Tell-Tale Tonsils

Speaking of Asher... This morning he came up to me and informed me that he had a loose tooth. He only said this because his sister Ainsley has been working on a loose tooth for a while now so he thinks he has one too. Well, as he opened his mouth to show his "loose tooth" I noticed something in the back of his throat. It looked like a piece of clementine that he had been eating so I asked him to swallow and open back up so I could see. It was NOT a piece of clementine. His uvula looked to be attached to the side of his throat or a 'growth' on the side of his throat. I was nothing short of worried. I asked him if his throat hurt and he assured me that it didn't. For the last couple of weeks his voice has been extra raspy (it's normally a little raspy) but he consistently said that his throat didn't hurt when asked. Andyn had a check-up on an ear infection this morning so I took him along and asked the Dr. if he could just peek at his throat. The 'growth'? His tonsil. I'm embarrassed to say that 4 kids into this parenting thing I had no idea where his tonsils were supposed to be or what they were supposed to look like. One of his tonsils is EXTREMELY enlarged and it appears that the uvula is attached to it! The doctor said that the concern is when the tonsils are not equal in size but they don't really want to do anything about it until they're at least 4 yrs old. He gave me a referral for the ENT. We'll know more after we talk to him.

This is a picture of normal tonsils (as rendered on wikipedia) :

This is a picture of Asher's:

This is the best picture that I could get. On the left side is the enlarged tonsil and the uvula is as attached as it looks. Print PagePrint Page