If the archives are accessible, there has been much discussion on this in the past. If your tonsils are as bad as you indicate, you will very likely see improvement in your voice after you recover from surgery, which could take a month or so. You have probably been compensating for the lack of pharyngeal air space due to the large tonsils.
Be sure your surgeon and anesthesiologist are aware you are a singer. Ask the surgeon to avoid moving your head around during surgery as the endotracheal tube is more likely to bruise your vocal folds when your head is moved around. Anesthesiologists as a rule are loathe to cause any harm during intubation and since your voice is more sensitive to minor trauma to the vocal folds than nonsingers, s/he will most likely be willing to work with you on it and use as small a tube as possible and keep your head still. Be aware also, it is the anesthesiologist's job to keep you alive so s/he will need to protect your airway and there may be a limit to what limits can be set.
John
John Messmer, M.D. Assistant Professor, Family and Community Medicine Penn State Hershey Medical Center
> My tonsilitis has indeed become chronic and > thus the bloody pair will *have* to come out during the holidays... > What I wonder is just how much has their state affected my sound > overall and the ocassional difficulty of approaching the passaggio > easily all through their (longtime) condition? When I asked the > doctor if he saw my tonsils he said "They're hard to miss, there's > really very little space between them" and this is the way they heve > been for *some* time.
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