Yesterday ended up being an a good day for my tonsils and a bad day for television. After I finished my blog post I watched about ten minutes of Glee, before deciding the episode looked stupid, so I switched to New Girl. Ten minutes of Nick and Jess whining about being hungover, I switched to Supernatural, which was also a really weird episode, but at least I could sit through it. I don’t know if it’s the pain meds, or if I’ve just lost my patience for people being randomly mad at each other in my favorite shows. I finished the Fault is in Our Stars, but either the ending had been overly spoiled for me, or I simply lack compassion on pain meds, because I wasn’t too sad. Super good book, enjoyed the read. Just not a tear jerker, which all things considered is a good thing. Crying would hurt right now.

My day improved vastly when my friend gave me broccoli cheese soup, board games, and jello. Shannon, you are the best person in the world, and I love you. The soup was SO good.

And if you can’t tell by my description of day three so far, pain was minimal. Like a bad sore throat. Even at night.

Today was a slightly different story. On day four post-op, I was given instructions to rinse with salt water three times a day. (Preferably three different times then when I rinse with the bio-med stuff) and to open my mouth as wide as I can and stick out my tongue as far as I can three times a day. So I woke up for my seven AM dose of pain killers, and was feeling so good I decided to only take 2 teaspoons of the 2-4 teaspoon dose. I’ve been taking three. Last second I chickened out and did 2 and ½. It’s weird because my throat didn’t hurt, but it felt fragile. Like the pain is lurking beneath the surface and if I cough wrong or talk to much it’s going to come on stronger than I’ve ever experienced it.

So I lounged around for a bit telling myself to get up but getting distracted by facebook and tumblr. Just after 9 I finally got up, brushed my teeth, did the salt water thing, and then I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue as far as I could.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Am I glad I gave the pain meds time to kick in! That was an hour ago and my mouth still hurts. So, my suggestion for dealing with that is give the pain meds about half an hour, open as wide as you can, then immediately put on a fresh ice pack and drink a very cold drink. It helped….a bit. Remember, this is still an hour later. Be careful, because the stretching doesn’t hurt all that much while you’re doing it. It hurts when you close your mouth again.

I’d also schedule all these mouth swishy things because doing them all at once probably undermines the benefits of keeping your throat moist and not getting too stiff. So I’ve been alternating the salt water and the biomed, both help with the stinging of the pain killers so I pair them with doses of the medicine. Also, drink at least a bottle of something, water (I still can’t drink plain water, my mouth tastes awful), gatorade, juice (nothing too acidic), whatever, between doses. That’s one bottle every four hours. Doesn’t sound like much but I’ve been sleeping a lot so it hasn’t been easy to work it in, but I can tell the difference when I’ve had enough to drink and when I haven’t. It might not feel like it when you’re taking a sip of water after a long stretch, but a dry throat really does feel much, much,much much worse than swallowing cold juice.

All in all, still not suffering too bad. Tonsillitis hurt worse than this does so far (but again, that’s after pain meds, who knows how I really feel. My doctor didn’t give me anything for pain when my tonsils were swollen so much they were actually touching, so my perspective on severe throat pain is still pretty fresh.). I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop because I keep hearing how much worse it’s going to get at some point within the next few days as the scabs start to heal and fall off.