Five days ago I had some minor surgery done. Nothing complicated, really, but it meant spending an entire day at the hospital (8-9 hours), most of it on recovering enough to go home (with an arsenal of relatively heavy painkillers). The doctors removed the
tonsils and the
uvula, the purpose being to cure or reduce my condition of
sleep apnea.
Now, don't be fooled by the "minor" part of minor surgery, as the recovering part is by no means in proportion. In this case, having surgery in the back of your throat means you cannot swallow at all the first day or so. This includes your own saliva, so the only way you have to get rid of the saliva filling up your mouth is using your tongue to push it out between your lips (in my case it hurt too much to spit it out, even after having some relatively heavy painkillers). However, this improved after the first day.
Now, the scar tissue forming in the back of your throat hurts, and the surrounding area gets swollen, adding to the pain. Each time you try to swallow, you can feel the back of your tongue rub against the scar tissue, which again causes pain. In addition, muscles in the affected area hurt when you ask them to perform the coordinated task of swallowing, making the task non-trivial.
Since swallowing is so painful (even difficult), I have not been able to eat anything solid. At the most, I have only been able to eat small amounts of body-temperature soup and some chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce. I prefer the latter, since the taste is neutral and, unlike some soups, does not seem to irritate the scar tissue (tomato soup, for example, is probably too acidic). However, I am only able to eat a small amount before it gets too painful. This does not mean much in terms of caloric intake, so it mostly just counts as fluid, which is more important than food anyway. As for drinking, I have found that for some weird reason, pure water just hurts too much, so I stick to other drinks. The two most successful ones so far are body-temperatured tea (with milk) and, weirdly enough, ginger ale. Yoghurt is too sweet and acidic. The lack of caloric intake means that this is a pretty effective (although strictly not recommended) diet. My weight has dropped approximately 1 kg (2.2 lbs for you metrically challenged :-) per day, which means I will soon have reversed the past 2-3 years of weight increase, which a certain someone is responsible for. Even if this means I probably can use clothes I haven't been able to wear for years, this is just the wrong way to reduce weight!
As for pain killers, I take them every 6 hours or so (which means I have to get up in the middle of the night, when the pain becomes too intense, to renew the concentration of these chemicals to my blood stream), and the total prospected period I will have to live off them is 10-12 days, according to the doctors. These buggers are a combination of paracetamol and codeine (morphine-based), i.e. of the Paralgin Forte/Major class. Although they take away most of the pain, it certainly does not remove the peaks of pain that come whenever I swallow; i.e. only the average level of pain is reduced. Now, it's not only the scar tissue that hurts. Noooooo! A lot of the surrounding muscles in the general area hurt, and too often I get this intense pain which radiates out from the back of the throat and to the ears. These seem to disappear quicker if I apply a heat pack to the general ear/lower jaw area for 5-10 minutes or so.
Although the information I got beforehand mentioned pains for several days, and that it would be difficult to eat, there is no way I could have imagined this level of pain. If I had known how painful it would be, I would probably not have considered this as an acceptable solution to the problem.
(Thanks, tuxette, for supplying me with the foodstuff and liquid, and for being very patient. Now, can you fluff my pillow, please? :-)
