I had the most painful sore throat I'd ever had in my life, one where I could not swallow, was crying with pain and didn't want to breathe anymore - I made an appointment, got a locum GP who refused to even look 'as it's going to be viral'. I went home to cry facedown in a rolled up towel, taking tiny breaths in through my nose and drooling because swallowing my own saliva might as well have been battery acid.
Eventually, it went down after some awful tasting gloop came out, but I felt as though I was eating and breathing through a drinking straw and couldn't get my toothbrush to the back of my teeth, along with breath of evil, all of the time.
The dentist contacted the GP who referred me to ENT without seeing me, where they stuck a camera up my nose and referred me for surgery, which took several months of further painful throats and sleeping propped up, as I felt like I was suffocating if I laid down. I went in for surgery, it didn't go smoothly, but nobody had looked into my mouth for about a year by then.
After the operation, the surgeon told me that 'I cut and I cut, but I just kept meeting more and more infection' and that the infection was underneath extensive scarring from an untreated quinsy, in the process of infiltrating into the tissues of my neck/throat/mouth. He asked 'Why didn't you do anything about it?' - I tried, but the GP said it would be viral and wouldn't listen. When I could finally look, everywhere including the back of what looked like a cavern compared to my original mouth was black.
I felt pretty rough afterwards, but after two weeks, I was pretty much back to normal, except no sore throats, a change in my voice, no snoring, no choking and I could brush my molars for the first time in memory. So I still think it was worth it - I just wish that I had ignored the 'it's just a virus, stop being so dramatic, I'm not even going to look at it because I know what it is' twat locum and gone somewhere else. I did moan at the senior partner about her at the GP's, as I think he might have received a slightly pointed discharge letter going by how I was asked about the surgery at my next appointment for something entirely unconnected.
tl;dr The quinsy was shit, the operation wasn't simple, the recovery wasn't fun, but it was worth it in the end.