In what seems like another lifetime, tonsillitis plagued me about every six weeks. After a round of antibiotics, I would experience a week or two of good health; then the sore throat, the scratch swallowing and the aching neck would return. Finally, the decision was made to remove those troublesome tonsils. I was 23 years old.

The surgeon who performed my tonsillectomy was reluctant to do so, because the surgery is particularly hard on adults. He put it off as long as he could, but finally he realized that surgery was the only thing that was going to help me stay healthy. I made arrangements to be away from work, but not before a fellow employee could tell me how her brother almost died from a tonsillectomy.

No wonder, as I roused from the drug-induced sleep, I asked, "Am I dead?" There were bright lights and I knew I was somewhere I had never been before. The recovery nurse, a friend, chuckled and told me I was very much alive. She then told me the lights weren't as bright as they could be because I was wearing Tweety Bird sunglasses that my roommate had given me!

Three days after surgery, I became nauseated. As I began to lie back down on the sofa, I felt a huge lump in my throat and immediately leaned my head forward over the sofa once again. In some kind of insane and probably comical way, my parents were able to get me to the car and head to the hospital. I was bent over at a 90-degree angle with my neck bent another 90 degrees to keep the lump from choking me.

One shot of epinephrine later, the lump began to shrink, and I was finally able to lie back on a hospital gurney. The surgeon reported that he had just seen the largest uvula of his career. It had become irritated and enlarged during the nausea episode.

One of my brothers recently had a tonsillectomy and a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty. That second one means they took out the uvula. He no longer has the "little dangly thing" at the back of his throat, which is what most people call it. His goal was to eliminate sleep apnea, and it appears that the surgery has been successful.

So you might ask yourself, "Just what does a uvula do?" I looked it up for you and found out that the uvula essentially helps prevents food from going down the wrong way. It obviously does not do its job 100 percent of the time - we've all had one of those experiences when food definitely goes down the wrong way.

The uvula is also credited by some singers with helping to produce the vibrato - that's a fancy Italian term for vibrate - effect in which a voice trembles with slight and quick variations in pitch.

The negative of the uvula is that it is commonly blamed for snoring and sleep apnea problems. In the old days, my brother could shake his house with his snoring! It was a phenomenal sound, unlike anything I've ever heard in my life. Some people liken that kind of snore to a freight train, but I like the sound of a freight train! His snoring wasn't anything I liked, and to watch him while he snored so deeply was a disturbing sight. He also had sleep apnea, in which a person stops breathing up to one minute and often hundreds of times per night.

For years, he wore a CPAP machine to manage the sleep apnea, meaning he slept nightly with a mask and headgear. When he recently lost 190 pounds, the sleep apnea lessened, and he opted for surgery to see if he could get rid of the CPAP machine for good. It seems to have worked.

Our experiences with this particular body part may not be of interest to you, but ... uvula never know. It might come in handy one day!

Harris Murray, a free-lance writer, can be reached by e-mail at writeharris55@yahoo.com.

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