3 year old with constant tonsillitis/enlarged tonsils???

[sophieanne22]

hi, my son will be 3 next week and starting about 2 and a half months ago he got tonsillitis. the typical high fever, vomiting, red enflamed tonsils with white spots. well he couldnt get rid of it for a couple of months we had every antibiotic going, he had 2 bad periods where he had the full fever and vomiting but the rest of the time it has been just the tonsil symptoms with - and this is the worst part - the night time problems, namely, sleep apnea at its finest. i mean he has had it bad, chocking coughing gasping every two minutes. whilst on 10 days of co-amoxiclav, about day 7 the nights started sounding a bit better, day 10 we saw the ENT Dr who for the first time in 2 months said there was no infection but they were huge, so we would monitor for 6 months! (6 months of night time hell) so 6 days after this and his tonsils had looked large but free of white spots, they came back, but we took him to GP and he said there was no infection and not to worry about the white spots its only if it is red and with pussy exudes?? whatever that looks like i dont know! well, that was last week and the tonsils still have white spots and him and his brother have both had a cold, thing is im not sure if his brother is just teething and his is the tonsil/adenoid problem giving him a stuffy runny nose. and last night he was back to having afwul breathing, he woke twice with it. he had previously in those white spot free days had mostly heavy breathing with some snoring but not gasping. we were back to gasping. OH doesnt wamt to take him back to GP just yet and i just dont understand what is going on. why havent his tonsils gone down? and why has he got white spots but that isnt infection? what else is it??? my poor boy just cant get a good nights sleep and neither can any of us! (thank you if you have read this!!)

Sounds like he needs them out, especially if it's affecting his breathing at night. Generally it's four episodes a year, or like your DS due to sleep apnoea. I look after children who have their tonsils out and we have children his age. Are you seeing ENT again?

thank you for the reply, we had a letter saying we will be sent another letter nearer the 6 months when his next ENT appointment is, this would be maybe early december though :/ i dont know how it can be left that long when it is disturbing him so much. or if they could atleast sort it so he was breathing a bit better on a night like last week it would help, but when they said there is no infection last time depsite the white spots, i dont know what else i can do really

If he has got sleep apnoea, that's a reason to remove tonsils/ads. It doesn't just have to be tonsillitis. Although obviously you can have both. If it's affecting his sleep, he's disturbed at night, wakes up frequently, is noisy, unsettled, changes position a lot, tired during the day, these are all a case to get his tonsils out. They can do a sleep study to see how his night breathing is and oxygen levels.

Large tonsils obstruct the airway, hence the trouble breathing, large adenoids can also cause glue ear and be related to hearing problems.

Can you push to be seen earlier? You can only have tonsils out when they aren't infected and if you aren't being seen until winter, he may be ill again by then.

well i ended up taking him back to the GP again just because it was stressing me out so much worrying more than anything. i showed him the sleep video i took last night. he said the white bits aren't tonsillitis but they are a word i cant remember or pronounce, basically something that might indicate infection somewhere but isn't actually infection. he gave me two weeks of erythromycin which i hope doesn't make him sick. i hate the 4 times a day one because i always end up having to space it every 4 hours so i don't have to wake him in the middle of the night which feels like im overdosing him! and also leaves a gap over night which i don't like. it also has to be refrigerated, we were thinking of taking them away to go to peppa world etc for his birthday next week, think i might have to postpone it it will be a nightmare trying to store the stuff and give it while we are out :/ i just hope it works! he said there will be no infection after this and we will see where we are at after two weeks. he was the top GP there but he said something weird that the tonsils dont actually stop them breathing, which i thought thats what could cause....idk, weird!