Tonsils, anyone?

This may be a really bizarre question, but how many of us here still have our tonsils?

I had mine removed when I was 22 - I had developed antibiotic-resistant tonsillitis with peritonsillar abscesses . . . funny thing is, I was chronically sick (caught everything I was exposed to) up until that time, but I was rarely sick after I had the tonsils removed. Lupus symptoms started developing a few years later after my children were born . . . hung in diagnosis limbo for years, though . . .

Just makes me think and wonder if having extreme and prolonged immune stress followed by 2 back to back pregnancies may have triggered the onset? I think I need to ask my doctors opinion on this one as well . . . . . . . . .

Maybe I think too much, maybe I am grasping . . . I am just curious if anyone else experienced similar onset after having your tonsils removed?

The NIAID database lists a ton of articles about research showing different diseases causing or triggering lupus. There are two facets to the research, the genetic side and the infection side. They are all operating under the idea that all autoimmune diseases are merely different manifestations of the same problem. I was researching tuberculosis and found an article there where they had been able to show that tuberculosis caused the development of anti ds-dna to nervous system cells. Another article I read discussed how a person with sarcoidosis had a lesion excised and they decalcified it and in the center was live mycobacterium--tuberculosis. Obviously I was researching TB, but there is stuff out there about tons of other types of infections. I think it was NIAID or NIH, one of the two. I know I emailed NIAID and they sent me some links. They were very cool about it.

I had my tonsls out when I was eight or nine, after a horrible two years of endless throat infections. They kept giving me penicillin, and finally figured out I had a staph infection, my mom thinks I got cultured with a used q tip--they weren't individually wrapped back then. Anyway, once thy got the swelling down I got them yanked. Then, except for the odd case of strep throat every few years, didn't have a problem at all. My son either after his were out.

I am having problems as an adult becausemy salivary glands and lymph nodes are shot from all the infections maybe, don't know. Now I am bein tested for lymphoma. I can only say that if you have a child that is having troubl with throat infections,best not let it go on too long because its not good later on. I don't miss my tonsils one bit.