5th November is a date we celebrate Guy Fawkes night here in the UK, however on 5th November 2015 I had something very different to celebrate. After 4 years, goodness knows how many antibiotics and, except for a glorious almost 6 month spell of being tonsillitis free last winter, trips to my GP, I was finally getting my tonsils out!
Having had my pre-op assessment a couple of weeks prior, I was declared fit and healthy for the operation, so naturally I had my last bout of tonsillitis a week before the operation. I was nervous when I arrived at the hospital - what if they looked at me and decided they couldn't do the operation? I arrived at day surgery before my call time of 8am and got all checked in, so far so good, and sat with my mum until a nurse came to take me through to the pre-op ward. Once I was in the ward the surgeon came and spoke to me about the operation, hooked me up with a sick note for my recovery time off work and looked at my tonsils to check I was ok to have the op, luckily the super strength antibiotics I'd been on had done the job and I was good to go. One of the anaesthetists also came and spoke to me, asked me some medical questions etc. then I got told to change into my sexy hospital gown (on the plus side they let me keep on my own underwear) and dressing gown and slippers as out of the 4 or 5 of us there I was getting taken to theatre first.
I didn't have much longer after that to wait, killed some time reading the magazine I had brought, and at around 9.30am the nurse came and walked me down to the room where I was getting the anaesthetic. The anaesthetist put the cannula in my hand to give me all the drugs etc. and was chatting away to me. The last thing I remember was chatting about my year abroad in Germany and the next thing I knew it was around 11am and I was being woken up in recovery. The first thing I noticed was I was super thirsty, I guess that's a side effect of the anaesthetic and also having not had anything to drink since my last sip of water at 6.30am.
I don't really remember much else from this portion of the proceedings other than being told my tonsils were out and being wheeled to the ward I would be staying in. The first couple of hours post op I pretty much spent lying in my bed drinking as much water as I could manage to swallow. The nurses tried me with some lunch around 12 but it was a bit too soon after the operation and I only managed 4 wee bits of pasta before giving up. A while later I got offered a sandwich, this went slightly better and I managed half, however unfortunately I then decided to get up to the bathroom unaided which was a big mistake and the sandwich decided to reappear in the sink. The rest of the afternoon was spent dozing on and off, drinking water and apple and blackcurrant squash and being given pain meds at some point. They also gave me something for the nausea. Dinner wasn't much more successful, I managed a little of the cottage pie they gave me and a yoghurt, then was sick again trying to swallow my co-codamol. Cue more anti-nausea medicine and the decision that I should spend the night in the hospital. Later in the evening I managed to eat a ham sandwich and around 11pm I went to sleep.
Post op the pain wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be, and although swallowing was difficult because of the swelling, it could have been a lot worse. The surgeon came round to see me in the afternoon and said that I must have had a fair few infections because my tonsils were horrible when he took them out. In the pre-op assessment a few weeks back they asked if I was ok donating my tissues to medical science, so I guess some poor medical students are probably having the joy of poking about at them round about now.
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