Recovering from My Tonsillectomy

12 days ago I had a tonsillectomy to help resolve some issues I've been having with throat infections the last few years. Before I had kids I would generally have one bad throat infection (Strep, etc) every Winter. After having kids 4 years ago, I noticed that I would get sick much more often. The past 6 months I have had Strep or something like it 3 times. I asked my doctor what my options were and he (reluctantly) mentioned a tonsillectomy.

I've been having a rough time with the recovery, so I've belatedly decided to keep a running diary of how things are going. I'm hoping people who are going through similar issues will find this blog post helpful or perhaps cause them to reconsider the procedure.

By the way, if you want to see some shit that will haunt your dreams, go to Google Images and search for "tonsillectomy". I won't even link to it because it's NSFW.

Days 1 - 2

I had my surgery at 8am in the morning and my wife picked me up to drive me home around 11am. I was pretty zonked out from the general anethesia and the pain medications they gave me. When I got home, I set myself up in the basement with a ton of ice and water and started binging on Netflix. I was pretty groggy over these two days but the pain wasn't that bad. I actually felt like I could eat whatever I wanted.

Days 3 - 7

These were the worst days for me, pain-wise. I was religiously taking Oxycodene and extra-strength Tylenol every four hours at staggered intervals. I was also taking anti-biotics, Celebrex and using a medicated mouth wash. I really didn't eat too much and stuck to very soft food (bananas, soggy cereal, macaroni and cheese, etc). I drank a TON of ice water. But despite this, my pain never reached the levels that the nurses warned me about. I never felt like I had swallowed glass and never felt like I needed to place an ice-pack on my throat.

It's right around this time that I realized I couldn't taste anything.

Days 8 - 11

This was the first complete day that I didn't take any Oxycodene and instead relied on Tylenol. I really hated how numb the Oxycodene made me feel. I was nervous about the pain, but I really wanted to feel normal and be able to drive. As happy as I was to be off the narcotics, I was now really realizing the extent to which I could not smell or taste anything. Now that my pain was subsiding, I was getting back into normal meals with the family and I was really noticing that I couldn't taste anything. Worse, certain things (like beer and whiskey) tasted horrible. I started getting pretty bummed about the situation, especially after running some Google queries. It didn't seem like there was much I could do, but I decided to start a regime of taking Zinc daily based on some of the things I read.

Day 11

I began taking 50mg of Zinc in the morning along with the Tylenol and Celebrex.

Day 12

I had a root beer and felt like I could taste perhaps 40% of its flavor. This was exciting!

Day 13

I've stopped taking pain medication (Tylenol) and Celebrex. At this point the only pill I'm taking is 50mg of Zinc.