Operation 15 is over

[thewayne]

I had surgery on my sinuses yesterday. You have six sinus cavities in the front of your skull, with tiny little passages between them. Well, my passages had basically closed off and weren't passing air, and were also nasty little pockets of infection. So yesterday I had a balloonoplasty procedure done.

It was not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but I've also had far worse. Afterwards we went to Applebee's for lunch (tomato basil soup and half of a BLT sandwich, along with a chocolate mousse shooter, quite good after having fasted for some 14 hours). Got some excellent pain meds and I REALLY needed them last night! Woke up this morning and I was breathing quite well with very little pain, I hope to not use the pain pills at all today (they're a useful thing to have around the house for the occasional muscular strain/sprain).

I'll be on antibiotics for a week and steroids for another day or so. One of the things that my doctor is having me do is a saline wash for my sinuses, something I've been doing for three years. It's a NeilMed squeeze bottle, and I'm temporarily doing it three times a day instead of twice. It is amazing the amount of bloody gunk that's getting flushed out. But this morning is less disgusting than last night, so that's improvement.

So today will be 'sit around the house and do very little', aside from needing to dig in to homework that I need to complete tomorrow night, I think I'm going to dig out my copy of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and watch some trash. I also have the premier episode of Ash Vs The Evil Dead on my DVR, that'll be a must watch considering what day it is. And maybe Corpse Bride or Nightmare Before Christmas. And going down to the BBQ place and getting a sandwich and a pound of brisket.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Operation fifteen? Egad. I'm a complete novice - just one, for an abscess on one leg, which happened to catch a nerve. My, that was fun. *ahem* Amazing how such a physically tiny disorder can be almost debilitating.But then, look at drug masses - 250mg terbinafine, 5mg finasteride - vanishingly small quantities, bulked out out of necessity in pill form, yet with the profound effects they intend.

Saline washes are miraculous things. ^_^ Used them routinely while my piercings were healing (both long since migrated out, sadly, but the sensitivity remains =:) - they're so effectively, and at leadt in that context, surprisingly soothing.

Burt Wonderstone I enjoyed more than I should have. =:) And a superbly disguised turn by Jim Carrey, too!

Don't forget The Book of Life, too, especially as you strike me as having quite a romantic nature. ^_^

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 15. Heart surgery at 18 months, five on my right thumb by the third grade, tonsils, parathyroid, carpal tunnel x2, cataracts x3, and two sinus surgeries. I think that's 15. And that's excluding six tooth extractions that were full anesthetic.

I like to feel that I'm making up for a lot of people, like my wife, who hasn't had any. Now if only they'd send me money in appreciation! ;-)

It was very remarkable the change overnight between Friday and Saturday. The swelling went down rapidly, and I didn't need pain pills until last night, took 'em before I went to bed. It's amazing getting up in the morning and being able to breath well before flushing my nose and doing a host of other nasal sprays.

But sinus flushes after sinus surgery are, shall we say, colorful. Entirely appropriate for Halloween.

I had doctors strongly recommending sinus flushes to me for a couple of years before I started doing them 3+ years ago, and they are quite remarkably effective. We've credited them, plus all my donor immuneglobin, with greatly reducing illness severity. When we had the Great Tree Incident of '12, we had to spend several days at the observatory while we got initial repairs done, and a plague swept through the observatory at the same time. It hit my wife pretty hard, along with a lot of her co-workers, didn't do a thing to me.


We enjoyed Book of Life, but I don't have a digital copy yet. We're going to be ditching satellite and going with Apple TV in the next few months, so things like that will be instantly reachable then.

I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey overall, but he was quite wonderful in Wonderstone. I think it was the joy of watching him do such horrible things to himself. Likewise, I don't care for Adam Sandler, but I really enjoyed Pixels and the two Hotel Transylvania movies.