Ugh

Let me paint you a picture: imagine taking Q-tips, and wrapping them in gauze or cotton balls... and then shoving them as far up your nose as possible, and then some. Spray them with water so that they expand to fill your nose (which is now twice the size it used to be), and for good measure, stick a straw up one of your nostrils too. Oh, and then wrap some gauze around your head so it keeps a good steady pressure on the stuff in your nose. That would be a pretty good simulation of my life right now.

I suppose it's time for a recap. My surgery was scheduled for Monday at 10:30am at St. Mary's Hospital. We needed to be there at 7:30am for registration, so you can imagine that neither Carolyn or I were happy about that. I must admit though, the OR waiting room process is much more expedient than the ER process. I don't think we were waiting more than 2 minutes in any place before being taken care of and escorted to the next location. By 8am I was in my scandalous hospital gown, lying down on my bed in my semi-private "room". Really I just had a wall of curtains, but that is more than I expected. And I had Carolyn waiting with me, so that was awesome.

By 10:30am I was strapped onto the operating table as the anesthetic percolated through my system. I awoke 5 minutes later (although I was told surgery took about an hour) in the recovery room, feeling surprisingly not nauseous! I had mentioned my previous unhappy experience with anesthetic when I had my molars removed and they were able to pump in some anti-nausea medication into my system. I can't tell you how delighted I was about that.

Before long they wheeled me back to my semi-private area. (Side note: getting wheeled around in your bed is a lot of fun. I think somebody should incorporate the activity into a video game: The Fast and the Furious - Hospital Bed Drift). Normally patients hang around for another hour or two to make sure they are stabilized after surgery, but it was during this time that I found out I'm a bleeder. My surgeon came around to check out the problem and she ended up redoing the packing in my nose (see first paragraph). Now, I'm all for sticking things up one's nose, but even I have my limits; unfortunately my surgeon has no such bounds. But I must admit it worked: the surgeon got her kicks and my bleeding reduced substantially. Shortly after 6pm I got a wheelchair ride down to the car and we went home.

The rest of the story goes like this: George preoccupies himself for 4 hours, takes his Tylenol 3 meds, and repeats. Today I finally get to take the packing out of my nose, which will be glorious but likely very bloody. I can see why they stress the need to be at home for the week following surgery. Anyway, this blog post has left me exhausted.