how all that shit got there in the first place.
By the end of it, it felt so good to have the pressure released that I motioned the doc to do one more on my left tonsil even though he said he saw nothing, and sure enough there was another oz. or two.
It was actually quite humorous now that I think of it, how the nurse was asking me 100s of questions for the paperwork when I couldn't even reply. I kept trying to brush her off but she persisted. Thankfully my mom was there and answered most of them for me based on what I had written earlier.
A few hours later I went home. They put me on some liquid narcotics (Codeine mostly I think) which I had to take every 4 hours. This really fucked with my head. Made me feel like a tweaker and lazy at the same time. But the pain forced me to take it every 3 1/2 hours on the dot nearly.
After a few days I felt a lot better but still needed the narcs to sleep or eat.
After a week or two I felt much better and could sort of talk again. I was so bored and sick and tired of being sick and tired that I actually called work (I was a telemarketer at the time) and asked if I could come in do some non phone work (which they denied of course), lol. I think I spent most of that week texting everyone 24/7 and drawing pictures of pain and suffering. The drugs helped in the sketching I think, because some of them are really trippy.
After about a month from start to finish I had to get a final checkup and a doctor release note to go back to work. By then everyone and their mom knew I had tonsilittis and wanted to hear every little detail. I started wishing that I couldn't speak again.
PS- After it was all over with, I attributed my illness to ocean water. I had just started the summer off and remember specifically a time when a wave barreled over and forced water in my nose and got stuck in my sinus or whatever. I don't know if the bacteria was from human pollution or just from the nature of the sea. If you've ever been in the ocean for a long while and come out you've probably had the thing where you can turn your nose towards the floor and watch the liquid ooze out. No liquid came out this time.
After the surgery my right tonsil was left with crypts that form tonsilloliths or tonsil stones. They cause bad breath and are pretty disgusting. I try to push them out every day but they are constantly reforming so it just adds to my daily routine.
