Jun 26 2007
Ms. Q Has No Tonsils
This post is dedicated to Irisi from Ruminations who will be having tonsil surgery this summer.
I was a sickly child.
Even then all my problems were in my head.
More accurately my problems were with my ear, nose, and throat and pretty much anything to do with breathing.
I had asthma. Luckily, it was only childhood asthma. All I can recall about it was that I had to have a special foam pillow and we didn’t have curtains.
I had allergies to pet dander. This was worse – I’d start to sneeze, my eyes would tear up and if I were around the animal long enough I’d start to wheeze.
I had sore throats all the time.
It seemed like I was always going to the doctors but when you’re a little kid, even if you’re not sick, you’re getting vaccines, inoculations, and constant checkups to see if you’re developmentally on track.
One day my parents told me that I would be having an operation. A tonsillectomy.
I think I was 5 years old.
I don’t remember much about what they said but I don’t recall being scared. I just knew that my tonsils were those red things in the back of my throat.
These were the things that I had to say “AAaaah” for so my doctor could see them.
Based on what everyone was telling me, I figured “ectomy” meant “remove.” No one mentioned “cutting.”
Staying overnight in a hospital seemed somewhat of an adventure.
I was used to staying over at either one of my grandmother’s homes on the weekends, which was usually a treat.
Grandchildren are supposed to be spoiled, right?
If you think I’m cute now, I was absolutely adorable then. If you think I’m small now, I was even smaller then.
I was in some large room with perhaps 5 other kids. I just have memories of a lot of white – white floors, white walls, white sheets, and people in white uniforms. I was in a raised hospital bed with a curtain that went around it.
I’m not sure how long I was there. I remember relatives visiting and being given a blue box that contained a Madame Alexander doll. The doll was fragile looking with dark hair and a long white dress. I remember thinking that it was pretty but it didn’t look cuddly. I was never into dolls, much more into stuffed animals.
While I was looking at the doll, my mom mentioned that maybe I should share the doll with the girl in the next bed, perhaps let her play with it.
Nuh-uh! I may not be ecstatic about my doll but SHE WAS MINE. Mom mentioned that the other little girl was a lot sicker than me.
SO? Was my thought. I was the queen here. La-la-la, I’m playing with MY DOLL.
MINE.
But that other little girl did look pretty sick. I remember grudgingly saying it was okay for the girl to play with my doll.
While the girl was playing with my doll (MINE!) I wasn’t too happy about being generous and nice.
I think I spent the night – I remember a nurse coming by at night and I was in one of those flimsy back-tying gowns. She came by and said that she had to give me a shot and it would be “just a pinch.”
Let the screaming begin.
Well, okay, I didn’t start yelling just yet.
The nurse was nice (as in kind) looking and she directed me to turn over on my side. It’s when she lifted my gown a bit to expose my tender backside that I began to get nervous.
“You’re such a brave little girl.”
Whimper.
“This will just be a pinch.”
Whimper...winding up now….
I smelled the rubbing alcohol and felt its cool evaporation.
Start screaming NOW.
The shot wasn’t all that bad but people deserved to be screamed at when they lie to you about something being just a pinch.
The lights are dimmed, the bars are raised around my bed so I feel like I’m in a giant crib and the curtain around my bed is drawn.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know is that my parents are back and looking at me and telling me that I’ll be going into surgery soon. I am not worried yet, I mean, I’m still The Queen right? Still the center of attention?
This occurred around 1970 when parents weren’t allowed in operating rooms. Heck, I don’t think anyone but medical staff were allowed in operating rooms back then.
Warning: Bad Stuff Happens Next
People in white come around the bed and the bars are raised. These aren’t low bars to prevent you from falling out of the bed, these bars are vertical and high enough that I feel very small. I’m back in the crib again and I’m trapped.
The people in white are wheeling me away from my parents. My mom is following though, taking photos. The kid in that photo looked pretty scared.
I start to get scared but I’m being brave at that point. My cage goes through some swinging double doors with round windows. I remember seeing my mom’s camera through one of those windows. She had a Kodak Instamatic, the kind with those square flashbulbs.
The bars are lowered and the people in white are making me lie down. I am not liking this. My gown is removed and all I see are these people in white: white gowns, white masks, white hats, white hands.
All these people in white are bending over me and one starts to put something cold on my chest, probably a stethoscope.
I totally freak out.
I begin crying and screaming and my legs and arms are thrashing around. I remember grabbing the cold metal thing off my chest and flinging it off.
I remember kicking. I remember thinking I shouldn’t be doing this because I’m a good girl but I’m scared! I’m scared!
“Hold her down!” I hear.
Someone grips my head and a big rubber mask comes towards my face.
“Smells like ice cream…” someone says.
I take a whiff and think, “You LIAR! Ice cream doesn’t have a smell…..”
There’s a photo of me coming out of the operating room – my mouth open and round. I think they put something in my mouth so I wouldn’t choke on my tongue.
I wake up and all my relatives are around asking me how I’m doing. I’m told that I’ve been brave and that because I’ve been so good I’ll get popsicles and ice cream – isn’t that nice?
I’m looking over at the bed next to mine, hoping that I get my doll back at some point.
I do get to eat ice cream and popsicles and I leave the hospital with my Madame Alexander doll.
My mom ended up having to have her tonsils removed, too. She was peeved that she didn’t get any ice cream.
“All I got was an ice collar.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
i had 8 teeth taken out to get my braces working right . . . that sucked!
Gary: Dang. That’s a lot of teeth. Did you wait until your wisdom teeth came out or what?
YIKE!!!!! Now my daughter is *****NEVER***** getting her adenoids taken out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kidding…sort of. My daughter has supposed to have gotten her adenoids out a little over a year ago, but I’m a great big giant chicken. She actually had to be put to sleep to have an extra tooth removed from up under her gum and she fought it sooooo hard – it was awful to watch. So awful they probably did you a FAVOR back then by not letting your parents watch.
I had my mouth wired shut for many weeks to fix an overbite. This was after I went under and had my jaw broke and repositioned. Yeah… fond memories there!
Jill: My mom would’ve loved to attend the surgery – she would’ve taken photos of the entire thing. It would have been nice to have been spared the freak out episode if my parents were there to hold my hand or something.
Not sure how my Dad would’ve held up.
I don’t recall any pain.
Tonsillectomies were big when I was a kid. When I got older, they weren’t doing them so much.
HMTKSteve: Yeesh. And you still have a slight overbite now, right?
Maybe if it had occurred to me to be my normal camera-happy self the whole thing wouldn’t have freaked me out enough to endlessly delay the adenoid surgery!
I think it could really have gone either way depending on the particular parents involved.
If she were as sure and confident with her camera then probably you would have been spared the freak out episode. But it could be not – just could have depended on a lot of things. I don’t know if my daughter would have been better off minus the the hand holding but also minus the slight look of panic in my eyes, or if the hand holding trumped the helplessness I felt…in any case, it will be a while yet before I work up to another round with that & sorry you had to have the freak out session at all. 
Jill: Well, I wouldn’t have liked the constant photo-taking (there are literally thousands of photos of me as a child – I’m surprised I’m not blind from all the flashbulbs) but I think I would have felt better having my parents around. The crowd of doctors seemed overwhelming.
I also had no serious idea what was going on. They may have told me but children don’t process things all that well. So having them around while the doctors prepped me, that probably would have helped. Unless they were freaking out of course. My mom didn’t freak about those things and I can’t recall my dad ever getting weirded out, either. But I never had any serious injuries. I was pretty much an “indoor kid” (like an indoor cat).
I’m not a parent so I wouldn’t know what to recommend for not freaking out if your child has to endure some discomfort. I’d probably try to talk with other parents or a child psychologist to see what the best approach would be (share your fears but be strong or hide it best you can like you’re not worried at all?)
My flippant answer – “I wouldn’t know what to recommend for not freaking out if your child has to endure some discomfort.”
Anti-anxiety medications work well.
My real answer –
I dunno…you can hide all the emotions you want from kids and they tend to pick up on them & magnify them despite your best efforts. I find tempered honesty to work fairly well most of the time, “I’m sad/worried/angry about ________ but it’s going to be ok” along with not letting them see when the emotions are at their most overwhelming…’course that operates on having a fair degree of control AND somewhere to be alone on occasion…
I can’t figure out where I got my “indoor kids”, but I guess it’s just the times.
So, who is the photo of?
HMTKSteve: I found that photo off some site that discussed dental procedures. The woman in the shot is holding ice packs to her cheeks to reduce swelling after wisdom-teeth extraction. Or something like that.
I did find a very generic photo of a man wearing one of those blue-fabric covered ice packs. It was tiny and just the back of his head. The photo I used here was more expressive of the kinds of faces my mom makes.
How come you didn’t credit the photo?
OOOOooey! I remember when my sister got her tonsils removed…They gave them to her in a plastic concealed container afterwards. Her tonsils looked pretty nasty!
-Gregg
HMTKSteve: Didn’t think of it and now I’m not sure where I got it. I’ve only recently seen people give credit to images they are using that aren’t their own.
Gregg: My mom and her mom (Granny) were teasing me that I would have my tonsils waiting for me in either a bag on the door or in a jar by the bed. I wasn’t sure if they were serious but did look around for them when I woke up. Does your sister still have them?
A good source of images (that I use) is flickr. Just search through their Creative Commons stuff.
Whoops, I go and forget to read people’s blogs for a week and see what happens, someone dedicates a post to me! You’re too sweet
What a traumatizing story! When I was 8, I spent a week in a hospital in Greece… They did a similar lock-out-parents-then-pin-me-down-and-stab-me thing, and my dad gave my favorite dolly to the girl with lukemia the next bed over. I never did see the dolly again.
I’m glad you’ve recuperated (?)
Irisi: Although I could remember being in the OR quite well, I don’t feel traumatized by it. I don’t have a fear of hospitals although I do fear post-operation bacterial infection (like getting MRSA) and anaesthesia in general. I haven’t had an operation since the tonsillectomy. (so far, so good!)
Yep, I did recuperate
I think that the girl next to me was sick with something really bad as well. I got the idea that my parents were telling me that I was lucky, that the girl next to me was much worse off than I.
I got sick last year with some type of infection. Four days of fever, could barely eat and by day 4 I finally took myself to the ER (it was a holiday so my doctor wasn’t available) and OF COURSE the fever broke then. But ER was very slow and the doctors and staff very nice. I felt like crap (I’m glad I’ve forgotten how badly I felt – wow!) and ended up getting my first IV to rehydrate me. THAT was a bucket of chuckles. I lost maybe 3 pounds in 5 days. The doctor had no idea what it was – said I had “acute viral infection syndrome” – just a catch all.
Which is why I use my hand sanitizers and do my darndest to take care of myself! As nice as the hospital staff was (the nurse was very kind and soothing) I really don’t want to go there!
I’ve had surgery before – corrective eye surgery. Basically they went in and chopped up my eye muscles, relocated them, and then re stitched them. Recovery was not very pleasant, I was literally completely blind for two weeks, and my eyes itched like nothing else… eek!
I unfortunately have been in the ER (especially for rehydration! I’m bad at keeping myself hydrated, apparently..) too many times to count
I have this heart condition, so sometimes if I get REALLY sick there is a risk my heart could blow up and I could die. Hence, whenever I run a really high, uncontrollable fever, somebody ends up rushing me off to the ER.
… I hate hospitals, as a patient. >:(
Irisi: Eye surgery? Eeeee! I had pondered laser correction surgery but thought, uh, I have healthy eyes and glasses and contacts are merely inconvenient. So I passed. I really did consider it since I could’ve gotten it covered by insurance but…I’ll be up for bifocals soon enough.
Based on your hangover prevention post I would’ve thought you’d never be dehydrated! I’m sorry that you have a heart condition. No wonder you do the organic and good food stuff in general – gotta stay outta the hospitals (as a patient).
Yeah, I wish it was just lasers, and not involving knives and sutures.. >.