What is Chronic Tonsillitis?

I had chronic tonsillitis and infected tonsil crypts. They made me have bad breath. The debris that collected there was mucus from a nasal drip and food particles. The accumulation of this stuff makes tonsil stones.

These tonsil stones are called tonsilloliths, and they caused me to have a raspy voice and offensive breath. What actually caused the bad breath was sulfur-producing bacteria. The debris in the crypts and the sulfur caused a toxic reaction that produced bad breath.

My doctor told me I could do something to control it. He said I should gargle with a saline-soda solution three times each day.

@kylee07drg – It's good that you decided not to have surgery. Doctors these days actually prefer to take a wait and see approach.

My child had frequent throat infections. The doctor told us that to be considered a candidate for surgery, a child must have either 5 cases of tonsillitis in one year or 3 or 4 per year over a period of several years. He actually recommended that we wait and see what happens.

He informed me that tonsillitis often improves as the child ages. Sure enough, during the next year, my daughter only got a sore throat twice, and the following year, it only happened once.

I had chronic tonsillitis. Strep bacteria often inflamed my throat, and I had to take antibiotics for it. I was a small child and hated how the antibiotics made everything I ate taste bad for a week, but my doctor told my mother that serious complications can arise from untreated strep throat.

If left untreated, strep bacteria can spread and infect the middle ear, the sinuses, and the kidneys. Since I was too young to understand this, my mom just told me that my head would explode if I didn't take the medicine. That worked.

Eventually, after several battles with strep and a lot of missed time at school, I had to have my tonsils removed. I'm glad that I did, because sore throats were the absolute worst.

As a child, I stayed sick with colds a lot. I remember staying home from school with sore throats on many occasions.

My mom took me to our doctor. He said that I likely had chronic tonsillitis and that I should have my tonsils removed.

Once we got home, I told her I did not want them taken out, and she agreed that we shouldn't. That same doctor had recommended that my older sister have her tonsils removed. She didn't, and she turned out fine.

After a few years, the frequency of my sore throats lessened. I guess I didn't have chronic tonsillitis after all.

Chronic tonsilitis is truly miserable for the people who have it. I used to be a teacher and I had one child who constantly had an antibiotic on board and could barely eat.

For a while, things just went along with her pushing through the best that she could, but eventually her mother pressed her doctor for more than just medicine. After all, her child was utterly miserable all of the time.

As a result, the child had both her tonsils and adenoids removed. The next three years of her high school career were sickness free!

It seemed that as a child growing up, I constantly had a sore throat, runny nose, headaches, coughs – these kinds of little bouts just never went away.

Then when I moved out of the house at eighteen, everything mysteriously cleared up. I now know that what appeared to be chronic tonsillitis might have been related to second hand smoke.

I know it seems like my parents probably should have taken me to the doctor, and on several occasions they did. I was always just given some antibiotics and sent home. However, they were definitely of a mind that children didn’t need to go to the doctor over every little thing as well.

Come to find out, my chronic tonsilitis might have been more of an allergy than anything else. When my mom quit smoking after thirty years of die-hard puffing, her same symptoms disappeared as well.

I don't know why no one ever suggested surgery, but that I know of, no one did.