I have had schnoz surgery. If the good doctor did his job, I will look exactly like I did before I walked in.
Before this, my entire experience with surgery was limited to having my wisdom teeth removed, which I will admit, doesn't really count. But after an increasingly common recurring sinus infection, zee doctor recommended surgery to correct what the good lord couldn't.
Endoscopic sinus surgery is where we are at from a medical advancement standpoint. This means that there are no external incisions and without getting too graphic, everything goes through the nostrils. This is a great departure from what Dr. Kramppp described to me, which involved an incision from ear to ear over the top of the skull, and a peeling back of the entire top half of the face, in order to access the sinuses. Solid piece of mind from the-only-med-student-i-know. Evidently beside manner is a later course.
The whole surgery took a little over 2 and 1/2 hours and has been surprisingly uneventful. I admit I had growing trepidation about an elective surgery where the two most common complications (which are extremely UNcommon) are leaking spinal fluid from the brain and blindness caused by an inadvertently severed optic nerve. Let's see, I went in for a sniffly nose and walked out blind and with a BRAIN-LEAK. Excellent decision making Oswald.
But everything has gone very well. After a Tuesday morning surgery I am feeling about 80% better on Saturday morning. I have a sniffly nose that requires a little irrigation (gross) and take about a half a pain pill a day (weeee!).
The first couple nights were difficult because the surgery left me with two splints and some packing in my nose rendering it useless for breathing, and a constant source of what I will tactfully refer to a "ick" and "yuck-nasty" (both very different). The flow was stemmed by a sexy "schnoz-sling" which hooks around the ears and hold a piece of gauze, or six, againt my newly-generous nostrils. This required sleeping upright and with the chance of errant ick and yuck-nasty, Dagny and I decided to bunk on the basement sectional, where I can look all Hannibal-ish on the chaise-lounge end, while she curls up on the couch. She didn't have to do this, but I was eternally grateful.
Returning to the doctor on Thursday gave him the wonderful opportunity to reclaim the splints in my nose as well as the packing. I don't know exactly what they look like because my eyes where tearing up like a weepy old wench and he had me do some deep breathing but suffice to say, I now know exactly what it's like to give birth. Take that ladies! As an aside, nasal packing looks almost identical to pickled beets. Don't ask me where this comes from.
So now I'm beginning to reclaim my ability to talk at a full volume, but anything above "inside voices" still reverbrates my pallette more than I can stand. I can't claim to feel a tremendous increase in breathability yet, but there is still quite a bit of swelling that has not subsided yet and I don't expect to have a good idea of what the finished product will be like until next week.
I have no complaints in general because I had no external bruising (common), no nausea (almost unavoidable) and no vomiting (practically assured).
Combine this with the fact that I have never broken a major bone and I am beginning to gather enough evidence that I have somehow developed Wolverine-like super self-healing ability. I will be further testing this theory by shooting myself in the foot with a small-caliber pistol next weekend and will post the results here. I figure that we are already stocked-up on pain pills and gauze so there really will never be a better time.
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