Surgery

As most of you in the Facebook world know by now, I just had a Septoplasty. In other words, I had a crooked nasal passageway and had to get it straightened out. Apparently, deviated septums run in both sides of my family and even my little cousins have underwent this procedure. Why even go through all this? Because my friends/family couldn't tell the difference between me and a bear snoring.

A good news about getting this surgery in Korea is that it only cost me ~$US250 including medicine. Cheap right? This same procedure (with a couple of others) would have cost me over $6000.00 in Amurrica.

Surgery:
This was my first surgery ever. I had no idea how strict they were with jewelry and nail polish. They even cut off a bracelet I'd been wearing since college. Anyways, after crying about that, I had to strip naked and get into some patient scrubs! Yay to feeling free. I was then given an IV along with some antihistamine shots and was to wait about an hour before I could be all cut up.

Once I was taken to the OR, I was shot with anesthesia multiple times. It hurt so much, I yelled the F word outloud a couple of times. After that set in and lost all feeling of my nose/mouth, the doctor came in and cut my nose open. As he was shoving stuff up my nose, I could feel my nasal bone snap, crackle, and pop! Of course it didn't hurt, but I felt my bone being shifted around in there. After all that, I could feel the string as they sewed me up.

The surgery itself only took 40 minutes. They finished me off by shoving all kinds of gauze up my nostrils and then taping me up with more gauze in case I bled out. And bled out, I did. My grandma was NOT being supportive and all I felt like doing was crying. Every time I cried, the more I bled. Not only did I bleed through my nose, I even bled out my eyes. I felt like the bad guy from Casino Royale, as he wiped the blood off his eyes.

Post-op:
Going home was not fun. I nearly passed out as I tried to get up and thought about how effed up it would be if I fell forward and hit my nose on the ground. I wasn't allowed to wash my face or breathe through my nose (not that I could, even if I tried). Trying to sleep was even worse. I was told to sleep sitting up, or propped up. ugh. I woke up every hour because I was forgetting to breathe and nearly choked.

Look how wonderful and happy I look right here. I had so much gauze up my nose, it nearly doubled the size of my normal nose! Eating was hard, drinking was hard, talking was hard, life was hard.

Day 2 was not bad at all UNTIL I had to go back to the hospital to get the gauze taken out. OMG I never felt pain like that ever in my life. I cried so hard and told the doctor to just stop. He only worked on one nostril and I was crying like a little baby. Sleep was horrible. This time, I was sleep talking. I still have couple strips of plastic in there. I think it's to hold my nose upright and makes sure it sets straight.

Day 3, I am still taking drugs and am doing a nasal cleanse.  I have bloody mucus dripping out my nose and have to make sure that I wash out everything bad in there. On a funny note, look how much medicine I have!

I have other kinds of drugs to take, but thought it was funny that I could wrap my meds around my neck like a scarf.

Anyways, Merry Christmas Eve. Hopefully my nose will feel better and I can actually breathe out of it.