Maybe those who do the removing treat the children in such a way as to encourage such conditions as (PTSD), depression, or anxiety.
Fortunately, I avoided all such conditions.

… prior to having their tonsils removed contributed.

ice cream... and the reality being that it was agony to swallow even my own drool. Also remember an extremely unpleasant nurse.

Source of my anxiety? Maybe.
Start of my lifelong discomfort in any and all medical settings? Definitely.

ice cream. I do remember having more pain and recovery time than my younger step-sister who had hers out at the same time.

I don't think people of that generation are more prone to anxiety than those born when antibiotics prevented most often the need for tonsillectomy. However, I can't speculate on Swedish rates of anxiety and/or tonsillectomies in that country.

My parents brought me from NJ to a Park Avenue surgeon when I was almost eight. He was a stranger, not my pediatrician. I was informed that I was going to "have your tonsils out." When it was explained to me that they would put me "to sleep" and my tonsils in my throat would be cut out, I freaked. I waited until my mother was distracted and literally ran out into the streets of Manhattan, thinking if I got lost, no surgery. (Well, I WAS eight.)

They caught me and tried to reason with me. On the ride home, Mom stopped at a diner and bought me a hot fudge sundae in order to appeal to my sense of reason. More of this if I got the surgery.

They even gave me an insipid record to play to get me used to the idea. Peter Ponsil Lost His Tonsils.

Fast Forward to the morning of the surgery. I was checked into, no less, Mount Sinai Hospital on Fifth Avenue. (Holy cow! For tonsils???) My mother was with me. I was told about the ether and the mask. And I was told I'd get a shot to help me sleep. And I was expecting to get that shot in my arm like the other ones, like tetanus. And I hated shots. But no, I was misled. The nurse told me to lower my pajama bottoms. What for? For my shot. What? Who does that? It almost sounded perverted (to an eight year old). I looked helplessly at my mother, hoping for parental intervention. No dice. If anything, Mom looked tired and perplexed. What are you waiting for? (So much for my patient advocate.) I didn't want that shot in my butt. I knew that crying and throwing a fit wouldn't change things. And I was getting that shot. I figured all I could do was stall for time. The nurse was poised. I looked up and asked her, "Nurse, is that needle clean?" Yes, I asked a nurse in a premiere hospital whether the needle on the shot was clean. Mom looked aghast and maybe would have put me out before the shot hit me.

Post-surgery. I woke up and my throat was screaming in pain. Swallowing saliva was torture; same with water. I went on a hunger strike. Refused ice cream. They made me roast chicken. (Are you kidding me? It was akin to swallowing broken glass at that point.) And they kept me in the hospital for longer than usual because I lost a lot of blood during the procedure. And they gaslighted me, telling me that losing a lot of blood meant the surgery went very well. (It sounded like malpractice to me.)

I was released. At home, while still coping with a very raw throat, I contracted measles or mumps during my recuperation. Double the pleasure, double the fun. (Note the sarcasm.) And I "celebrated" my birthday during this time period. I was miserable. And I missed a lot of school.

Because I lost so much blood, I was quite anemic. That meant I had to take these awful green pills to build up my red blood cells. I could barely get them down. And it also meant getting the finger-stick blood tests alternate days to check my blood count. I swear the technician not only used the same finger, but also managed to stick me in the same spot on my finger, which was howling painful. The other option to build up my blood was to have me eat the vegetables I most eschewed: spinach, Brussel sprouts, etc.

This whole adventure lasted from February to April.

While I don't think I have PTSD from all this, you can tell it made an imprint on my memory.

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2024, 09:37 PM - Edit history (1)

Interestingly enough, I never caught strep even tho we shared a bedroom all thru childhood. I first caught it when I was in my 30s because it was going around the office and my damn sick boss used the phone on my desk.

But back to my sis. She was born when I was 6 y.o. and our brother was 5 y.o. — so primary school in the 1950s. We brought home every childhood disease going around, which meant that in the first year of her life she got measles and mumps and chickenpox and rubella. She was one sick little baby. She was so tiny that at the age of two my parents took her to a pediatrician for a couple of visits, which was a big deal because our family doc was a GP who took care of the whole family for everything. The pediatrician said she was just going to be “a little hummingbird.” She was 3 when we moved away.

What she was was a really skinny little girl who was sick a lot with strep and whatever else went around. Our dad did not believe in tonsillectomies — but we moved again, and a new doc took one look at her throat and said the surgery absolutely had to be done, and so at the age of 10 it was.

She started to grow. She grew about 12 inches in a year. She was hungry all the time from growing so fast, and mom just kept feeding her probably 6 times a day, and she was still skinny.

“A little hummingbird” my butt — by the time my sis quit growing she was nearly 6 feet tall, which is 8 inches taller than I turned out to be.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the study correlating anxiety disorders and PTSD with having one’s tonsils out. Our dad didn’t approve of the procedure because he and his sibs were of a generation born just after WWI when it was commonly done as a preventative measure — so dad and his two sibs were sent to the hospital as a group to just get it over with. Anxiety disorders — don’t really know that it runs in that side of the family, though I suspect PTSD was probably present because of the time they spent in an orphanage.

Where the anxiety disorders run deep is on my mom’s side of the family, but truly they (and we in my generation) also had experiences that could account for that — and I suspect a genetic component. My sis got the whammy. But from a tonsillectomy that cleared her system of a serious, continuous infection? Pardon my skepticism, when she was so desperately sick as an infant, and repeated illnesses dragged on for years. My health has always been better than hers, starting with greater resistance to infectious diseases after childhood.

Still, compared to a study with a million people in it, I expect my family’s experiences can easily be chalked up as anecdotal.

My sis also had huge ear problems. I was always sick with respiratory illnesses, having been born with a swollen right tonsil. Both of us had the surgeries early on and both of us got so much better, especially me. My sister continued having ear problems and was totally deaf in one ear by the time she was 30, her ear drum had ruptured.