Tonsillectomy Surgery

Tonsillectomy Surgery

Do not eat or drink anything 24 hours before surgery. Get to the surgery location early to do paper work and get prepared for surgery. Have someone to drive you home and pick up your prescriptions (if possible, have the dr. Give the prescriptions before the surgery and pick them up).

The nurses will give the person a bag for their clothes, including bras for the ladies, and a hospital wrap and packaged socks. Once dressed and laying down on the surgery bed, they will cover the patient with blankets, put in the IV, and for this patient they placed circulation cuffs on the calves. The doctor will come in, ask for any last questions, then the anesthesiologist will come in, talk, go out, come back with other nurses, place the sleep medicine into the IV and cart the patient of to the surgery room, but the patient will not know because they fall asleep within a minute of rolling out of the room.

Whoever is waiting for the patient will also meet the doctor, if the person has a cell phone, the nurses will get the number just in case they need to call it, and, in this patient's case, after 25 minutes, the doctor will come out and talk to the person waiting, let them know how the procedure went and that the patient is resting (the surgery could take 30 minutes to an hour).

Once the patient wakes up from surgery, the nurses ask about the pain level, be honest. They will give some more pain medicine if needed. The patient may feel nauseated due to the pain medicine, but the staff will offer mashed up popsicles in ginger ale, they will also make one to take home. The patient will change into their original clothes before leaving, with help, and be carted out by wheel chair.

Tips on medications for adults:

I was given four medications: Keflex, Fluconazole, Prednisone, and a huge thing of Percocet.


All doctors are different, these are the medicines I was prescribed. The Fluconazole is for yeast infections and to prevent any of that in the mouth, the Keflex is to fight bacteria and sickness that may want to set in, the Prednisone is for swelling and pain and needs to be taken with food-before taking it, to lessen the sick feeling it has on a person-drink 1 to 2 glasses of water, and the Percocet is for pain, take as directed on the dot for the first 5-7 days, after that if one wants to stop and switch to extra strength Tylenol (so they can drive if feeling up to it), talk to the doctor, but do not take the pain killers with any other over the counter meds. Once one stops the pain medicine, plan on not taking it again, but the patient needs to talk to the doctor if he feels he needs to go back to the pain medicines, because mixing the pain meds and over the counter drugs can cause serious liver damage and could have horrible effects on the body. 

If in doubt about anything, call the doctor.

When getting home, sit down and go to sleep, take advantage of the sleep, it will help you heal. For parents, if able, have the kids stay with a relative over night for the first night at least.