Tell about your tonsillectomy

I have not myself had that surgery, even though it is fairly common in Norway, although not so common as in the Anglo-saxon parts of the World.. What perhaps interests me much are all the prepartions for this surgery and what arrangements had after surgery. I just list some of the preparation and arrnagements that might occur.: Enema, rectal temp,, other temp, blood pressure measureing, ausculation, rectal injection of sedation, anesthesia procedure, urethral catheter, anal catheter, IVs, breathing tube, electrodes, injection marks, surgical scars on different body part.

Also symptoms are interesting, especially symptom from other body part than the throat area, for example rectal or urthral symptoms.

Some of the things mentioned would be very uncommon for a plain tonsillectomy. But I have strong indications from elsewher that kids and young people often have exams in the intimate area or lower body part under the same session, because it is convenient to do these at the same time when the lower body part is free to access during anesthesia for tonsillectomy., so the two things get scheduled to be done at the same time.

I had my tonsils out when I was thirtysomething, as well, one of my daughters had hers out when she was pretty young. We both had severe soar throats often. My daughter also had her adenoids out at the same time, other than that, neither one of us had anything else done. I believe it was done under general anesthesia, so an IV was started in pre-op. Probably had our chests/ lungs listened to. In the OR, once we were under, I'm sure we were hooked up to all kinds of monitoring equipment and possibly a breathing tube. I'm not sure how that works since they are working in the throat. Other than that, nothing was done as far as examining us. Definitely nothing with our rectums or genitals. Neither one of us had to even take our underwear off when we changed into a gown for surgery. I think that is pure fantasy.

It was obviously routine. During our 5th grade April vacation it seemed like my whole class was there at the hospital. Only one guy got out of it because they found he had a cold. They wheeled me into the operating room, clamped a foul smelling rubber mask on my face and suffocated me with what smelled like model airplane cement and it burned my lungs and windpipe. That was the end of my model airplane hobby. When I began to come to I couldn't read the blurry numbers on the room door and then I tried to swallow: BIG fucking mistake. I was just learning to play the trumpet and it ruined that--all the air came out my nose. I've never been able to swim since without wearing a nose clip. Oh yeah, the kid who got out of it paid dearly. He became an ensign and was lost at sea on his first cruise.

The only good part about the whole ordeal at 12yrs old was the enema that I recieved before surgery!

I can continue by telling a fairly recent story from Norway. A 4 years old girl had tonsillectomy. After the surgery the girl had strong pain from her urethra and difficulties with urination. They had to take her back to the hospital where it showed that her urethra had been hurt, It healed, but the ordeal resulted in a complaint.

The explanation that were given is that they intended to place a suppository in her anus, but by mistake pushed it at her urethra before the mistake got detected. Such a suppository is actually common for pain killing and sedation after the procedure. The parents accepted the explanation.

But the explanation given is highly improbable. A professional nurse would never had done such a mistake, even if she were drunk.

I suppose they inserted something into her urethra by purpose, but would not reveal it. Possibly they performed a cystoscopy for some reason which could have been for research or for training of other health personal, and it was done brutally. Possibly some authorities had ordered some intimate exam to be performed without letting the parents know. The minimal explanation is a clumpsy insertion of a catheter.

I know about the incident because the parents went to the newspapers with it.

I have not myself had that surgery, even though it is fairly common in Norway, although not so common as in the Anglo-saxon parts of the World..

I am in the USA and was born in 1962. By the time I was in 1st Grade it seemed, according to memory, like maybe half of my class was having their tonsils out. Scared the bejesus out of me because I kept wondering “when is it my turn?”. I did have some sore throats in my youth and even tonsillitis as I recall but nothing bad. However, my pediatrician was ahead of the curve at that time. He did not think the routine removal of tonsils was a good idea and nothing I had at that time was out of the ordinary or severe that he felt would warrant removal. I still have my tonsils and adenoids as do my younger sisters. My mother, born in the late 30's, had her tonsils and adenoids removed as a routine matter. My late father had his tonsils removed as well though I am not sure about his adenoids. I know my mother to this day has some respiratory issues that might now be due to her lack of tonsils and adenoids according to research. Those organs do serve a purpose otherwise I think evolution would have eliminated them by now.

I had my tonsils and adenoids out in 1969 at the age of six. I was an in patient for two nights - not uncommon back then for a simple procedure. I did not have an enema or catheter - why would they do that for this type of surgery?? I do remember suppositories, for sedation at night and before the surgery IIRC. I'm pretty sure I woke up during the procedure - I could hear voices, but couldn't see anything. There was no pain.

The best part was getting to eat lots of ice cream!

I took mine out when i was 1yo, cause they were bad to me……didnt remember anything….not even the ice cream part as my friend @bbw4doc told about 😢

Za

At age 5 or 5-½. Done in the Doctor's Office. I was knocked out with ether. I have no memory of getting a enema the night before. It would have been with the enema bag and I sure would have remembered that at age 5+. This took place in 1955. I fussed briefly with ether but I went out quick. When I woke up my throat felt a little sore but not too bad. I was given a pint of Chocolate ice cream and went home with my Dad. Full recovery was rapid.

Thanks to Velociraptor (post #1 ) for asking the question posed by this thread (he knows that the topic interests me) and to others here for their several informative answers. 😃

I'll give an account below of my own memories of my T&A (tonsils and adenoids) surgery at age 4. I remember it vividly. But I'll probably need to omit some of those memories from this post - can't cover everything! It took place in a suburban private hospital that was probably just a large converted house. The children's ward was an especially big room with several beds spaced around it. It was presided over by a fierce matron, I remember.

I had never been away from home in my life before. By the time I left hospital about two days later, I had received an impression that the world outside my family circle could be cold and heartless, and at times decidedly terrifying. Not good! (Dr Karl Menninger talks about the unwitting cruelty of surgeons, especially where children were concerned, in his admirable 1938 book ‘Man Against Himself’. See below.)

I was admitted to hospital the evening before my surgery, which was scheduled for the following morning. Just before the appointed time, a gurney arrived for me, and I was wheeled across a foyer and down a side corridor. I could have walked the distance in about 20 seconds. Wheeled into the operating room, I saw several white-coated persons, including Dr Shannon, my surgeon. He waited while one of the nurses or orderlies asked me to move myself onto the operating table. ‘Can you manage it?’ I could and did. ‘Now lie down.' For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Then they put a bandage over my eyes. Mum hadn't told me to expect that, and I felt my first twinge of unease. Then came the anaesthesia with ether.

Ether was administered by drops applied to a gauze mask which was fitted over my mouth and nose. Again a few seconds passed. Then the fumes began to affect me. The smell was choking. Suddenly I was terrified. For just an instant, I magnanimously assumed that someone had made a mistake, so I tried to sit up and ask them to please start again. But they pushed me down! My terror became anger, and I kicked out - knowingly aiming my kick at where I thought someone was standing. The kick was well aimed, and I had the satisfaction - again momentary - of feeling contact, and hearing a startled grunt as I connected. Soon afterwards came oblivion.

Those T&A memories are the definite basis of my strongest medfet fetishes. Perhaps that basis was augmented when I was again in hospital at age 12 and saw other kids coming back from having surgery, often tonsillectomies. Still half asleep, many of the kids would be whimpering or moaning, or crying, some with blood around their mouths after their surgery. I'm not proud of myself, but inside me sadistic feelings stirred when I saw those things. I also noticed that occasionally other surgery would have been performed on the child at the same time: e.g., on waking up, a boy would notice not only that his throat hurt but that his penis was sore - they had circumcised him! (Another combination of surgeries was T&A plus surgery to cut the frenulum of the tongue in kids afflicted with tongue-tie.)

I'll conclude by quoting Karl Menninger:

An occasional example of frank sadism in surgeons is occasionally not lacking. […] Nothing is so barbarous and so fraught with the danger of subsequent disaster to the personality as the widely prevalent custom of taking a little child into a strange white room, surrounding him with white-garbed strangers with outlandish headgears, permitting him to see queer paraphernalia, glittering knives, and often blood-splotched linen and at the height of his consternation and terror pressing an ether cone upon his face and telling him to breathe deeply and soon his tonsils will be ‘out’. (Menninger, pb edition, p. 261)

Ah, the good old days!

- Ken

I was probably 3-4. Post op my bed had high rails, like a cage without a top. I needed to pee, but I couldn't get the attention of the nurse; I noticed at the head of the bed/cage was the sink. So I peed into the sink rather than wet the bed. I was upset that due to milk allergy I only got Jello while all the other kids got ice cream

I had my tonsils removed when I was about 5 years old. I believe it was around 1951. It appears that many children had their tonsils removed in that era. I remember that my parents took me to the hospital in the afternoon before my surgery. My dad said to me before leaving that he expected me to take everything like a “big boy.” When my parents left, a nurse came and took my temp rectally. I was used to that because my family doctor and my mom both took my temp rectally. She told me that in a little while that she would be back to give me an enema. She asked me if I got them at home. I surely did!! She returned a little later and she gave me the enema. This was the first time that I ever used a bedpan!! Later before going to sleep, I remember that she gave me an injection in the butt. The next morning I was taken to the OR. They put me to sleep with ether and the mask. I believe that I stayed another full day in the hospital. They gave me soft food to eat. When my parents arrived to take me home, my dad asked the nurse if I had been a good patient. She said that I truly was!! At home a few days later I must have become constipated. My mother called the doctor. When she was off the phone she told me that the doctor said that I had to have an enema. A little later my aunt arrived and she and my mom gave me an enema.

I was five or six years old. I had a one or two night hospital stay. I recall the anesthesiologist told me the gas would smelly like "grape jelly." My next conscious moment I was going to tell him that it smelled like spaghetti sauce to me, but when I went to speak I experienced some great pain in my throat. The extent to which I would be given ice cream was definitely exaggerated. That's about all I can recall.

The topic fascinates me - a peculiar thing to fetishise, I know - and I've obtained some pleasure lately from raising the matter with lady friends, who are usually quick to say something like, ‘Oh, I had mine out when I was …’ or ‘I’ve still got mine'. Sometimes I have to ask them but often, as I say, they volunteer the information. One gambit I use is to link it with my asthma and mention research by some medicos at Melbourne University in 2018 which showed that susceptibility to breathing disorders increases if you've had your tonsils out in childhood (as I did). Maybe you'd call that playing the sympathy card!

Some readers might like to look at a thread such as ‘The mechanism of paraphilias/fetishes?’.

- Ken

I had my T&A’s removed when I was 6 or 7 years old, so that would be 1958 or 59 time frame. I used to get a lot of sore throats and ear aches as a child. The remedy back then was T&A surgery. They bribed the kid with the promise of all the ice cream you wanted after the surgery. Yeah, right. I was scheduled for surgery and 2 night stays. The night before the surgery and the night after. The day before or maybe the day I was supposed to be admitted my mom summoned me to the bathroom and told to me to undress. I asked if I was get a bath and she said after I had my enema. (WTF?) What’s that? I asked. She said she was going to wash out my butt and proceeded to pull out her red combination bag and set it up. I didn’t know what was in store for me. She filled the bag and sat on the toilet seat and told me to lay face down across her lap. She then lubed my butt with Vaseline and slid the black enema tube in. I started to holler as she started the flow. She explained that it was necessary for my surgery and if we didn’t do it at home then I would have to have it in the hospital and the nurses would not be as gentle as she would be. In retrospect I’m sure mom was as nervous as I was about the whole deal. Anyway she let the water flow and it started to cramp and she would stop for a minute and let them subside then let it flow again. When she thought I had enough she told me to hold it for a while, which to me seemed like forever, then I was able to release.

I don’t remember much about the admission process at the hospital. I do remember getting to my room and then a nurse coming in and checking my temperature with a rectal thermometer. Next she lubed me up again and told me I was getting a suppository! WTF, again! Next thing I know something is sliding into my bum again followed by her finger to make sure it’s in! I asked what was that and she showed me a suppository in the package. I seem to remember it was kind of green looking through the wrapping. When it was time for surgery they wheeled me down to the OR and the anesthesiologist put a mask over my mouth and nose and told me to breathe deep, and said doesn’t it smell like ”new mown hay?” I mumbled uh huh and passed out. (For years after my operation I thought the guy said newmonhay, like it was some medical term like pneumonia or something. Litttle did I know he was talking about fresh cut grass!) The next thing I remembered was coming to in the recovery room, sitting up and asking “where am I?” and immediately puking blood all over clean white sheets. My throat was on fire! The combination of raw tissue and bloody vomit was like I had a flamethrower in my throat. I mumbled something about the mess and the recovery nurse said don’t worry about it, got me cleaned up then they wheeled me back to my room. I felt so bad I didn’t want anything including ice cream. I spent the night and the next morning they brought me a fried egg and dry toast for breakfast. The toast was like swallowing sandpaper.

Anyway that’s my T&A operation story, but it was also the awaking for me to a new place to play! I had become aware of my anus as a pleasure center! As much fussing I did when mom administered my first enema, I was secretly making mental notes about what was happening. She never gave me another enema but I began to sneak them when I got a little older and also started exploring that area with other objects.

I still wonder why I had to have an enema for throat surgery in the first place and what was in the suppository the nurse gave me in the hospital, sedative?

Now you know the rest of the story.