The subject of tonsils was recently brought up which reminded me of this tale.
If you ask any child what they remember about getting their tonsils out they'll probably say "the ice-cream!". Well I don't recall being offered any and my experience didn’t have such a happy ending.
I was about 28 when my tonsils came out. Bad smells and pockets of white bits that smelled like a cadaver took up residence in my mouth was putting a crimp in my love life. Constant complaining got me scheduled for surgery and I was on the way to the hospital.
Back in the day you had to report for surgery the day before so I arrived, suitcase in hand for an overnight stay. Waiting in a hospital is a pin in the eye experience, the hours drag. I had a book and I napped a bit and made a few trips to the cafeteria for snacks. That was about all the excitement until they called on me for my Barium swallow test. They wanted to have a look at my throat to check for pockets. Some people have areas in their throat that collect food. The food lays around rotting, stinks up the place until it dissolves and goes away. They thought I might have one or two as I complained about feeling bits in my throat after eating hamburger, a crumbled meat that might have gotten stuck in there and I was constantly hammering on about bad smells. The barium would have filled the cavities and showed on an x-ray. At that time they didn’t believe the smell was coming from the tonsils. It I had any of these pouches they would have fixed them while cutting out the tonsils.
So I’m down in what seemed like the basement waiting for my name to come up for the test. One by one the people waiting went in for whatever test they would scheduled for until it came down to two of us, me and an old man in a wheelchair, bent over like a folded book. He never raised his head off his knees. He looked miserable, I wondered what illness had crushed his spirit.
My name was called and I go in. So I’m asked to take off my jammies and put on the ever-degrading Johnny shirt and scoot up on the bed. I do this without question, I was taught to obey but in my mind, having to change clothing just for a white liquid to be swallowed seemed a waste of time. So I am watching her prepare this strange piece of equipment with a long tube and I’m beginning to wonder what I was in for. She approached the bed and told me to roll over on my side and asked “Did they give you an enema? “No” was met with a disapproving, wrinkled nose. Always shy and quiet, I asked in a mousy, barely audible voice, “Why do I need an enema to have my tonsils out?”
Surprised, she said, “Tonsils?” Then added, “I have you down for a Barium Enema” I was thinking, “wrong end” and said, “No, I think it’s supposed to be a Barium swallow test looking for pouches in my neck”. It turns out, the poor older gentleman in the waiting room was supposed to be “cheeks up” not me. So I was given the Barium orally, that vile, chalky white liquid, had the x-ray and got out of there. So I figured great, what else can go wrong?
I’m in a ward because they didn’t have any private or semi-private rooms available. There was only one person in the room with me, a woman about my age who was obviously knocking on deaths door. She was in terrible pain, singing a mournful tune with a chorus that went on and on. Cancer I thought, what else could be so awful? She was wheeled in a couple of hours after I arrived and the nurses checked on her constantly, so it had to be bad, very bad. The woman was too ill to press the button for help, so several times I paged the nurses to come in to clean up after the latest wave of nausea. They left her a bed pan but she would miss it every time sending a shower of blood all over the floor. The spray of red contrasted the pale green tiles; it looked like a crime scene of a brutal murder. The nurses would come in, pull the privacy sheet, clean her up and take away the soiled bed linens and Johnny shirt.
Around the fourth time she was sick, I went out to the nurse’s station to tell them their services were needed once again and with the gravest of looks I asked if she was dying, after all I should know being in the room with her, what if she croaked right in front of me? The nurse sort of smirked, and explained that no she wasn’t dying, she had her tonsils out this morning.
I never saw that coming and the look on my face must have been precious. She explained that adults suffer more than children who seem to breeze the procedure.
Well that was eye opening and a cause for concern. Not only did I not want to suffer, I sure as heck didn’t want be emptying bloody stomach contents all over myself. I was determined that this wouldn’t happen to me. The woman obviously was a wimp with no tolerance for pain, whereas I was known as a rock. I had a 12 lb. baby that was like passing a watermelon through a straw but felt no worse that the cramps of diarrhea. I reportedly sang in the delivery room, surely I could manage a little bitty operation for tonsils, the removal a small piece of skin hanging in the back of my throat. Really lady, have a bit of pride.
So the next morning they wheeled me into the operating room and the anesthesiologist started knocking me out. I was counting backwards from a hundred when my world turned black and I was gone. The operation was uneventful, my tonsils apparently were so far gone they all but fell away from the scalpel. Rotten was the word they used. Good news I thought, at least now my breath would be fresher…they hadn’t found any pouches so the only olfactory offender was the tonsils
I was wheeled back to my room. The other woman had been released so I was alone, except for the boyfriend I was seeing at the time who was there for moral support; another reason to hold it together. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the nausea to hit. You must swallow a lot of blood during surgery that upsets the tummy and is catapulted out with projectile vengeance. My boyfriend held my hair back so I could let it fly into the pan. I was only physically sick a couple of times, but it sure was violent. There might have been moaning but at least I had better aim so I didn’t have to wear it. I know one thing; I wasn’t offered any ice-cream.
If you ask any child what they remember about getting their tonsils out they'll probably say "the ice-cream!". Well I don't recall being offered any and my experience didn’t have such a happy ending.
I was about 28 when my tonsils came out. Bad smells and pockets of white bits that smelled like a cadaver took up residence in my mouth was putting a crimp in my love life. Constant complaining got me scheduled for surgery and I was on the way to the hospital.
Back in the day you had to report for surgery the day before so I arrived, suitcase in hand for an overnight stay. Waiting in a hospital is a pin in the eye experience, the hours drag. I had a book and I napped a bit and made a few trips to the cafeteria for snacks. That was about all the excitement until they called on me for my Barium swallow test. They wanted to have a look at my throat to check for pockets. Some people have areas in their throat that collect food. The food lays around rotting, stinks up the place until it dissolves and goes away. They thought I might have one or two as I complained about feeling bits in my throat after eating hamburger, a crumbled meat that might have gotten stuck in there and I was constantly hammering on about bad smells. The barium would have filled the cavities and showed on an x-ray. At that time they didn’t believe the smell was coming from the tonsils. It I had any of these pouches they would have fixed them while cutting out the tonsils.
So I’m down in what seemed like the basement waiting for my name to come up for the test. One by one the people waiting went in for whatever test they would scheduled for until it came down to two of us, me and an old man in a wheelchair, bent over like a folded book. He never raised his head off his knees. He looked miserable, I wondered what illness had crushed his spirit.
My name was called and I go in. So I’m asked to take off my jammies and put on the ever-degrading Johnny shirt and scoot up on the bed. I do this without question, I was taught to obey but in my mind, having to change clothing just for a white liquid to be swallowed seemed a waste of time. So I am watching her prepare this strange piece of equipment with a long tube and I’m beginning to wonder what I was in for. She approached the bed and told me to roll over on my side and asked “Did they give you an enema? “No” was met with a disapproving, wrinkled nose. Always shy and quiet, I asked in a mousy, barely audible voice, “Why do I need an enema to have my tonsils out?”
Surprised, she said, “Tonsils?” Then added, “I have you down for a Barium Enema” I was thinking, “wrong end” and said, “No, I think it’s supposed to be a Barium swallow test looking for pouches in my neck”. It turns out, the poor older gentleman in the waiting room was supposed to be “cheeks up” not me. So I was given the Barium orally, that vile, chalky white liquid, had the x-ray and got out of there. So I figured great, what else can go wrong?
I’m in a ward because they didn’t have any private or semi-private rooms available. There was only one person in the room with me, a woman about my age who was obviously knocking on deaths door. She was in terrible pain, singing a mournful tune with a chorus that went on and on. Cancer I thought, what else could be so awful? She was wheeled in a couple of hours after I arrived and the nurses checked on her constantly, so it had to be bad, very bad. The woman was too ill to press the button for help, so several times I paged the nurses to come in to clean up after the latest wave of nausea. They left her a bed pan but she would miss it every time sending a shower of blood all over the floor. The spray of red contrasted the pale green tiles; it looked like a crime scene of a brutal murder. The nurses would come in, pull the privacy sheet, clean her up and take away the soiled bed linens and Johnny shirt.
Around the fourth time she was sick, I went out to the nurse’s station to tell them their services were needed once again and with the gravest of looks I asked if she was dying, after all I should know being in the room with her, what if she croaked right in front of me? The nurse sort of smirked, and explained that no she wasn’t dying, she had her tonsils out this morning.
I never saw that coming and the look on my face must have been precious. She explained that adults suffer more than children who seem to breeze the procedure.
Well that was eye opening and a cause for concern. Not only did I not want to suffer, I sure as heck didn’t want be emptying bloody stomach contents all over myself. I was determined that this wouldn’t happen to me. The woman obviously was a wimp with no tolerance for pain, whereas I was known as a rock. I had a 12 lb. baby that was like passing a watermelon through a straw but felt no worse that the cramps of diarrhea. I reportedly sang in the delivery room, surely I could manage a little bitty operation for tonsils, the removal a small piece of skin hanging in the back of my throat. Really lady, have a bit of pride.
So the next morning they wheeled me into the operating room and the anesthesiologist started knocking me out. I was counting backwards from a hundred when my world turned black and I was gone. The operation was uneventful, my tonsils apparently were so far gone they all but fell away from the scalpel. Rotten was the word they used. Good news I thought, at least now my breath would be fresher…they hadn’t found any pouches so the only olfactory offender was the tonsils
I was wheeled back to my room. The other woman had been released so I was alone, except for the boyfriend I was seeing at the time who was there for moral support; another reason to hold it together. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the nausea to hit. You must swallow a lot of blood during surgery that upsets the tummy and is catapulted out with projectile vengeance. My boyfriend held my hair back so I could let it fly into the pan. I was only physically sick a couple of times, but it sure was violent. There might have been moaning but at least I had better aim so I didn’t have to wear it. I know one thing; I wasn’t offered any ice-cream.
RSS Feed
