My story - Cured by tonsillectomy, but still can’t get over it...

[ginger505]

Hi. I was reading this forum for many years, and now it’s time to also share my story.
It all began 25 years ago when I was born. When I was a kid (boy), under 10 years old, I remember that was the only period of my life when I really lived in the true sense of the word. I was a very happy, very positive, very energetic kid. I was the happiest kid on Earth. Back then, I was living in a small village in my country. Everything was perfect, I had friends, I was playing all day with them. When I started school, I made even more friends. we were gathering almost everyday at my house yard to play, I was always the initiator. Calling them on their home phones (because mobile phones were more rare at those times) to come over and play. All neighbors knew me and we were a big “gang” of kids happy and full of energy.

Around the age of 10-11, everything had to take great twist. My bad breath started to begin. I didnt notice by myself, because nobody can sense their own breath. But day by day, my best friend from school started acting weird when I was talking into his face, and started to offer me gum. something was strange. after a while, another - more obvious - sign. I have a sister, and at that age, we were sleeping in the same room, but in different 1-person beds aligned parallel. My sister started complaining in a more “funny” manner to my mother that I have a bad breath. I mean making jokes “ohhh his breath smells I cant fall asleep because of it”. Because most of the time i was falling asleep with my mouth open, directed towards her bed. My mother being an ignorant parent, was like “he will brush his teeth. stop telling him he has a bad breath” without any intention to investigate or whatsoever. My parents come from pretty poor peasant families, who worked on the field.
so yeah, at that time I was slowly becoming aware that I have a bad breath, but was also thinking is bcs of my hygiene.
I remember another time I was sitting at the table with my father and I was talking, and my father asked my mom: “the kids aren’t brushing their teeth?” and mom was like “yea they are brushing”.

After being kinda aware of my condition, i started to slowly become more introverted, despite how much extroverted I was in my childhood. I was starting to withdraw. I got mad at my best friend for a non-sense reason, something like he talked some not important stuff “behind my back” and ended the friendship with him. Basically, I withdrawed from friendships with the popular children that I was playing with when I was a kid and slowly joining the social-awkward kids from the class because somehow i felt safer there, like “hm these guys are more stupid they wont notice my breath”.

In the same years, i was also attenting dancing classes at my school. And it was so fucked up for me. I mean for single person dance it was ok. But at some point we also started to learn vals/tango/cha-cha dances in which I needed a female pertner. I was dancing with a classmate girl, and I was so cringy all the time, trying to hold my breath, to look in different directions, to chew a whole pack of gum just to supress that smell. Ofc the girl noticed and she also had a more “mean” atttitude, I mean was making weird face expressions, but she never said anything bad to me, she kinda resisted pretty well.
At these dancing classes, after we were learning some dances, we were also making shows on a stage. At the second show, I got very sick, like fever, runny nose, painful throat etc. And my mom told the dance instructors that I can't attend it because I'm very sick. They said something like “if he doesn't come he can't continue the dancing classes” and yeah I said I cant come. Then after 1-2 weeks they came again at my house asking why I didnt show up at the lessons and mom told them what they said and they said “ohh dont worry he can continue, we didn't speak seriously” but I still ended the lessons, maybe also because they were a bit jerks, but my main problem was the breath. This disease made me be able to give up on valuable people in my life SO easy. The smallest mistake, and i would be gone from their life. It developed my personality to prefer to stay alone then with people, and to act arrogant.

Years passed. I finished elementary school and started high school. I literally had 0 connections from elem school. Not because i couldn’t have, but because I subconciously dropped them all due to my issue.

When i started high school in 2010, social media started to become popular with smartphones etc. I made some friends in high school, more exactly 2. I always stayed low-key and socially awkward.
My friends started to have social media, but at that age around 15, my thoughts were:
- should I create myself a social media account like facebook?
- what for? even if I have facebook, i won't be able to talk to girls because if it works out, i cant go further IRL because of my bb
- so yea, I will not create myself a facebook account until I fix my issue

In the meantime, I started to isolate myself from the village. (the high school was in a city near thr village)
My father was always asking: “why is he always staying inside?” because the majority of girls/boys of my age were hanging out, even in clubs. My mom was replying like “what can I do if this is what he wants? leave him to do what he wants”.

Years passed, and at the age of 17, my parents marriage was falling apart. My parents broke up, but not in a nice maneer. My father was cheating on my mother and my mom came with the plan that we 3 (me, my sister and my mother) should run away from home. This is what we did, we moved in a rent in the city of our high school. at that moment, I was 0 social life (except high school friends), also homeless, living in a rent at 17 years old wanting to finish my studies.

But to be honest, bb was always the biggest problem of mine. i couldn't care less where I live, what my parents do etc. I just wanted to break free from this curse.
At that age, 17-18, i started for the first time to investigate. I went to an ENT, but because I was too ashamed of my condition, I told her that i came there because of my white coated tongue, didn't mention anything about any smell. She suspected candida and gave me a candida treatment.

Years passed, I successfully finished my high school, and our living situation was getting better but my problem was still there. I never had a girlfriend in high school because I was too ashamed of this problem. Though I was a pretty attractive guy, tall, nice green eyes.
At this time, I still didnt know what was the cause of my bb.

At 20 years old, I started computer science university. Again, was very socially awkward, rarely talking to people, I made 1-2 friends, while almost cut all connection to the high school friends.

At 21 years old, after some researches, I went again to a different ENT and this time told her that I can't breath on my nose, which was also true, i was mostly breathing using my mouth even when sleeping. She said that i have a slight deviated septum and enlarged turbinates. which can be fixed with surgery.
I told her i want the surgery. The reason i wanted the surgery is that I thought it will fix my bb, even though I didn't tell her anything about any bb.
I went through surgery and nothing changed, my bb was the same.

Years passed, in my last year of college I had to take some jobs because I needed money to pay the student taxes. I was employed as a game tester, where again tried to hide my bb as much as possible and to stay as away from ppl as possible.

Then I got a job in a toy store where I was arranging toys on shelves. This job was embarrasing because from time to time I had to talk to clients asking questions, and my breath was very bad sometimes, I felt that in people reactions. I quit this job after around 1 month.

Then (at 22 y/o) I found a freelance oportunity in the IT field in which I could work from home. This was ideal since I wasn't compelled to talk to no-one irl.
I worked here for 3 years. In this time, while still researching all time, I suspected 90% that my problem is related to tonsils. Tonsil stones. i planned to have the surgery in spring 2020 but the pandemic hit and I needed to delay.

In the summer of 2020, I had my first romantic relationship, at the age of 25. Not because I wanted, but because the girl found me and approached me, and was very insisting. We were together for roughly 1 month. In this time she didn't notice my bb while kissing/intimate because i was desperately cleaning my tonsils until I was bleeding with cotton sticks, extracting the stones, using mouth washes, desperately brushing teeth/tongue etc. In the end it didn't work out with her because she didn’t have a very nice personality and I was also very insecure and, as most of us in this forum, very sensitive. I couldn’t handle a very short-tempered character, controlling, jealous etc. so I broke up with her.

In the autumn of 2020, i finally went to the same ENT doctor who did my nose surgery and told her I want to take my tonsils out because they stink. She checked with her tools, also smelled her tool after, and agreed that my tonsils were wasted. And we scheduled my surgery in 1-2 weeks. I had my surgery in october 2020. The surgery was terrible. After i woke up from anesthesia, I continued to bleed from tonsils place for like 6-7 hours. I think I bleeded 1 liter of blood, I vomited. I was taked by the emergeny doctor at 20:00 again to emergency room again under total anesthesia to stop my bleeding. I woke up the next day and the bleeding finally stopped.

Fast forward 1 month, in december 2020 i was finally bb free. I finally untied the curse. But before the christmas of 2020, I had a panic attack because I read on the internet what can too much blood loss cause to the body, like organ failure and stuff like this. I took some anti depressants and benzodiazepines given by a psychiatrist, only a short period of time.

After all these last events, I developed a chronic stomach pain which I don't know exactly where it came from. This is me in the present. Since december, I fell in a pretty deep depression, i think because of all which accumulated:
- bb surgery
- chronic stomach pain
- the break up from the toxic relationship from the summer
- a project i lost in the freelance thing


In the past months I evaluated a bit my life so far. And I literally don't know how to live normally again. It’s like I am again at the age of 10, even if 15 years have passed since then.
- I dont know how to live like a normal person. all these years i took refuge in work or video games
- I dont know to talk to people so well, I isolated myself during the years
- I never had social media presence, was always in the dark
- I lost all the connections from village/school/high school/college. I didnt reach them out for years
- I lost contact with 80% of my family, especially the one from father side
- I masturbated all my life except while the summer relationship, i have 1% sexual experience at my age. Also due to too much masturbation, i even have a scar on the glans of my penis which kinda hurts during sex
- I started have teeth/gum problems since age 14-15. I might suspect they started so early because of the lots of bacteria stored in the tonsils. I already have a molar which was extracted and replaced with an implant
- I'm an introverted mess, even though I was a very outgoing kid when I was little
- because of bb and the isolation, I neglected many parts of my life. i dont train, i dont eat healthy.
- due to all of these years, i developed generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety and depression and had and still have suicidal thoughts

What can I do? I can't seem to be able to have a normal life even after i fixed the problem. I thought that if i fix the problem, my life will be turned 180 degrees to normal. but i got used to a “sick person” life and dont know how it is different.

[Emanuela hoxha]

Feel bless that you ate cure now because of what you have gone throw all these year remember your self when you was 10 years old and believe me all you had at that age you still have it inside you only that it has besn hiding for a long time now but its still in you , so bring that energetic 10 year old guy you were again back to life and enjoy dont waste no more day thinking about this issue anymore , life has given you an opportunity to live again and you ar every young so enjoy , p.s sorry for my english by the way best of luck

[simple]

Hi ginger505, I read all your story and really relate to your experience. I know that already formed habits can seem very hard to break, but for your mind to accept the necessary (I hope you agree) changes, you have to make incremental adjustments. This can also require mental energy at first, so I think you should prioritise dealing with what seems like deression / anxiety problems, with which therapy can help. It can benefit anyone, not only people who have “problems”! You have struggled with this bb problem for most of your consicous life, so the idea of being a “hermit”/“loner”/<insert any adjective that you identify with> has become part of your identity. Now, as the environment (luckily) adjusted so rapidly, you probably have an “identity crisis” that most people experience at points of change in their lives.

I can suggest reading some books on changing habits for you to start to get used to living like a normal lucky person. For instance, Charles Duhig “the power of habit”; James Clear “Atomic Habits”; Alex Heyne “Master the day”. Gay Hendrick’s “Big Leap” can also help with transformation and changing your self-limiting beliefs.

You gotta stop this victimhood mentality though, this is really blindsided. C’mon if I was cured as simple as that, I’d be dancing me feet off till I die from exhaustion. You should consider yourself really lucky, not a lot of bb sufferers can experience that no matter how hard they try - some cases are just untreatable and come in a package with serious health issues. Whereas you can finally take control over your life! If you want, you can PM me for a chat, I’m in my 20s as well.

Hi. I was reading this forum for many years, and now it’s time to also share my story.
It all began 25 years ago when I was born. When I was a kid (boy), under 10 years old, I remember that was the only period of my life when I really lived in the true sense of the word. I was a very happy, very positive, very energetic kid. I was the happiest kid on Earth. Back then, I was living in a small village in my country. Everything was perfect, I had friends, I was playing all day with them. When I started school, I made even more friends. we were gathering almost everyday at my house yard to play, I was always the initiator. Calling them on their home phones (because mobile phones were more rare at those times) to come over and play. All neighbors knew me and we were a big “gang” of kids happy and full of energy.

Around the age of 10-11, everything had to take great twist. My bad breath started to begin. I didnt notice by myself, because nobody can sense their own breath. But day by day, my best friend from school started acting weird when I was talking into his face, and started to offer me gum. something was strange. after a while, another - more obvious - sign. I have a sister, and at that age, we were sleeping in the same room, but in different 1-person beds aligned parallel. My sister started complaining in a more “funny” manner to my mother that I have a bad breath. I mean making jokes “ohhh his breath smells I cant fall asleep because of it”. Because most of the time i was falling asleep with my mouth open, directed towards her bed. My mother being an ignorant parent, was like “he will brush his teeth. stop telling him he has a bad breath” without any intention to investigate or whatsoever. My parents come from pretty poor peasant families, who worked on the field.
so yeah, at that time I was slowly becoming aware that I have a bad breath, but was also thinking is bcs of my hygiene.
I remember another time I was sitting at the table with my father and I was talking, and my father asked my mom: “the kids aren’t brushing their teeth?” and mom was like “yea they are brushing”.

After being kinda aware of my condition, i started to slowly become more introverted, despite how much extroverted I was in my childhood. I was starting to withdraw. I got mad at my best friend for a non-sense reason, something like he talked some not important stuff “behind my back” and ended the friendship with him. Basically, I withdrawed from friendships with the popular children that I was playing with when I was a kid and slowly joining the social-awkward kids from the class because somehow i felt safer there, like “hm these guys are more stupid they wont notice my breath”.

In the same years, i was also attenting dancing classes at my school. And it was so fucked up for me. I mean for single person dance it was ok. But at some point we also started to learn vals/tango/cha-cha dances in which I needed a female pertner. I was dancing with a classmate girl, and I was so cringy all the time, trying to hold my breath, to look in different directions, to chew a whole pack of gum just to supress that smell. Ofc the girl noticed and she also had a more “mean” atttitude, I mean was making weird face expressions, but she never said anything bad to me, she kinda resisted pretty well.
At these dancing classes, after we were learning some dances, we were also making shows on a stage. At the second show, I got very sick, like fever, runny nose, painful throat etc. And my mom told the dance instructors that I can't attend it because I'm very sick. They said something like “if he doesn't come he can't continue the dancing classes” and yeah I said I cant come. Then after 1-2 weeks they came again at my house asking why I didnt show up at the lessons and mom told them what they said and they said “ohh dont worry he can continue, we didn't speak seriously” but I still ended the lessons, maybe also because they were a bit jerks, but my main problem was the breath. This disease made me be able to give up on valuable people in my life SO easy. The smallest mistake, and i would be gone from their life. It developed my personality to prefer to stay alone then with people, and to act arrogant.

Years passed. I finished elementary school and started high school. I literally had 0 connections from elem school. Not because i couldn’t have, but because I subconciously dropped them all due to my issue.

When i started high school in 2010, social media started to become popular with smartphones etc. I made some friends in high school, more exactly 2. I always stayed low-key and socially awkward.
My friends started to have social media, but at that age around 15, my thoughts were:
- should I create myself a social media account like facebook?
- what for? even if I have facebook, i won't be able to talk to girls because if it works out, i cant go further IRL because of my bb
- so yea, I will not create myself a facebook account until I fix my issue

In the meantime, I started to isolate myself from the village. (the high school was in a city near thr village)
My father was always asking: “why is he always staying inside?” because the majority of girls/boys of my age were hanging out, even in clubs. My mom was replying like “what can I do if this is what he wants? leave him to do what he wants”.

Years passed, and at the age of 17, my parents marriage was falling apart. My parents broke up, but not in a nice maneer. My father was cheating on my mother and my mom came with the plan that we 3 (me, my sister and my mother) should run away from home. This is what we did, we moved in a rent in the city of our high school. at that moment, I was 0 social life (except high school friends), also homeless, living in a rent at 17 years old wanting to finish my studies.

But to be honest, bb was always the biggest problem of mine. i couldn't care less where I live, what my parents do etc. I just wanted to break free from this curse.
At that age, 17-18, i started for the first time to investigate. I went to an ENT, but because I was too ashamed of my condition, I told her that i came there because of my white coated tongue, didn't mention anything about any smell. She suspected candida and gave me a candida treatment.

Years passed, I successfully finished my high school, and our living situation was getting better but my problem was still there. I never had a girlfriend in high school because I was too ashamed of this problem. Though I was a pretty attractive guy, tall, nice green eyes.
At this time, I still didnt know what was the cause of my bb.

At 20 years old, I started computer science university. Again, was very socially awkward, rarely talking to people, I made 1-2 friends, while almost cut all connection to the high school friends.

At 21 years old, after some researches, I went again to a different ENT and this time told her that I can't breath on my nose, which was also true, i was mostly breathing using my mouth even when sleeping. She said that i have a slight deviated septum and enlarged turbinates. which can be fixed with surgery.
I told her i want the surgery. The reason i wanted the surgery is that I thought it will fix my bb, even though I didn't tell her anything about any bb.
I went through surgery and nothing changed, my bb was the same.

Years passed, in my last year of college I had to take some jobs because I needed money to pay the student taxes. I was employed as a game tester, where again tried to hide my bb as much as possible and to stay as away from ppl as possible.

Then I got a job in a toy store where I was arranging toys on shelves. This job was embarrasing because from time to time I had to talk to clients asking questions, and my breath was very bad sometimes, I felt that in people reactions. I quit this job after around 1 month.

Then (at 22 y/o) I found a freelance oportunity in the IT field in which I could work from home. This was ideal since I wasn't compelled to talk to no-one irl.
I worked here for 3 years. In this time, while still researching all time, I suspected 90% that my problem is related to tonsils. Tonsil stones. i planned to have the surgery in spring 2020 but the pandemic hit and I needed to delay.

In the summer of 2020, I had my first romantic relationship, at the age of 25. Not because I wanted, but because the girl found me and approached me, and was very insisting. We were together for roughly 1 month. In this time she didn't notice my bb while kissing/intimate because i was desperately cleaning my tonsils until I was bleeding with cotton sticks, extracting the stones, using mouth washes, desperately brushing teeth/tongue etc. In the end it didn't work out with her because she didn’t have a very nice personality and I was also very insecure and, as most of us in this forum, very sensitive. I couldn’t handle a very short-tempered character, controlling, jealous etc. so I broke up with her.

In the autumn of 2020, i finally went to the same ENT doctor who did my nose surgery and told her I want to take my tonsils out because they stink. She checked with her tools, also smelled her tool after, and agreed that my tonsils were wasted. And we scheduled my surgery in 1-2 weeks. I had my surgery in october 2020. The surgery was terrible. After i woke up from anesthesia, I continued to bleed from tonsils place for like 6-7 hours. I think I bleeded 1 liter of blood, I vomited. I was taked by the emergeny doctor at 20:00 again to emergency room again under total anesthesia to stop my bleeding. I woke up the next day and the bleeding finally stopped.

Fast forward 1 month, in december 2020 i was finally bb free. I finally untied the curse. But before the christmas of 2020, I had a panic attack because I read on the internet what can too much blood loss cause to the body, like organ failure and stuff like this. I took some anti depressants and benzodiazepines given by a psychiatrist, only a short period of time.

After all these last events, I developed a chronic stomach pain which I don't know exactly where it came from. This is me in the present. Since december, I fell in a pretty deep depression, i think because of all which accumulated:
- bb surgery
- chronic stomach pain
- the break up from the toxic relationship from the summer
- a project i lost in the freelance thing


In the past months I evaluated a bit my life so far. And I literally don't know how to live normally again. It’s like I am again at the age of 10, even if 15 years have passed since then.
- I dont know how to live like a normal person. all these years i took refuge in work or video games
- I dont know to talk to people so well, I isolated myself during the years
- I never had social media presence, was always in the dark
- I lost all the connections from village/school/high school/college. I didnt reach them out for years
- I lost contact with 80% of my family, especially the one from father side
- I masturbated all my life except while the summer relationship, i have 1% sexual experience at my age. Also due to too much masturbation, i even have a scar on the glans of my penis which kinda hurts during sex
- I started have teeth/gum problems since age 14-15. I might suspect they started so early because of the lots of bacteria stored in the tonsils. I already have a molar which was extracted and replaced with an implant
- I'm an introverted mess, even though I was a very outgoing kid when I was little
- because of bb and the isolation, I neglected many parts of my life. i dont train, i dont eat healthy.
- due to all of these years, i developed generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety and depression and had and still have suicidal thoughts

What can I do? I can't seem to be able to have a normal life even after i fixed the problem. I thought that if i fix the problem, my life will be turned 180 degrees to normal. but i got used to a “sick person” life and dont know how it is different.