// newmodernscience

Really it’s just alot of pain. The funny thing is, I wasn’t all that worried about it, in fact somewhere in the back of my head I was more concerned with not waking up from the anesthesia meds, even though that’s just silly.

The last thing I remember was them having me lie down on the operating table. There was this foam circle where my head was supposed to go. “Put your head on the donut!”, they said. And I remember the anesthesiologist and nurses laughing over his pronunciation of “carnitas”. Next thing I know, i’m swooning in a chair in the recovery room, though I don’t really remember anything clearly until after I got home. Recovering from the meds was pretty uncomfortable, but the worst? not being able to sleep. See, I breathe out of my nose normally when I sleep, but with my nose and sinuses packed with gauze, there was no chance. So sleeping was like open mouth napping for 15 minutes at a time until my throat dried out, then drinking water, drying out, and then having to use the bathroom every hour and a half. So, after day 3 when I got the packing out, boy did I sleep. Getting the packing out was uncomfortable, but I could notice the change in breathing immediately. Of course, the next 5 days after that it was healing and and messed up, so hard to breathe again. They gave me this rinse kit, that was AMAZING. It’s basically a bottle with a small pressure pump that you filled with warm water and little saline packets. You then, squirt it up one nostril, and it comes out the other, taking with it just about everything that’s up there. Fantastic. It’s really kind of gross, but it seriously works. I can see how it’d really help if you had allergies, or a cold or something. For an hour or so, it kind of makes you feel like you accidentally snorted swimming pool water.

So, the 2 annoying side effects? well, my hearing is messed up, and will be for a about a month. It’s like… Popping your ears? But it never comes back. So, everything is really loud. The road noise from the car sounds like a jet engine sometimes. The other annoying thing is that it seems that I snore like all the time. I used to snore a little, but now it doesn’t matter what position I sleep in. However, I don’t wake up from it anymore (unless Carey gives me the elbow) so, i’m actually sleeping better.

So, quite the adventure, this surgery thing. I’ll have to say overall that it’s not all that fun, but it was certainly interesting. We’ll have to see what happens with the foot thing.