tonsil stones

I'll start with tonsil stones, or tonsilloliths, because that's one thing bugging me lately.

I had been aware from time to time of a feeling like something was stuck in my throat, a tickly feeling. I'd have a tickly cough for a few days, and something would eventually come out. I figured it was a piece of food or something. In fact, I noticed when this happened the gross thing I coughed up was a little piece of rice. Since I usually have a kleenex in my pocket, I'd dispose of it without further ado...And in the meantime, I often had swellings in my throat, and feeling like there was a lump in my throat, that I figured were mildly swollen lymph nodes - again, from post-nasal drip and allergies.

But then other things started happening. I was getting pain in one ear or another, and had a bout of severe vertigo for over a week. Sore throats, too. My doctor just said it was post-nasal drip from my allergies. Then I looked with a flashlight in there, as best I could. There was a huge white spot on the right side of my throat. I reached down my throat to poke it, and all this junk came out onto my finger... then I gagged and coughed and more gunk came flying out into the sink. It smelled truly awful. I thought maybe it was an infection and that was pus coming out, but it was too thick to be pus. (Are you grossed out yet?)

I wondered if I had some disgusting throat disease -- cancer, or like, some kind of STD, throat gonorrhea or something. I hear you can get genital warts in the back of your throat. Syphilis. Maybe something even odder that I couldn't imagine. Looking stuff up on the net didn't help! I didn't know what to search on... "pain in throat"? "Lumps in throat?" Rash in throat? Pimples? Boils? I didn't even know where my tonsils were or what I was looking at. I even had a theory that maybe it was stuff stuck in some passage that went from the back of my throat to my sinuses.

Finally I reached the point where I went to an ENT, an ear-nose-throat specialist. She looked down my throat and said that I had deep holes, called crypts, in my tonsils, probably from past illnesses. Stuff, basically the same stuff that forms on your teeth, like tooth plaque, gets stuck in those holes in your tonsils. It smells really bad, gives you bad breath and a weird taste in your mouth, and the stones can get stuck and cause irritation or infection. She wrote down the word "tonsilloliths" for me.

"Lith" means "rock". The gunk stuck in the tonsil holes sits there for so long that a sort of chemical reaction occurs, like with tooth plaque, and it solidifies to some extent. A bit like pasta al dente.

EW.

The only cure for this is not to have tonsils. Tonsillectomy in adults is very painful and somewhat dangerous. As I understand it, they cut your tonsils out and cauterize them. Tonsil tissue might grow back. And recovering from tonsillectomy (as an adult) can mean extreme, prolonged pain, and not eating solid foods for a month or more. I'm not ready to do any of that just for a minor annoyance.

So, then what? What could I do?

The doctor said to gargle with salt water. Now, all my life I've heard that it's a good idea to gargle with salt water if you have a sore throat. And if you have a really sore throat, this does exactly nothing to help your pain. Warm salt water makes me want to throw up. BUT... doing this regularly does help prevent the tonsil stones from forming. Since I started doing this a couple of times a day, my tonsil problems have gotten a lot better, and I especially notice that the "swollen lymph nodes" got better too.

I also inspect my throat every day with a small, powerful flashlight. I've gotten to know where the main crypts, or holes, are. If I see white stuff poking out of them, I can either get it out by poking it with my finger. (This gets easier with practice.) I've used other things like blunt medical probes (available in medical supply stores) and manicure tools (it worked, but I don't recommend it) to get into the holes. Again, this takes patience and practice.

Another cheap, effective way to rinse out your tonsil crypts is to use an infant ear/nose syringe. These are in the infant section of any drugstore. I think you're supposed to use them to create gentle suction to get snot out of babies' noses. Mine, the long-nozzled kind, squirts high-pressure warm salt water into the back of my throat. I can use it for suction too, to dislodge a stubborn tonsillolith. But squirting water back there can reach to the places you can't see. The holes go deep sometimes. You wouldn't believe the amount of junk I've seen come out of there. It's just nasty.

I tried a WaterPik, and this worked, but the pressure was too intense. The infant nose syringe was extremely cheap, readily available, and can be controlled by hand. You can also use it to wash out your sinuses, but I'll write about that another day.

I hope this helps anyone who's having the same problem.

Practical hypochondria

Anyone who's had annoying medical problems knows that balance is hard to achieve. When to worry about your health? When to ignore it and hope for the best? What can you do that isn't going too far?

I obsess sometimes on minor medical problems. And every time I get a headache, I worry that it's brain cancer. I spend hours looking up obscure diseases if I get a really big zit. And you know what... that's okay. It means I'm overeducated, but if I find it comforting to assure myself I don't REALLY have brain cancer... it's not hurting me, and it's not hurting anyone else. The key is, judging what sources of information are reliable, and which aren't. There might be some quack-debunking - both for traditional and alternative medicine.

I would like to put a big priority on self-education and self-help, as well as cheapness. I'm not going to tell you to buy some product or vitamin or jog 20 miles a day. Ha!!! As if! No, I'm all about the common sense remedies, like gargling with salt water, or keeping your fingernails clean, or changing your lifestyle little by little to be healthier.

Here on Practical Hypochondria I will blog the history, in detail, of my experiences of my body and of medicine. You want to hear about my tonsil stones, and my sinuses, and how I got better from an anal fissure? And about all the rare diseases I worried it might be? You've come to the right place.