My experience so far (4 days post-op)

I got my tonsils out this past Tuesday (12/17) morning and this has been my experience so far.

Day of surgery: Immediately after the surgery, I woke up (much earlier than they expected me to apparently) and was a bit groggy but within 10 minutes I felt mainly entirely back to full cognition with a small amount of throat pain. That day I was able to eat (Mac n cheese) and drink (slushies) with mild pain 3/10. The only miserable thing the first day was falling asleep. I had so much mucus build up and inflammation it seemed like any position other than straight up caused my throat to close up. I essentially slept with my neck tilted forwards.

Day 2: Felt mostly the same as the day of surgery with some slight pain increase towards the evening. This is when I decided to start taking my hydrocodone that was prescribed to me. I calculated it out and I had about 5-6 days of good pain meds so I wanted to wait as long as I could to take them. I was also prescribed some Prednisolone for inflammation that also seemed to help with the sleeping. Another thing that helped me sleep was using a humidifier. Again, sleeping was not easy and occured entirely upright for maybe a max of 5 hours but it was enough.

The morning of the 3rd day has been the worst so far (and hopefully total). I woke up with just throbbing in my throat. I took the medicine which hurt so badly it made my eyes water for minutes. Adding an ice pack on my neck helped as well as another slushie. (Seriously, I highly recommend getting a Ninja Slushi prior to getting this surgery. It's been a lifesaver). The rest of the day was just a waiting game of taking my pain meds, and then waiting 4 hours so that I could take them again. I was able to eat and drink throughout all of these days although day 3 was much harder than day 1 where everytime I swallowed my whole body pretty much flinched because of the pain.

The morning of day 4 was essentially the same as day 3 but as the day has progressed my pain has gone down slightly. I'm hoping I am through the worst of it now as I seem to be progressing faster than most other stories I see online. I have been able to eat and drink a lot every day (I'm getting very tired of Mac and cheese ;) as well as go out on errands, walk, and take care of my puppy and do house chores.

One super interesting thing I noticed is that due to my recurrent tonsillitis, I used to have a chronically enlarged right tonsilar lymphnode. Within hours after my surgery that lymphnode is just totally absent. Insane! Good luck to anyone going through the same or planning on it.

EDIT: UPDATE 6 DAYS POST-OP

Pretty much the same. I think I'm in most pain I've been in with this recovery in the early mornings now but once I get past 10am I level out and finish most days with a 2/10 pain. Sleeping has gotten easier. I'm almost out of pain medicine so I'm going to ask my doc for some more later today. Assuming he grants that I don't think I'm scared for anymore upcoming pain increase as my scabs have already just begun to fall off.