Brain Stew

I had the spacer/implants and splint removed from my nose yesterday. I thought the splint was removed last week, but it was actually the gel packs that were removed. The splint removal was a bit uncomfortable, but tolerable. There was a definite sense of relief when it was gone. I had had one of the stitches holding it place come out and so some of it was pushed far up into the left side of my nose making me sneeze A TON and so I was so glad to get that out.

BUT THE IMPLANT THING WAS LIKE HAVING MY BRAIN SUCKED OUT OF MY NOSE.

I mean, he was digging around in the left side (the right side is the one that has been giving me all this pain) and then from behind my left eye comes this searing tour-de-force of pressure nad ripping pain. I actually moaned.

I'm not a wimp, people. I have had a 100% natural child brith, I have 10 (depending on how you count them) tattoos, I pierced my own ear when I was in 6th grade for goodness sake, I can take pain.

BUT THE RIGHT SIDE.

OMFG. He could not get to the implant, so he is poking and prodding and renumbing it over and over and he keeps ripping out stuff that feels awfully similar to the left side extraction, but it isn't, it is just hard crusty bloody boogary stuff. So he would take a break, renumb and try again. Suddenly, I felt this ripping pain and pressure akin to my eyeball being ripped from the inside out my a gigantic crab claw and my brains follwoing being squeezed through my eye hole. I screamed, literally, screamed aloud and then all this blood just started gushing out of my head. It was like a bullet hole or something and my guts were pouring out of my head, all over my clothes and the nurse was like "OMG, Dr. K, she's bleeding!" and they pushed me back in the chair and covered my nose with gauze and I thought I might puke or faint. I have NEVER been light headed with blood or pain, but I am telling you all, that I thought I was going to pass out, so the doc gave me a SMELLING SALT. that felt great having a little whiff of ammonia in my newly gouged nose.

Anyway. I survived the ordeal but I will NEVER. NEVER. do this again. N E V E R!

My head does feel better though ym right eye is still agitated. I am thinking positive that there is an end in sight to all this. please.

this is the balloon catheter they use. The implants are about the same size, maybe a little thinner with these like grappling hook things attached to it. If you're real ambitions I think they are called micro something spacers

Never ending sto-orey

I went to the eye doc today because my eye has been jacked since my surgery - and my friends cat last night (I am allergic to cats) made an already bad situation worse...and I have allergic conjunctivitis. Yippee for me. So I got gels and drops and all kinds of good stuff for my eye. But he says I should be right as rain in that department sometime in the next 48 hours. PLease oh please oh please.


I knew when I got this surgery that it would just be a snowball effect of issues, and so far, I think it is.

I am trying to get by on advil for most of today. So far so good, it just feels like someone smashed my nose with a brick, but it's OK.

I want to add, I don't REALLY look like Barbara Streisand now. I think I look the same, though I can tell a slight difference in my nose, I don't know if anyone else would. I will have to post some beore and after pics to see if anyone can really tell. I just thought it was kind of funny if you came out of surgery with a schnaz when you went in with a rather straight and uneventful nose.and now, because I must cease and assist (what do they say? Cease and desist?) all complaining, I bring you, a HAPPY MOMENT (drum roll, please)..............................

good grief. I can't think of a single happy thing to say. I am going to go stick my head in the oven now.

used to know a girl, had two pierced nipples and a black tattoo

* My splint is out. Lisa, you must be one tough bird, because removing the splint hurt like hell. Even with a numbed nose. Ugh. The worst was when he used some sucker machine to get all the gunk out, felt like my brain was getting abortioned.

* But that ain't all, folks. I have to go back in a week to get these steroid implants in my ethmoid (I think) sinuses removed AND some sort of plastic wrap is on my septum and that comes out too. He says it won't hurt as much as the splint. But I dunno. They nicely forgot to mention that septum replacement is one painful mother fucker.

* I can blow my nose now!

* which means I get great joy at blowing out lumpy green bloody clumps of junk. I keep wanting to show people, like i am just so proud of myself that chunks are coming out now!

* on top of all this, my baby had some kind of diaresha (that's what we call it because in 5th grade there was a girl in my class named Dialesha and so ever since I told my nine year old that, diarreah has become diaresha) puke virus. I was so worried I would get it and have to puke before that spint came out and the puke would get all caught back there in my nose.... I didn't. There is a God.

* this is a pretty gross post

* Honestly, people, I think pain medicine is the only thing keeping me happy. Hello Betty Ford.

* My goal is to be "happy" again by March 27 (the day after the steroid plastic extraction). Will I make it????

my nose is built like a wound that won't heal

I thought I wouild try to document the whole sinus surgery deal, but each time I look down at my keyboard my nose starts bleeding, so....we'll see how far I get. Plus, something is wrong with one of my eyes - I have no idea what, but it feels like it got scratched or burned in the whole ordeal.

OK. So I went in Friday about 11:30 - found out I gained 2 more pounds - thanks so much body, even after giving up fast food for Lent (such a Judas, this body). My sats were 97 and my heart beat was alittle high for me, like 113 over 64 or something (I am usually pretty low, like 98 over 52 - maybe that is an exaggeration, but I have a low heartbeat).

So I farted around for like 3 hours while they all did their thing. Finally at like 2 they took me back. Guess what?! Operating rooms look just like they do on TV! Go figure. They got me warm blanket, my doc gave me a little grandfatherly pep talk nd the next thing I knew people were annoying the fuck out of me asking me to sit up and take big breaths and yadda yadda.

I don't think I could open my eyes for like an hour after the surgery. They gave me dilauidid and fentanyl and I tell you, neither worked. It was the same as when I had demerol during my son's birth - I could feel the drugs but also still the pain. Anyway, somewhere in there my sats went down to 88 and my heart beat went up to like 130 or somerthing and my face turned all red so they were all kinda freaking out. But they would not give me even an ice chip and I kept trying to tell them in my morphine haze that I would be able to breathe so much easier if my swollen dehydrated tongue wasn't constricting my airway, but no one was listening.

So the sugery was only supposed to take 1.5 - 2 hours but took 3 because, as my doc told my husband, there was A TON OF SHIT IN THERE. Oy. and then the whole red face heart beat sats thing took an extra while as well.

I think my face got red because they heat you up in some bag. I get very red in the face when I get hot, like after I work out I always look like a red faced mess, but they kept saying it was from the dilaudid. Well, here is a secret, people - I have taken dilaudid before (nonprofessionally) and it did not turn my face red. But I wasn't sharing that info.

So now I have a splint holding my new spetum in place and that is causing me some pain, but overlall I don't think my sinuses feel soo shabby. There is some throbbing and bleeding, which is annoying, but I am tolerating (with the help of my friendly vicodoin rx and some advil (the magic pill, apparently) and some ativan when i start to freak out and want to pick the fucking bloody splint out of my nose).

I hope the splint removal does not hurt.

So my sinuses have been sinuplstied and all the other ones have been ectomied (why ever they call them ectomies, I am not sure) so I hope this fixes up some problems. Please.

Life right now is a bit of a medical cluster fuck.

I lost my secondary insurance because my husband made too much money last year. This means that the Colisitn I was just prescribed is going to cost us $400 a month -which clearly means that I am not oging to be using it anymore.

The ENT wants to do balloon sinuplasty on my head. and fix my septum. His cost alone is $13,000 - from that, I gather, the whole deal will cost us $2000 before insurance kicks in. That might not be that big of a deal off hand, but I have got to get a job and until I do we really are living pay check to paycheck with not another $50-$100 a month to be paying off a $2000 medical bill.

So, it all sucks.

And my family is all pressuring me, "you HAVE to do this surgery..." and it's like, no, I don't. I probably should, but I don't HAVE to do a goddamn thing.

So it looks like I'm back to teaching this fall, if I can get a job, so that I can get insurance. The school corp here has GREAT insurance, and if we have both then we'll be fine. But that is still 6 months from now...so I dunno. Plus, really, I was hoping ot be able to use this master's degree of mine to teach as an adjunct somewhere - but that won't give me insurance, so for now that is all on hold and it's back to the little snotheads.

I am pretty open about financial stuff, I mean, it's just money, and I see no real reason to hide when I have it or when I don't, though I know I have been making my family uncomfortable talking about not having any right now. The thing is, I think that money always seems to come and go in cycles, so while it' s slim pickings right now, it will come around again.

So right now I am pretty pissy with the whole effing thing, dealing with insurance and money and blady blady blah.


so, as I always say:
moneyisnotrealmoneyisnotrealmoneyisnotrealmoneyisnotrealmoneyisnotrealmoneyisnotrealmoneyisnotreal