an update on having my sinuses out

So two weeks ago I had the surgery: septoplasty and inferior turbinate resection. That Friday night I slept (ha) on the couch. Breathing through my mouth, so of course my mouth got super dry and my throat was raw. Saturday ditto--it wasn't quite as bad, because I got a little more sleep (once the codeine kicked in and kept knocking me out), but still with the dry mouth. Particularly the right side of my throat was very sore indeed. It seemed that was where it had got banged up the most with the breathing tube.

Sunday night I tried sleeping in the bed, because I missed Himself and sleeping on the couch sitting up was killing my neck. I made a stack of extra pillows so I'd be a little more upright, and we brought the humidifier back out, but I couldn't really get comfortable; I still couldn't breathe through my nose, but my head was far enough back that my throat kept kind of collapsing and I'd snort once and I was up half the night worrying that the tossing and turning would be keeping Himself awake.

So Monday I came back down to the couch. But I wised up and brought the bed pillows with me; stacking them up on the arm of the sofa was way better than using the sofa cushions and this snap-on neck pillow I use on airplanes as a kind of headrest. I worked from home Monday but knocked off around 3pm when I was just too fuzzy headed to get anything more done--but the rest of the week I was able to work pretty much whole days, which was good, because otherwise I would have gone totally. stir. crazy from cabin fever. At least I was more comfortable at night, though. Only every morning I could feel that sore spot on the right side of my throat. It was really quite painful to swallow; it felt like there was a marble covered with sandpaper in there. I was sure the soreness from the breathing tube couldn't have lasted that long. But every morning once I'd moistened up my mouth a little, and gritted my teeth and swallowed a couple of times, it eased up a little--I could still kind of feel something poking my velum when I swallowed, but it wasn't as bad. Especially once I was allowed to take ibuprofen, on the Wednesday; that helped a lot in a way the T3 hadn't (the codeine knocked me out, but the Tylenol didn't touch the pain, and that was really the only pain I had).

And Friday I went and got the splints out. There were these kind of half-moon plastic bits that were in there to make sure the swelling stayed down, the packing stayed in place, and nothing healed together that I'd just paid money to have someone slice apart. And they had cylindrical breathing channels in them, but of course those got clogged up with the packing gauze and (ugh) so on, no matter how much I sprayed with saline. (I wanted to use the neti pot, but I wasn't allowed to until the splints were out.)

Getting the splints out was like miraculous. I can breathe through my nose! I can sleep lying down! Next to my husband! The sore spot in the back of my throat on the right side went away! (Because it turns out the right-side splint had slid a little further back than it was meant to, so it was irritating the back of my nose and may even have been poking me in the velum. Charming. I wasn't allowed to blow my nose or use the neti pot the whole week because the splints might have dislodged and slid forward; don't know if there was a way to avoid the opposite, but whatever, as soon as it was gone I felt better.) There was still some post-nasal action and other nonsense, but everything was so much better.

... But I still get very tired very quickly. We walked to the train Monday morning, and that turned out to have been a mistake, so I had Himself pick me up from the train that afternoon and I drove to and from the next station out (where there's parking) on Tuesday. Wednesday he drove me in and I walked home; but yesterday I was plain exhausted and worked from home. Today he drove me in and I walked home again. Speeds between off and full. I need to find them.

I'm still getting rid of a lot of crud. Not to be too graphic about it. But of course healing takes time. It's only been two weeks since the surgery and one since the splints came out, so I'm not going to be back to plain untraumatized skin in there yet. Neti pot twice a day, all the saline nasal spray I can shoot in the meantime, humidifier overnight, and allergy medicine because it is, in fact, that time. And I mostly feel better every day.

Last night my nose was whistling nonstop so I couldn't sleep, and I finally opened my mouth but then I had 4/5 of the problems I was having breathing through my mouth last week. Sigh. And in the morning my nose felt dry and stuffy. But the hot shower fixed that, and in general I think the whole situation continues to mend.