Could it be a tonsil problem?

I've been through pretty much every test they have to try and figure out my throat issue. The quick summary is that I always feel like something is causing tightness on the right side of my throat and my right ear generally feels clogged. The odd part is that after eating certain things the tight throat feeling gets even worse.

It's odd that it's only on the right side. My ENT has had me go on high does PPIs which didn't seem to help anything, I've done full allergy testing both skin prick, injection, 72 hour with food on surface of skin, and blood tests for foods and I'm not very allergic to anything at all. Most recently I did a 10 day course of antibiotics with no change in symptoms.

On my latest visit my ENT did notice that I have a white spot on my right side tonsil and mentioned that the only thing he can think of is that somehow the tonsil is infected and possibly pushing on my eustachian tube causing the throat and ear problems. He said that it is very hard to tell if something is wrong with the tonsil since most of it is hidden.

I did have an abscess on this same tonsil about 3 years ago that I ended up in the hospital for, so his theory seems possible since I've had issues with that tonsil before.

Has anybody else had something like this? He says that he can remove my tonsils but also made sure to tell me that recover is not fun (I'm in my 30s). The only part that I am still wondering about is why does eating certain things cause the problem to get worse. It seems like that is more of an LPR/acid type response but maybe the tonsil gets irritated by certain things. Sometimes after I eat I have lots of mucus and throat clearing for a few hours... not sure how that is related to the tonsils but I never had any of these issues until about 2 years ago so maybe they are somehow related. Thoughts?

Hi,

Yes. This has actually been going on for the better part of 2 years now. Most recently I was put on 10 days of Cefdinir antibiotic with no improvement. Even when on twice daily 40mg Nexium I had no improvement in symptoms which is why we're thinking it is not acid related but maybe some type of persistent tonsil infection? When I had the tonsil abscess the only symptom I had was a fever, it didn't show up in any other tests like bloodwork, etc. That's why I'm wondering if maybe there could be something going on with the tonsil still that is just undetectable by all these tests and untreatable by antibiotics.