Terrible Tonsil Stones Tonsilloliths

Heer Eickhorn

As most of you have realized, tonsilloliths are not very well understood. Theories abound. Most doctors know nothing of their secret lives. The afflicted don’t understand the biology and are left to confront the tonsilloliths with their own devices. Their desperate attempts at eradication of the tonsilloliths are largely futile. My struggle started with a simple and innocent kiss. This is my story.

About 10 years ago, I dated a woman thrice. Her hot breath was fetid when we kissed, smelling much like the breath of a Basset Hound that had just eaten and vomited a dish of spoiled Romano cheese. This malodor quickly dissuaded me from further contact with her. About a month after we stopped dating, the march of the tonsillolith army started. She had infected me! I would sneeze, and see the tonsilloliths fly out of my mouth. At first, I thought they were bits of baked potato, from a prior meal, lodged in my throat. That made sense. But the horrific stench made me think otherwise. No potato I ever ate smelled like that! Not knowing their official designation, I named these aerial abominations “stink critters.” This sneezing/ejection problem continued for years. As time passed, there were more and more critters. They grew in size, number and stench. Now, they also started to appear when I coughed. Were they taking over my body? I was at a loss as to where they were coming from. Then one day, I felt a vague feeling of something squirming in my throat. I looked in with a flashlight and mirror. I could see a whitish object in the back of my throat. I thought, my God, what is this? My brain spun with possibilities – cancer, infection, pox, parasite, creature? So, I got a cue tip, and carefully poked at it, much like one pokes a still strange animal to see if it is alive. With the prodding, the critter recoiled and immediately scuttled back into hiding with a tiny hideous screech, or so I thought. I sniffed the end of the cue tip and nearly passed out. I was stupefied. I felt panic. I felt terror. I felt sick. What the hell was this monstrous thing in my throat that gave off stench worse than a steroid fortified skunk? This thing, that seemed to move as if alive and made frightening sounds? Thus, the strange and bizarre game of oral hide and seek began and continued for months. I knew it was always there, as I could feel it squirm and smell its stench. Shy and evasive, the stink critter always scurried back into hiding at the slightest prod. Then one day, I had an epiphany. What if my prodding was indirect? What if I prodded around it? Would that trick the critter out of its hiding place, like a wily rodent being probed out of its burrow? Outsmart it, I thought. So, I prodded around its home, poking in all kinds of uncomfortable places that made me gag. It was awful and I almost gave up. Then, almost by magic, the elusive critter popped out of its hidden nest. I was stunned. There it was. I had flushed it out into the open. As President Bush would say, I had “smoked it out of its hole.” Quickly, while it was vulnerable, I deftly extracted it and set about studying it. Like a tiny piece of putrefying cauliflower, its stench was unrivaled by anything I had previously smelled. It was slimy and slippery. As I studied it, it seemed to wiggle ever so slightly, the way a dying worm weakly wiggles in the gutter after a rain storm. Even worse, I thought I heard a faint angry squeak. I was absolutely horrified, Terrified, MORTIFIED! I felt like the vile recombinant of a deranged scientist: freak, space alien, leper - all three now me! My heart raced. My head pounded. What the hell was this critter I had captured from my oral cavity? Were there more? Were they breeding? Where exactly were they nesting? How do I get rid of them? All I had were questions, and no answers. So, I spent days on the internet and in the library researching the condition. My edification led me to the tonsil crypts as their possible breeding ground. I had never heard of such a thing before, but set out on an oral reconnaissance mission. I poked and prodded. I peeled back skin flaps. I dug under membranes. I drummed the uvula. I palpitated the palate. The mouth is an exotic place, lush, humid, full of microbial wet mysteries much like a tropical rain forest. I explored my mouth as thoroughly as Captain Cook explored Tahiti. I hunted the stink critters like the army hunts Osama Bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan. Then, after weeks of looking, I found their nesting sites! There they were in their homes – the deep crypts of the tonsils. Then, without delay and with much malice, I began the tonsillolith slaughter! The Rout! The HOLOCAUST! After I discovered their secret crypts, I expunged scores of them from my mouth. But after a few days, the replacements came. This frustrating cycle went on for years. I finally concluded that the mother must still be hidden somewhere in the deepest, darkest, most secret crypt. There she had to be, giving spawn to great batches of filthy, slimy, horrible stink critters faster than I could remove them. Thus, my mission directive changed. I now set out to destroy the mother. I probed and explored every cave and crypt I could find. I imagined I was a Navy Seal, diving through seas of saliva, mucus, drip and slime on a mission to root out the tonsillolith mother that had been terrorizing my mouth for years. Months passed and no luck. I began to grow tired and disillusioned. I couldn’t find the mother, and she mocked me by spawning at an even faster rate, turning out stinkier and stinkier hordes that quickly set up home in my mouth and had to be dug out. It was just like that TV commercial, digger the toe fungus, having a party under your toenail! Except these critters were much more sinister, burrowing into my throat and exhausting their toxic fumes during their nasty 24/7 party. With that mental image, I steeled my resolve, and continued my hunt. Then, one weary day, I spied her! It was mother, hidden in a previously unknown, unexplored crypt. There she was, MOTHER, the evil crypt keeper, peering out at me, taunting me, angry with me for destroying so many of her babies! She had found the most inaccessible crypt in my tonsil and built her rotten nest. For years, she had silently squatted in her deep, dark secret crypt, birthing swarms of terrible slimy stinking malevolent progeny to propagate her kind and infect humanity. How could I extract her, I thought? She was the root, the mother, the breeder of all my oral misery. I will get her. I must get her! But it will be difficult. So, I sterilized a pair of craftsman needle nose pliers and prepared for the mother of all battles with the tonsillolith mother! But, she had gone into hiding again. Months passed without any sightings of her. Oh, she was crafty! Then, one day, after a great deal of probing and prodding, she peered out at me once again with a look of smug contempt, knowing that the majority of her bulk was safely hidden inside her protective crypt. Above everything else, her attitude is what I hated the most about her. Her glower, her loathing, her hatred, was all more than I could stand. But, the moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived! Years of training and practice now paid off. Now, it was time for shock and awe! Reflexively, I sprang into action. I grabbed the edge of her with the needle nose pliers before she could dive back into the unreachable recesses of her crypt. What happened next is hard to describe, and even harder to relive, but I will do my best. Like a fishing rod with a trophy Marlin hooked, the long pliers dipped and jerked in my hands. I almost lost my grip as it felt like my wrist would break! It was a fearsome and difficult struggle, like trying to grasp a rabid skunk with small tweezers. A horrible, distorted, high pitched growling pierced my left ear, much like the hair raising primal wail a Bengal tiger makes when rousted out of its den. This epic battle continued for what seemed like hours and was almost lost several times. Then finally, the terrific tussle ceased and out she came. I quickly heaved her into the sink, and watched her pulse with rage and resentment. Like a chameleon, her bioluminescent coloring morphed from ghastly shades of ghostly green to sickening yellows. Like an old fashioned, fresh drilled, Texas spindle top oil well, she gushed fountains of slime. She was huge – a tonsillolith monolith. Plump and rotund, she obviously was pregnant with hundreds of babies. The room filled up with the most terrible stench. Putrid fumes rose off of her like steam from an iron, consequently setting off the smoke alarm in my house. Transfixed, there I stood, face to face with the nefarious, furious mother. Concerned with the commotion, neighbors pounded on my doors and windows. This quickly snapped me out of my trance. I composed myself then calmly, and without emotion, turned on the water to the sink. At last, I thought, I had the upper hand, as the vanquished mother tonsillolith began her journey down into the sewer, riding an irreversible tsunami of water. It was over. Mother and all her ilk expunged from my mouth forever. At last I could relax. I felt a wave of calm wash over me like a warm gentle Caribbean ocean wave. For the first time in years, I was at peace. I savored the wonderful euphoric feeling. But the feeling was fleeting, because, then, in the back of my throat, I felt a squirm. I quickly looked into my mouth with a flashlight and my knees buckled at what I saw, for it was only there for an instant, then gone. It was several pregnant daughters, along with their incestuous father, jeering me, Mocking Me, TORMENTING ME, then, quickly vanishing back into their secret crypts.