A Painfully Funny Experience

Saturday, May 21, 2011
May 11, 2011 was the date I had my tonsils out. Believe me, you wouldn't want to have your tonsils out too. The days that followed seemed like a very slow-paced chapter of pain. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours and hours like days. I never expected the pain to be that much though it was relatively obvious what I was getting myself into.

Days before the "big day," I placed myself into preparation of what I was headed to. A bit of research, viewing of actual surgery via YouTube and even heading to forums to see how people who have submitted themselves for "holy" tonsillectomy had to say were few things that kept me busy. The funny thing was me getting more frustrated and terrified to undergo the said operation right after seeing how tonsillectomy is actually done. Repeatedly convincing myself that tonsillectomy was something common and "minor" was apparently of no aid as well. I knew it was a bad move for my paranoia but eventually I realized that those acts were very helpful and worth-it.

It was late last year when my doctors strongly advised me to have my tonsils removed yet surprisingly, it took me a quarter to convince myself that it was for my own good. One can't blame me for being such a scaredy-cat; my dad was afraid of needles too! By this time, assuming that I've inherited some sort of phobia of needles, getting hospitalized and the like is very safe. Over that long span of time, internal debates have been going on though I knew beforehand what the bottom-line would be. And at long last, I have finally decided to leave my fears away and go for the win-win situation.
When the day finally came, I was trying to suppress my fear amid the light atmosphere in Chong Hua Hospital's operating room. Everyone seemed happy for a reason I never knew. Thoughts were swallowing my consciousness that time and the feeling of getting executed dawned on me big time. Around 9:00 in the morning, they brought me to operating room 4 (if I'm not mistaken). Yes, I would have to admit that it was my first time to see the inside of an operating room; pretty impressive and very similar to those that you see in the movies. However, I had a heterogeneous mix of feelings that made me so uneasy inside. My blood pressure sky-rocketed and I was staring at that monitoring device the same way one would watch the movie Titanic. Looking back at myself make me laugh at times. I felt like someone whose hat was that of a dunce's. All of a sudden, something was injected through the IV and the person who did it smiled and said, "this is for you to relax." The first dose seemed to have escaped my system as my stats were not giving them the results they have expected. So they had to give me another shot and *poof* I couldn't remember anything that happened next. The following scenes would be subject for censorship, trust me.

I woke up in the recovery room, painless but felt weird. An hour passed and I was sent to my own room ton "enjoy" my stay there. It turned out that the real recovery room was my own room.

Post-operation day one was not that bad. In fact, I wasn't in as much pain as I was in the successive days. I was getting more pain as days passed by. It reached the point when I wanted to give up but knew that there wasn't really such option since my tonsils already departed my body. Tears were the best comfort I got. Even my all-time favorite, Ice cream, didn't help me from being in a "not-so-happy-camper" mood. Pain was getting on my nerves too much that even my pain relievers were the inflicter of pain through my veins. It even came to a point where swallowing my own saliva was the least thing I would have wanted to do.

Days 3-7 were the most painful days during post-operation period. I am on my 10th day as of writing and pain has significantly faded though I still experience periods of sudden pain that would make me want to stay in bed and play dead.

Tonsillectomy was never a delight at all but it was the best option for me never to experience tonsillitis again. After all that I've been through, I could say I have won over my fears.

At this point, I place all modesty aside in saying I am tonsil-free and I made it!