Why oh WHY would you want a tonsillectomy?

My entire life, I've suffered from horrible throat pains. Tonsil stones. Frequent bouts of tonsillitis.

As I've gotten older, it's actually gotten worse. Enough to finally make an appointment with my ENT to discuss the possibility of getting my tonsils removed.

After making this appointment, I decided to go to the world wide web and mistakingly read through blog after blog of people's personal recovery stories.

Ignorantly, I thought that the recovery for an adult was the same as for a child- a few popsicles, sleep for a few hours.... and then back to good.
Nope!
A tonsillectomy in an adult is signficantly harder to get through than as a child. The risks are much higher and the recovery is extremely painful.

I also read that most ENT physicians won't just willingly take out an adults tonsils because of the risks associated with it. You actually have to have a decent reason. So I went in to my appointment with many questions. I very much trust my ENT, Dr. James Kempiners, as he's been around for previous ear problems I've gone through.

Unfortunately there was a problem that arose the day of my consultation. An elderly person actually drove their car into the doctors building where my appointment was that day- so I had to reschedule with another physician within the group. I was slightly leary about that because like I said- all of my trust is with Dr. Kempiners, but I begrudingly went in with the other person.

He took one look in my mouth and immediately said "so... when would you like to get these out?" I was prepared to have to argue my case to get my wishes of having them removed. Nope!

The only thing that I had to wait for was to finish breastfeeding, as you are put under general anesthesia and have a 2 week recovery with decent narcotics. So my consult was quite awhile ago, but they said that the "go ahead" to get the tonsillectomy would be fine for whenever I was ready.

After finishing up with breastfeeding, I immediately called the office and was elated to find out that even though I didn't have my initial consult with Dr. Kempiners, I was still able to schedule my surgery with him. He brought me in for a pre-surgery consult and confirmed what the other physician had said: these tonsils had to go!