From my other journal, dated August 30, 2002

I have never had a sore throat like this. It started out as just feeling irritated by the drainage from my sinus infection and has gotten much, much worse. My tonsils are inflamed and when I swallow I swear I can feel my adenoids.

I'm not sure if that's even possible, but it sure feels like it is.

The whole way down my food feels as if it's peeling the skin off of the inside of my throat with a rusty, red-hot cheese grater.

The area at the top of my throat, around and above my tonsils, is so swollen and irritated the pain extends downward into my tongue and the area below it. The simple act of pushing the food around inside during the act of chewing is excruciating. Pain censors light up from the bottom of my mouth to the back of my throat.

I had recurring throat infections right after I quit smoking a few years ago (but no further problems until now), and even though my tonsils were much larger than they should be in an adult, none of the doctors who told me that thought it worthwhile to have them removed. Now I wish one of them had.

I'm about ready to sterilize a pair of toenail clippers and extract the little monsters myself.

Actually, I'm hoping there's something else we can do. The pain of a tonsilectomy for adults is reportedly much worse than it is for children, due in part to the size of the tonsils and the condition of the surrounding tissue. Little kids go in, get them removed and eat ice cream for a week. Adults go in, get them removed and can't eat anything but cold liquids for ten - fourteen days.

Skite!!

Sounds like a not-so-fun way to spend a vacation to me. Add to that the fact that Larry doesn't have any vacation time coming up until October and the fact that it's going to be almost impossible to recover while chasing the babies around and I think the suck factor here is rather apparent.

Well, as painful as it is, maybe it isn't serious. Doctors are reluctant to remove tonsils and/or adenoids from adults due to the difficulty in recovering from the procedure and only do it when all else fails. Maybe it's strep. Maybe it's a throat infection brought on by drainage from the sinus infection running down the back of my throat. Maybe the tonsils themselves are infected. They are a basic filter after all, catching every little particle of bacterial garbage that goes by them. They serve no other purpose yet they cause so much pain when they go bad.

Appendixes do that too.

It's as if during our creation our creators looked us over, saw that there were a couple of empty spaces and decided to throw in appendixes, tonsils and adenoids as filler. And what invariably happens to these spare parts?

They're the first things to go.

There's proof that we didn't really need them to begin with.

Maybe Goddess & God should have just used poly-fill or cedar chips instead.

We have relatives coming in from Virginia for my Mom's / Zoe's birthday and both Zoe and I are sick. If I have strep everyone who's been exposed will have to be under house arrest for a few days.

The suck factor begins to increase...

~~~~

Later on:

Yay! I don't have strep and my tonsils, though swollen, are not too bad off. They don't have sores or pustules on them, they're just really inflamed due to drainage. I have what the doctor referred to as "drainage streaks" down the back of my throat that are bombarding the already sensitive tissues with bacteria. This causes further irritation and is the reason for the pain in my mouth as well as my throat because the swelling is extending outward from my throat. The doctor gave me a stronger, generation 2 antibiotic. That should take care of it.

Zoe's got that damn cold now too and is totally miserable. She looks the way Trent looked last week, all pale and exhausted.

I'll have to go get the cake tomorrow regardless. Hopefully we will be able to fit it into the freezer.