Since you’ve opted to have awake tonsil surgery to avoid general anesthesia due to your existing heart condition, the removal of your tonsils shouldn’t take long, yet we must warn you that the length of surgery could vary depending on any unforeseen complications, which, generally speaking, don’t arise in most patients and can certainly be avoided if you can just keep your mouth wide open the whole time and not fidget while the surgeon inserts a long needle into your mouth to numb your throat by administering several excrutiating pricks into a sensitive area, an uncomfortable yet crucial step right before the operation that’s known to easily trigger your gag reflex, but, like we mentioned earlier, if you can sit still, all you should feel is a small pinch, and after that the rest will be a walk in the park, so to speak, minus the fact that you’ll feel a lot of cutting and pulling and also smell catharized blood vessels, the part of the procedure which tends to induce nausea in most people, plus it may be mentally challenging to sit with your head tilted back, feeling like you’re fighting for your life in an ancient gladiator arena, but overall there should be no physical pain, unlike the pain and suffering of Roman gladiators, who were de-facto slaves and had to entertain crowds in violent spectacles, often to the death, however, the D-word is not even on our radar in your case, even though you may at certain moments feel like you’ll be dying, you won’t be, in fact, you’ll be very much alive, what’s more, away from gladiators and violent fights, save for one similarity, namely that once the procedure is underway, you may feel like a gladiator pinned under the sword of another, but only because your tongue will be pressed down firmly so the surgeon can easily get to the back of your throat where the tonsils form a ring around the entrance to the airway and the esophagus, a tricky place to navigate, except for your skilled surgeon who’s done a myriad of these operations and is looking forward to helping you get rid of these germ-infested, swollen pads of tissue without which your life should be easier, and as soon as they’re removed, your gloomy world will brighten, and the only thing you’ll be left with is a gaping hole that will eventually heal properly, unless you refuse to follow post-op instructions, in which case it may get infected and turn into a purulent opening large enough to swallow you whole, so, at least, goes the legend of the extracted tonsils, those little rascals, which, just a word of caution, may briefly pulsate on the surgery table, like a pair of tiny beating hearts.
