Tonsillectomy (Pt. 1)
Chronic illness: another way Bella Hadid and I are exactly the same
Hello- This week’s and next week’s newsletters were supposed to be one big fat newsletter, recounting in far too much detail and with way too much self-pity the ordeal of having a low-risk surgery.
Actually, not only a low risk surgery, but one covered by insurance that I recovered from at home surrounded by family. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say the one giant essay was a ~bit much~. So here I give you Part 1, in which the artist recounts the surgery itself and the circumstances that led to it. This will be followed by a second act, an epilogue of sorts, next week. Then I will hopefully put the story of the tonsils to rest. Like the real tonsils, which are deep in medical waste. But no promises. Write what you know, eh? Anyways, let’s have at it. Scalpel!
The theme of June 2023 was “get your throat filleted and cauterized”. It’s like a “backyard barbecue” party theme, but a little different. After a year of relentless tonsilitis (preceded by many other years of relentless tonsilitis), I decided to schedule the surgery.
A tonsillectomy is a common elective surgery routinely performed on kids (probably some of you!), but also often on adults (me!) when the frustration of constant illness makes it worth it. From first IV prick, to the chopping block, to waking up in recovery, the whole procedure only takes about 90 minutes. It is straightforward and comes with very low chances of complications. I had been told all of this years ago, when it was first suggested that my throat was doing me more harm than good, and it proved entirely accurate on operation day.
But it hadn’t been the prospect of the surgery itself that had made me put it off for so many years, it was the subsequent recovery period. I had been told by doctors, nurses, and acquiantances to expect at least two weeks of searing pain, nausea, exhaustion, and, as one medical professional put it, “weird burnt flesh in my throat”. The tonsilitis medical blogs and Reddit threads - which I indulged in increasingly this past year after each fresh fever, doctors visit, and antibiotics - were the same. They described an adult tonsillectomy as nothing short of miserable.
But of course, misery with an end date, which is one of the better kinds. And however awful, it could mean less trips to the hospital, less antibiotics, and ultimately many more weeks of bopping around disease-free. This was something I’d badly wanted for a long time.
If you know me, which all of you do because this is actually a newsletter with 24 subscribers, you know that I’m sick a lot and I stay sick for a long time. It isn’t more remarkable than that - I just spend a lot of time coughing and sleeping and popping Mucinex and feeling gross. I then spend much of the in-between time popping vitamins and trying to get my healthy self back. Increasingly though, the healthy side really began to evade me. It’s hard to remember a year that ever passed without taking antibiotics, but recently my goal became to make it not years but just a few months before resorting to them. Sometimes, when a routine sore throat turned into a raging infection, it would be many rounds of meds in a month. In my 24th year especially, I caught myself thinking of my health not in terms of longevity, but in terms of timing. Instead of feeling frustrated if a bug came around at Christmas, for example, I would anticipate the inevitable December bout of strep but hope that it would be gone by the time Santa came.
The last lil’ tipping point for me in choosing to get the tonsillectomy was when a cold that was going around broke through my immune system so effectively that I ended up with bronchitis and daily trips to the hospital for antibiotics in their much more agressive IV format. It only took about an hour each session to get the medication dripped, but it was ultimately enough lying-on-my-back-staring-at-the-ceiling time to really assess my happiness, or lack there-of.
It had begun to feel like I was navigating life in a new, distorted way. Instead of seeking consistent happiness and contentment when I now felt it wouldn’t be there, I was grasping for small pieces of happiness and cleaving to those. It felt quite similar to periods of life when my anxiety was particularly bad, and probaly sounds familiar to those who have gone through their own rocky patches (lol, everyone).
I was familiar with how my fluctuating mental health could change my ability to be happy. But this was among the first times when my detiorating mental well being was directly tied to the state of my physical body. That feels insane as I type it, but I hadn’t before experienced health problems that spanned months and years, or that took a toll on the how fulfilled I felt in my life. No matter how I negotiated and renegotiated things in my mind, it was disorienting that the root of my problem was in the limits of my immune system, something I had naively always expected to just work.
Now, I’m running the risk of being overindulgent about a health condition that had a relatively unsevere impact on my life, and one that I’m fortunate had treatment opportunities. But coping with persistent illness can feel isolating and all consuming, until you realize, to varying degrees, how shared of an experience it is.
Lately, I’ve felt like more people in my life than ever before are experiencing some kind of chronic condition or physical pain. I’ve thought about attributing this to getting older. Perhaps we aren’t at the age of hip replacements, but I know I’m personally at the age where I have fears and questions when my doctors’ visits come around. Part of me knows that this entire observation is a bit selfish, as most likely I’ve only noticed more of others’ pain since I’ve begun to recognize it in myself. But no matter the reason, there seems to me to be a lot of young people in my life whose bodies aren’t working the way they want them to, from fragile joints that keep re-injuring, to relentless insomnia or persistent ailments. Glands that we’ve never heard of suddenly aren’t doing their job right. I’m aware more than ever of people who, like me, are struggling to wrestle their bodies into a state that alligns with their idea of wellbeing. Not superficially, but in functionality. And when our bodies fail us, to wrestle our idea of happiness into the confines of what our bodies can handle.
Now here is where I tell you the greatest tragedy of all: that I forgot to ask the doctors to take a picture of the tonsils once they were cut out of my body.
On surgery day, all the rumors came true. The nurses were nice, the hospital socks were fabulous, and the tonsils were trash. The anesthesia was strong enough that I walked right into Wallgreens 30 minutes after being on the table and delusionally picked out 10 snacks that I would not be able to eat once the drugs wore off. I had decided to return to Minnesota for the surgery, so I got to recover at my parents’ house in full grade school flu fashion, a comfort that I am immensly gateful for.
Those next two recovery weeks were the managable hell that had been promised. I can now forever know how it feels to have a a throat full of peeling cauterized skin. And I have lived experience that you can survive on just two excruciating sips of water per day, so long as you don’t move and spend all your time sleeping. It was, indeed, a miserable many days, followed by some more pretty bad days. Truly…. it really sucked. Now, 6 weeks recovered and healing well, I’m cautiously waiting to see if it will be worth it. While it’s shown that poor tonsils are a major contributor to chronic tonsilitis, it’s impossible to be certain if getting them removed will fix the problem until it’s been done.
But by the time I had decided that the recovery pain was a cheap price to pay for taking back some control of my health, it felt more like an inevitability than a decision. Even if I’m able to say goodbye to tonsilitis forever, this ordeal has made me confident I won’t be saying goodbye to ailment or injury forever. A common term on my beloved tonsilitis blogs is “quality of life”, something that also came up when I was in doctors’ consultations when I was first considering the tonsillectomy. What can I endure so that I will no longer have to endure something else? Which imperfect version of my little life do I want to take aim at? I no longer see this only in regards to jobs I may pursue or places I might like to live, but in the most crucial thing of all: the body I live in and the mind that has to find peace with it.
Bullet points:
Other things I did this summer include: take lots of jumping videos, get my passport renewed, and finally stay in a hotel room that had rose petals on the bed!
I also read the book 1984. It was cool I guess?
I also rewatched the show Broad City. It was amazing and friendship persists as the most powerful force in the universe.
For next week, if you can still tolerate me, I’ve written about the AFTER after-math of surgery. After that, something more fun. Any ideas?
See you soon but not soon enough!
Ryley
Such good writing. I love this because I am a school nurse (elementary!) and oh dear, the tonsils I see. You nailed it. ❤️
Accurate and honest! As Ryley’s companion at the hospital and post-op caregiver I’ll vouch for the fact that her “Adult Tonsillectomy” was way worse than the ice cream and applesauce event that I experienced as a kid. She was a very good patient💖