I returned to the hospital nearly seven and a-half years after my birth to have surgery.

My parents wouldn’t have been surprised about that. They actually would have wondered why it happened so late in my life.

What would have surprised them is that their grandchildren have no idea what a tonsillectomy is.

But a majority of children when I qualified as such underwent the procedure. It was usually performed when kids were around 4 or 5, although it wasn’t unheard of for toddlers to have it.

The rationale was that the tonsils becoming inflamed caused kids to get way too many sore throats. And even though most mothers didn’t go to jobs and were already home, taking care of a sick child isn’t usually fun.

So doctors were quick to order the tonsils removed.

I got upset because most of my classmates already had the operation, usually in kindergarten or first grade. I was already in second grade and the tonsils were still there. 

Why upset? There were two things about tonsillectomies that recommended them to 7-1/2-year-olds.

One was that I was going to miss at least a week of school. By the last week of September, any desire to get back to school fades into the drudgery of day-to-day classwork. 

The other was the understanding that having the operation would entitle the victim, er, patient to all the ice cream he or she wanted. 

What they didn’t tell kids was how godawful they felt after the operation. Who the hell wants ice cream when your throat hurts like it never has or will again?

Eventually, doctors realized that maybe removing the tonsils wasn’t a great idea. Surgery is always a risk. And, for little kids, the pain of the procedure coupled with not having your parents around is pretty traumatic; I think the horrible memory of that sleepless night in the hospital – and being a 7-1/2-year-old in a ward with 4 year olds and an infant – stayed with me a long time.

Today, tonsillectomies are performed rarely and only if there’s a really good medical reason. Given the hellish week my operation provided them, my parents would probably wish that doctors came to their senses about 20 years earlier.