womzilla | ZOMG I can breathe again!

I actually started this post last week, after the first events in it, but ran out of energy and then had NYRSF over the weekend and so forth and so on. So here's a somewhat TMI-ish catchup on my surgical recovery. (Short version: I'm fine, but it's amazing how exhausting even minor surgery can be.)

Okay, so, surgery was two weeks ago, January 29. January 30 I had the acrylic beads pulled out of my noses, and on Jan 31 and Feb 1, I slept a lot.

A week after the surgery, I returned to the doctor's office to get the last pieces of surgical packing pulled out. My doctor had told me there were two pieces of silastic lightly stitched to the bony portion of my septum, to protect the lining while it healed. He reached in with the forceps and cut the stiches (one on each piece) and then pulled out the actual packing--which were much bigger than I had thought they were. Although they are very thin--maybe the thickness of five pieces of paper--laid flat, they are each about the size of my thumb!

Here they are, laid flat beside my nose for size comparison. This is not meant to represent how they were imbedded in my nose; one narrow end of each would have been just behind my visible nostril and the other narrow end straight back.

Behold the power of silastic!

Once those were out, man, it was like my nose was reborn. Air flow--sweet, sweet air flow! I may actually have exclaimed, "ZOMG!", but I don't think I did.

The sinusoscopy was very promising--I was healing well. The sinusoscopy actually gave me direct confirmation that my nasal passages were improved. During the lead-in to the surgery, when the doctor would push the 'scope all the way back in my right nasal passage to see the sinus at the back, it really hurt. That, he explained, was evidence of how badly constricted the airway was by my septum. And lo, this time, it didn't hurt--tangible evidence of the widening of the passage. I felt great.

The next day was Friday. I think that was the day I started getting the cold, because I came home from work a bit early and resolved to have a bit of a nap before going up to Pleasantville for NYRSF. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to tell David Hartwell that, unless he heard from me, I would be skipping entirely for the evening, because my "nap" lasted eight hours. I woke up at 3:30 AM on Saturday, checked my e-mail to make sure the overnight OATS report went out from work properly, and then went back to bed for another six hours.

I did a similar thing on Monday--about twelve hours of sleep then, though not as high quality as Friday/Saturday. By that point, my nose was starting to clog up with, well, cloggy stuff; it was getting harder and harder to irrigate. (I've been using a nasal irrigation system which is sort of like a high-tech neti pot, flushing water with saline and bicarbonate through my nostrils.) On Tuesday, I managed to expel from my left nostril something of the same basic size and consistency as a gumdrop; I felt far the better for having it out, I tell you what. This actually managed to squick

nellorat, which I've done very rarely in my life.

Today was another follow-up visit with the doctor, and it was pretty unpleasant. I feel good now, I hasten to reassure you, and the doctor says I'm healing very well. But he had to remove, with scary tweezers and forceps and lubricants and anaesthetics and explosives and, I think, breakfast cereals and Christmas ornaments, a lot of the cloggy stuff. The right nostril went reasonably well. The left nostril? Not so much. I was in the examination room for nearly 90 minutes. He'd pull at the clog with tweezers, or cut it with the forceps, get a little out, squirt me with more lubricant and painkiller, go away, lather, rinse, repeat. At one point it felt like he was holding on to my tonsils with the tweezers and pushing on my forehead with his foot, hoping something would give. He wrapped it up after he'd gotten enough out to get a good look at my sinus openings (once again--looking good!), but by that point I would have gladly confessed to the Lincoln Assassination if it would spare me another go-round.

I was talking this over with my boss later at work, and I said, "The hernia surgeries were a lot worse than this. But at least after those, they didn't have to pull out the entire mesh and then shove it back in every week for a month." And pain is just exhausting. I worked for another three or four hours and then just slunk home.

Because of all the manual cleaning today, irrigation was a lot easier when I got home than it has been, and I feel mostly all right--again, breathing through my nose to a degree that was impossible yesterday and maybe even impossible a month ago. Tired, though; I'm probably going to bed in the next half-hour or so.

When this is all over, I think I'm going to be glad to have done it. But it's a nasty slog.