A Look Into My Nose, or: Probing a Patient's Proboscis Procedure

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 22:41:23 GMT

I have this ongoing fantasy that whenever I have to recover from an illness or injury it will give me plenty of time to write, or at least read. I'm always behind on both, so it seems like the perfect opportunity.

Then there's reality.

I applied for three sick days for after my sinus surgery, which I thought was overkill. Added to my normal days off, that gave me five days after a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure that would straighten a thing up here and unclog another thing there. The result, hopefully, would be fewer sinus infections and headaches.

Truth is, I was very close to being in a good mood, going in. Sure, we were at the hospital from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but I slept through half of it. Emily had two books, a cell phone, and a charger cord.

I woke up feeling no pain, which is really not a good sign one way or another. But the surgeon told Emily that, while the passages to my upper sinuses would always be unusually narrow, they were now clear and I was a model patient. Sadly, he found neither the loose change nor the Matchbox car I thought may have been lost up there in childhood.

It would have looked like this, only ickier.

It all went downhill from there.

For pain they put me on Norco, which made me think the Feds would burst in any moment, and I'd end up bleeding in a jail cell whether they hit me or not. Turns out the stuff's also called Vicodin, which isn't better, but gives you an idea of how much pain they expected. I have something of an addictive personality, so I decided to get off it as soon as humanly possible. Two days should do it.

Two days didn't do it. I was able to cut the dose in half from the maximum, then in half again, but my head and sinuses still throb as of when I'm pecking away at this, the next Thursday morning.

(I've been working on this column for three days. I keep falling asleep or just losing focus. London's got nothin' on my brain fog.)

So I looked up the exact term for my surgery, which no way am I well enough to type here, and researched the recovery time. How soon a patient could be expected to return to work was not a few days, but a week. It also said symptoms could continue for a month or two before all the aftereffects stop effecting. Until then: Dizziness, nausea, pain, minor bleeding, brain fog, confusion, dizziness--did I say confusion? But enough about my typical mornings.

Then we have the three times a day nasal saline irrigation.

There's no way to make this procedure more fun, but there is a way to make it less fun: Have it produce a large amount of blood and clotting. You know, my stomach isn't quite ready for me to discuss that.

So ... I'm not sure where I was going with this. Basically I just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I really am feeling better, it's just that "better" can be relative. I'm a little frustrated that I'm a week behind in my Haunted Noble County writing, but we spent some time listening to audio books (Wayward Pines), which I can do reclined with my eyes closed. I predict that when we talk to the surgeon he'll say I'm well on my way to recovery. I'm going to check him for my spare change.

Also, I'll take a nap. Or two.

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Pills Are Great, If They Don't Kill You

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 23:56:01 GMT

One thing about getting older is that you tend to know about all the medications out there. For one thing, they get advertised on what many people would consider "old person" TV channels: Science, History, National Geographic ... the channels I watch to learn things I didn't want to learn as a teenager.

"Have you been diagnosed with S.A.D.--Sad Acronym Disease? Ask your doctor if Incheeria might be right for you!"

The other thing, of course, is that we're now taking all those pills. I frequently have to ask my wife, "What's this med for, again?"

"It's for your memory, dear. Again."

The other day (or today, as I write this), I was introduced to one I'd never heard of. I stopped for my yearly visit to the allergy doctor, to confirm I still had allergies. When asked if I'd had any symptoms related to the whole respiratory system thing, I mentioned in passing that my sinus headaches had been increasing lately.

Ignoring symptoms? That's how a zombie apocalypse starts.

I hadn't given it much thought. I suffer from the Butterfly Effect: If a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, it will cause changes in weather patterns that will, sooner or later, hit my sinuses. Just another day in the Midwest, which has more spores and dander than the Great Lakes have sand.

I was being seen by a nurse practitioner--who was wonderful, by the way--named Ambush. Seriously. And she had an Army pin on her shirt, so even though she was nice and friendly, I had the strangest feeling Nurse Ambush could kill me with her pinkie. In a way she almost did, when she started pushing her finger into various places on my face.

Beats going to the urologist, anyway.

After I stopped screaming and begging for her to stop, she reminded me that people with strong allergies tend to get sinus infections easily, and guess what? As if I didn't already know.

She wrote me a prescription for, yes, an antibiotic ... but I'd never heard of this one. My regular doctor's office had heard of it, but they didn't have it. Why? "Well, we don't have a sealed, explosion proof vault."

That's when I started to get nervous.

Then I got the bottle.

First, the lid was actually bulging. I was worried it was over pressurized, but it turns out they were dead set--maybe I should rephrase that--on making sure I had enough to kick it this time.

Second, isn't that the color they give to pills that might kill people? I mean, I've seen blue and purple on the side of hazmat train cars.

Well, one of the possible side-effects is explosive diarrhea, so there's that.

I remained concerned, so I called my doctor for more information. When I told him the name and that it was 300 milligrams, he said, "You don't have children in the house, do you?"

Not unless you count me.

"Okay. I know this is going to seem counterintuitive, but these might make you very sick. Then they'll make you well, of course."

Should I avoid doing anything?

"Yes, you should."

Huh. Any other advise?

"Whatever you do, don't accidentally take two at once."

Why? What would happen?

"Have you ever heard the word Chernobyl?"

After that, I stopped asking questions.

Is it ... smoking?

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Slightly Off the Mark

A Look Into My Nose, or: Probing a Patient's Proboscis Procedure

Pills Are Great, If They Don't Kill You