Swollen tonsils for 9 months

[Cheesus]

Hi Folks

I am a 22 year old male and I've had swollen tonsils for 9 months. I wasn't too concerned by them - more just annoyed - until yesterday someone said to me they knew someone who had something similar and it turned out to be lymphoma (yes, *groan*).

I dont want to google it and im sure some of you are experts on this. My recent blood work (liver, kidney, thyroid, blood count, blood sugar) came back as not just normal but perfect (i eat REALLY well) and i don't have glandular fever. My doc thinks i'm just fighting 'a virus'. He is referring me to a fatigue specialist but now i'm wondering if it should be more like ENT.

Does anyone have any insight?

[Allochka]

Wow, swollen tonsils! Had similar scare recently, even went to ENT (shame on me...) I stupidly looked into my mouth after one tooth was pulled. And I noticed that one tonsil is swollen and definitely bigger then the other. And it kept that way for some time. First I was cool about it - had tonsillitis last summer, so thought that swollen one simply never went down. Googled chronic tonsillitis (I usually don't google anymore, but this seemed to me a very harmless and safe thing to check  ). And of course lymphoma and some kind of oral cancer popped up ...
Well, what I learned from my ENT and some posts here:
- Tonsils swell to fight infections, and pretty often they never come down in size anymore. Or perhaps you do have a chronic tonsillitis, which is actually not scary at all.
- Sometimes you percieve things as "huge", " swollen" , etc - but they really aren't. Maybe your tonsils just look big for you?
- If your tonsils are swollen more or less equal - then it's fine. But even if they are uneven, like mine - no concerns, it is a common thing. We are not ideally symmetrical at all.

Do you have other issues going on? Does your throat hurt all the time? Do you catch colds pretty often? Do your joints ache? If yes, then perhaps you could have chronic tonsillitis, and maybe an ENT visit would be OK (not due to possible lymphoma, but to check for tonsillitis).
But if nothing going on, and your tonsils just LOOK big to you - well, maybe they simply never reduced their size after some infection.
And I doubt you could have lymphoma with all the analyses you've mentioned being perfect 

[Cheesus]

Thanks for the response!

I can confirm that they don't just look big to me, my doctor regularly confirms 'they're still pretty big'. Likely it is just a continuation or residue of an infection. They are both completely even (as far as I can tell) along with other lymph nodes in my neck which are also even yet continually swollen.

Other than that I'm in relatively good shape. No other symptoms to report. I suppose after 9 months they probably would have gotten worse if it was something nasty, but in reality they are probably a bit better.

[Allochka]

If a doc seen them and not concerned - it's a good thing! And the worst case scenario for this would be chronic tonsillitis. Annoying, but nothing dangerous.

The person who told you about lymphoma and tonsils connection - I bet he/she doesn't know the details of the case he referred to.  Sometimes people make remarks, which drive a hypochondriac crazy, even without knowing the real facts about the disease. I've read a comment about Jack Osbourne on one entertainment portal recently. Someone said " poor guy has MS, unfortunately you don't live long with MS, it' ll be over for him soon".   OMG, the poster knows nothing about MS, probably confuses it with ALS. Imagine reading smth like this for a person who' s afraid of MS and doesn't know much about it yet? I'd freak out...
Same here - someone mentions lymphoma and tonsils, but does he/she really knows anything about all this stuff? Guess not 

[livelaughlove]

Wait.... do you have dry mouth? Or do you wake up with a horrible taste on your tongue that kind of tastes like poop? Or do you get a whitish coating on your tongue that you can scrape off with your fingernail? IF you answered yes, that means the crypts in your tonsils are probably a little enlarged and food and mucus is getting trapped in the crypts (pockets) of your tonsils. Then bacteria grows. They form little white stones, called tonsilloliths. These make the tonsils look enlarged and hurt. This also means that you need to restore the normal flora in your mouth (normal bacterial levels). The "poop" smell is the byproducts that bacteria produce as they digest the food in your mouth. To fix this, switch toothpaste to biotene. Also, gargle with biotene. Regular toothpaste and mouthwash is very harsh and will dry out your mouth. You need saliva as it produces amylase, to help digest food, hence a dry mouth with not enough saliva will not break down food particles and then bacteria overgrow. Also, buy a water-pik from your local pharmacy or bed, bath, and beyond. Use the water pik to flush out your tonsils twice a day. This will fix your problem. Many people have this problem. Antibiotics will not fix this problem, the only thing that will fix it is by keeping the mouth moist and clean and restoring normal flora, or by getting a tonsillectomy.

[eddarun]

There is a reason so many people have the tonsils removed, those swell up so easily and many have cronic swelling.  If your tonsils wereswollen because og lymphoma that would mean you would have had it for a long time, and I truly doubr your bloodwork would be perfect!

[Slangevar]

I had chronic tonsillitis when I was a kid... I finally had them out at age 7. Back then it was probably because I was being exposed to all sorts of new viruses, but it's still common among adults with allergies, post-nasal drip from sinus issues, acid reflux (especially silent reflux that doesn't cause heartburn pain) and even an unknown dental cavity or poor flossing habits.

(By the way, you should add your friend's comment about lymphoma to that list of things you never say to a hypo. Groan, indeed.)

[Cheesus]

Thanks for the responses guys. I imagine it is just a viral infection. My doctor has been pretty thorough in running tests and I imagine that if he thought anything further was warranted he would have looked into it.

livelaughlove, I don't think that applies to me! But thanks for the input I'll keep it in mind.

Slangevar I do have a lot of post-nasal drip - perhaps that is the cause? I'll take note of any correlation between post-nasal drip and tonsil enlargement.

[Slangevar]

Post-nasal drip totally causes inflamed tonsils and throat. The question for your doc will be: where is it coming from?  Do you have a chronic sinus infection?  Allergies?  Once they sort out the cause, they can start treating it.