Tonsillectomy

Indeed. This surgery seems to have been very common on children in the 1960s, still common in the 1980s, and now is hardly heard of (I'm a parent and do not hear other parents mentioning it).

And now there's further evidence that T&A is something to be avoided unless for a good reason. It may make the recipient susceptible to adult respiratory infections.

Maybe that's why I get pneumonia and bronchitis a lot. I had mine out at age 6 but don't remember being sick before that. I wonder if they were removed unnecessarily?

I had mine out at age 6 but don't remember being sick before that. I wonder if they were removed unnecessarily?

You betcha, bbw4doc! Well, you'll probably never know for sure now, but I would say that there's a good 50% chance that that was the case. As I've reported before, when I was a kid, in a reasonably well-off, middle-class neighbourhood, virtually all the kids had had it done. It was almost expected of the parents that they would tell the doc, 'Yeah, take little Tommy's [or Betty's] tonsils out', if the doc merely mentioned the procedure. And the parents might likely add, 'And better take his [or her] adenoids out too, while you're about it!' (Of course, they'd probably had their own T&A done as children.) It was a nice little earner for the docs in those days!

- Ken

I had mine out in 1952 at age 10 was taken to the hospital and was prepared for surgery with a bath and an enema that i had to poop out while sitting on a bed pan on a chair because another kid was getting the same thing done and he got to sit on the toilet. The next day i started to run a fever and they decided to send me home to get well, after a week i went back to the hospital to try again, got the same treatment but this time i got to sit on the toilet to poop.

Had surgery the next day for both tonsils and adenoids and everything came out okay except i had strings hanging out both sides of my mouth that were removed the next day.

I was in a crib post op. I remember the room was glassed so nurses could see kids. I needed to pee but could not attract attention of a nurse. The head of coribard was pushed against the sink. So I peed into the sink instead of the bed! I wonder if the nurses worried about the little boy who did not have to pee

I didn’t have it, but being a child in a disability school it was talked about a lot.

Speech therapists looked in our mouths a lot.

Apparently I had feminized tonsils despite being male.

Oh well

I still have the noids and the tonsils and I get upper respiratory infections and bronchitis yearly!

Because of my fetish, and how it got started, I love to discuss this topic. (Speaking of how it got started, another Zity-er, docinny45, is similar. See his post, #4, in MedFet/An experience to remember - How the magic started/Tonsillectomy age 3. There, he attributes 80% of his interest in medfet to having his tonsils out at age 5.)

Tonight, though, after looking at a long article online, "'A Wicked Operation'? Tonsillectomy in Twentieth-Century Britain", I just want to mention something I hadn't known (or anyway thought about) before. For decades at the start of last century, UK doctors opposing tonsillectomy (who were then in a minority) drew attention to considerable variability in the incidence of the operation between regions and social classes. They wanted to suggest that the operation was irrational. Then in the late 1960s the idea that tonsillectomy was 'traditionally' middle class was taken up by journalists: 'being born with a silver spoon and going to public school' was tantamount to also having your tonsils out!

Statistics seem to bear out this idea. In 1955, the following variability between regions was noted. In East Ham, near London, 25% of children entering primary school had had their tonsils removed, compared to just 0.5% in Merthyr Tydfil, a town in Wales. Socio-economic class was clearly also a factor. If you went to Bristol Technical School, and you were 14 or over, chances were only 14% that you'd lost your tonsils. But if you went to the relatively posh Bristol Grammar School, there was a 38% chance that you'd been done!

Now that I've thought about it, I'm not surprised at the above! Somewhere else in this thread I think I've noted that I went to a grammar school myself. Ditto several of my neighbourhood friends. By age 7, we'd all had our tonsils out!

Btw, today I've also posted on a related matter to Discussions/MedFet/Dental fetish/Throat exams.

- Ken

I had mine as a kid around 8, after about 1-2 years of discussions in the family about it, my personal opinion at the time was strongly against it but the hospital seemed to care more about parents and dr's opinion lol.

After getting a room I got 2 injections in the buttocks (one was a sedative the other probably atropine since lights after annoyed me). After injection the sedative kicked in very heavily and I desperately tried to fight it by shacking, pinching to avoid closing eyes, but it was useless since due to an emergency my op was delayed a few hoirs, so when they came to take me to OR, the effect was 95% gone and the fear counteracted against the balance 5% so I was definitely wide awake by the time I was grabbed away from my bed on stretcher. Both the long waits, the months spent in discussions in family without knowing if and when the operation will come and the extra waiting that day due to the delay in taking me to OR contributed to make me supernervous.

At the door of OR we had to wait another 5 min because it was not ready, then they took me inside, put on table and after another short wait. Since the surgeon was not ready at a signal from the door that he was coming without too much baby talk or preparation & since they were in hurry because of the previous delay I got a black anesthesia mask shown in front of face. Since my auntie told me many times that mask is bad and you feel suffocating and nauseous and to ask for IV as preferred option, more pleasant way to go to sleep. I turned my face, raised my hands and asked to have IV instead, I could also feel some really bad smell from just having had it near my face. But it seems on that day IV was not on menu because either that anesthetist preferred masks only with children or because they were late and changing anesthetic plan would cost a couple of minutes.

So without even replying to me the lady anesthetist tried to clamp the mask while I shook my head as nurses rushed to restrain me. I put on a short but brave fight I think, for some time they were not able to really clamp the mask but anyhow it was never really far from my face and I had to breath fast to fight so gradually I got weaker, until finally they clamped it and I could not hold my breath for long.

All the time protesting I just wanted iv so please stop the mask, the lights, the nurses restraining me, the anesthetist, the suffocating smell. All this caused a trauma (I still had nightmares for years) that caused my fetish. After op was nasty but tolerable.

5

Got 'em out aged 16,and because I probably was that scary looking they let me sleep during operation.

I had my tonsillectomy when I was a 4 or 5 years old child like all of my friends too. I think it was a standard procedure there and it has always done with general anesthesia.

When I was 13 years old I had my tonsils and nasal polyps removed and the sinuses and frontal sinuses were reduced in size. The operation was performed under general anesthesia and I remember the days afterwards as very painful.

I remember it hurt pretty good after for about a week. I didn’t eat much as I had a really hard time with the pain etc. But I did eat lots of ice cream and water ice.

I wrote most of this on another thread, but back in the late 1960s, when I was a teenager I had my tonsils removed very late. . The next day after the op all the little children who had it done on the same day as me were up and running around enjoying the copious ice cream that they were given. I was still being sick from the anaesthetic, I was getting constant nose bleeds for some reason and feeling very sorry for myself. All the little children went home on day 3, but I was in for a week while they tried to stop the nose bleeds with several cauterisation attempts.

Also my wounds in my throat were not healing well because of the sickness. The reason this writing was on another thread was because I was in a ward with many younger children, all of who were given an oral pre-med. I was expecting the same but a very attractive young nurse came and told me I had to have an injection in my bottom. I had never had an injection there, and had no idea what to expect, so I laid on the bed with my operating gown open exposing my bottom completely and waited for her to return. When she came back she laughed at my position, I told her I did not know how she wanted me and she said "certainly not like that" (oddly, I remember her exact words). The nurse had me lay on my side and bend my knee up a bit, then she gave me the injection. I was so frightened of how much it would hurt, but it was not too bad in the event

Good news for anyone whose kid is facing this procedure (adults too, l guess). Prof. Simon Carney of Flinders University in South Australia has looked at the cases of thousands of kids who have had either tonsillectomies (full tonsil removal) or tonsillotomies (partial tonsil removal) - and has found that the latter works well, results in much less blood-loss, and is relatively painless. He advocates leaving a crescent-shaped stump of each tonsil. Voila! Little Tommy or little Mary is happier for it.

- Ken

I have 2 sisters. They both needed them out. My mom paid me $20 to put up with them, not giving them any guff, be nice, and help her. I was all over that. They didn't find out about this till way later!

Interesting, Dragonflies369! So sisters teased each other and talked guff at each other, too! I was a bit like that to my sister, 3 years younger than me. But l do remember visiting her in hospital before her tonsillectomy, at about age 7, and l think l was big-brother-nice to her on that occasion. I wasn't all bad, you see! (The occasion wasn't reciprocal. She had only just been born when l had my tonsils and adenoids out when l was 4yo.)

- Ken

Lots of ice cream afterwards. ?

I'm warning you, when I went in at about five years old to have my tonsils out, guess what, I got circumcised at the same time. I remember my mother putting some kind of lotion or gasoline on me. I don't remember if there was any pain but I do remember it being all scabbed up.

So, let that be a warning. It happened to me.

the hoseman1

It's not rare, hoseman1, for a boy or teen to be circumcised (on his parents' request, usually) when he has his tonsils out. I saw such cases more than once. Mind, the youngster isn't always told beforehand. He wakes up with a sore throat - he'd expected that - but then wonders why he's sore down below, too!

- Ken

I don't think I've posted exactly this little item before (only related stuff, whether in this thread or in another such as "Bad Doctors" - or whatever it was called, which I've been unable to locate because when I entered "doctors" in Zity search, specifying heading only, it came up empty-handed).

No surprise to some of us to read of a 1966 article in the 'Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin' (published for doctors by the Consumer Association) which indicated how medicine and surgery have their fads and fashions, just like much else. The article argued that only 10% of tonsillectomies had 'clear indications', while the remaining 90% of them were attributable to the 'enthusiasm' of surgeons and to medical fashions.

My informant in a separate article, which I first read last year, one Louis Dwyer-Hemmings, comments: 'Frivolous recommendations by medical practitioners were thought to be just as possible and dangerous as frivolous demand by parents.'

Anyone who has seen kids straight after tonsil surgery would think long and hard about inflicting the operation on their own brood. (For a bit of grim humour, though, watch the old Clifton Webb movie called CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, in which a large family has all its kids done at home, one after the other, by an obliging surgeon. The operation, of course, used to be a nice little earner for GPs and surgeons.)

- Ken

I had mine removed at the age of seven. Reasons for removal have not been that clear. It was more or less state of the art in 1970. I remember the first visit to the hospital for an initial interview. There it was also decided that a general anesthesia would be necessary.

At the day of the operation two nurses went in my room with a little trolley. They prepared injections, two in my back and two in my legs. It did burn quite heavily, especially in my back. Then my complete bed was driven down to operation circus in the cellar. I remember the command to count backwards and the question whether I already got my injections - that's all.

Thanks Nils, an informative post. No less than four pre-op injections given a 7yo before his tonsillectomy whose necessity was unclear. See why it's been called a 'wicked operation'?!

- Ken

I had mine out at age four I think. I was dropped off at the hospital and was there i think 3 days ? I remember being given a bath the night before and then the smell of that nasty mask. After that it was orange sherbert and a matchbox car on the way home? 1971

Wow, very vague memory of having it done... I must have been very young, 4 or 5? as I don't remember where it was done or how long I was in the hospital.. Only memory is being driven in a car..

Hi efun42 (post #87 )! For me, as a young boy lying on the operating table as instructed by the anaesthetist, it amounted to rather more than 'the smell of the nasty mask'! For me, it was positively choking and hugely terrifying! That experience (of receiving ether) is the single most formative factor in my medfet.

- Ken

Speaking of recent Australian research on tonsillectomies (compare post #78 ), l remember that a year or so ago, researchers at Melbourne University did a longitudinal study (over time) of people who had had their tonsils out when they were kids. The researchers found that such people were more susceptible to ailments such as respiratory difficulties in later life. Ah, me!

Thanks Mum & Dad for surrendering your little boy to this 'wicked operation'!

- Ken

Curious as to when and if this was necessary. Just a sign of the time. Good excuse for ice cream. Don’t hear about it any more.

Thanks, gwhap! What you say (post #91 ) rather supports what l've saying here about the medical profession having reformed itself in recent times re this particular procedure. (There are probably one or two matters that have supplanted tonsillectomies as the new medical fads?!) I think that a main reason for tonsillectomy these days is for sleep apnea and such conditions - whipping out the tonsils may help clear the airway. Or is that just another voguish 'solution' for the condition?

Yes, plenty of post-op jelly and ice cream were bribes for kids facing having their tonsils out!

- Ken

Something like 65 years ago. According to the home medical "diary" it was done in the Dr.'s office.Ether to knock me out.Yes--I got a pint container of Chocolate ice cream when I woke up.There was no pre-op enema. I believe the procedure today is a big deal done only in a hospital with a 4 figure pricetag...