I’d like to thank everyone for all the good thoughts whilst I’ve been on the mend!

Last Monday I had my septum fixed. Wasn’t too bad… The worst part of it was getting the IV hooked up, actually. When I came out of recovery I felt kinda bruised and battered, but not bad.

The next few days weren’t all that bad, either. I had what felt like a bad sinus headache, and my face was pretty tender — both side-effects of the plastic stents they’d sewn into my honker. (I’ve been spelling ’em “stints” this whole time, but I was wrong. Go figger.) I could sit up and act human for an hour or two at a shot, but I spent most of my time laying on the couch gurgling.

By Wednesday night I could see a pattern, though. Every day I was getting more clogged up, more miserable, more swollen, more tender… It wasn’t getting better — it was getting worse! I was really struggling to breathe, constantly gasping for air, could barely move for fear of upsetting my nose. I couldn’t blow my nose ’cause of the stents, nor could I sniff. Finally, somewhere in there Wednesday night or Thursday morning the dam broke, finally, and my sinuses cleared.

And immediately started filling up again.

But I got a good half-day of relief anyway, which was welcomed! Thursday evening I slept for three hours straight — a record!

Today (Friday) I spent most of the day fretting and dreading my visit to the doctor to get the plastic stents removed. My nose was terribly tender, and my headache something fierce. It seemed like each day the misery added to the previous total. The last thing I wanted was for someone to dig around in my schnozz to tear stitches out, then pull chunks of plastic out of my head. But MAN was I looking forward to it. It seemed like every time the second hand hit the :15 and :45 mark I was dreading having the procedure done, but every time it swept past the :00 and :30 mark I was looking forward to it… Needless to say, I thought about it a LOT today.

The appointed time finally arrived. I’ll not go into how the removal went (that’s another post altogether), but I was surprised at the size of the stents. I’d assumed they were about the size and shape of a .22 caliber cartridge — a simple plastic tube. I wasn’t ready to see a 3-1/2″ by 3/4″ (I’m guessing) sheet of plastic with a small tube running along one edge… No wonder I had a headache!

One thing I did learn today is that while you often have the choice of screaming or not screaming, you seldom have a choice in HOW you scream. Turns out I scream like a little girl. I also learned that if the doctor takes you into a room with a suspiciously thick, possibly soundproof door, there’s usually a reason.

But within two minutes the pain was gone.

By the time we got home my week-long sinus headache was a thing of the past. I could walk and talk and BREATHE like a real-live human bean again! I ate dinner and tasted it!

I’m still awfully tender — feels kinda like I’ve been whacked in the face with a board — but the swelling’s gone down almost entirely already and I feel SO much better! I’m confident that I won’t need that last pain pill, and I’m sure that by the end of the weekend the “bruised” and “raw” feelings will be fading…

Dagmar has been WONDERFUL through this whole thing. She was always there when I needed her, and really did take good care of me! She’s a peach!