Bright White Light

The day after my surgery, I had to go back to the doctor for a follow up. I was surprised when he pulled out a wad of bloody gauze (I'm assuming) from my nose. I didn't know anything was up in there. Of course, I was out cold when he put it in there but it was still weird to have a foreign material extracted from my body when I didn't know it was there in the first place. He mentioned my deviated septum was the worst he had seen in a really long time. He also said the cartilage had began turning into bone and all sorts of nasty stuff was happening up in there. To sweeten the deal, I had two extra holes in my sinuses filled with a thick, white mucus. Good thing he got all of that straightened out. So, that was the first visit the day after surgery.

Today, I went back for my one week follow up and it was awful. The appointment was for him to suck out everything that had been collecting over the duration of the week: mucus, boogies, blood, any clotting, etc. First of all, the nurse stuck those numbing strips up my nose again and then laid me back in the chair. After a few minutes, the doctor came in with the usual, "Hey, how are ya?!" to which I responded, "Miserable!"

He took the strips out of my nose and then the nurse came back in and he got out his suctioning machine and proceeded to clean out each nostril. It was so bad. First of all, those numbing strips suck because I felt all of it. Well, I suppose I thought it hurt but without those numbing strips it could have been a lot worse but it was still really uncomfortable. And then the doctor had this light he stuck up my nose that was so bright I literally thought it was going to blind me. I squeezed my eyes as tight as I could and yet the light was still as bright as if I had my eyes wide open. It made me tear up, as well as his suctioning. Gosh, it felt like he was going so far up my nose I swear he was fondling my thoughts. And he was moving my nose around too and remember, this was only a week ago he had cut into it so it was still sore. I had tried to be so careful of my nose this whole time and he was standing there manhandling my nostrils like nobody's business. It was painful and went on for a long time.

Mom, who was in the room, told me afterward that the nurse noticed me gripping the arms of the chair I was in and she gave my mom that sympathy look like, "Aw, poor guy, this isn't pleasant for him!" It sure wasn't but I was a trooper and made it through.

After he was done I could actually breathe out of my nose for the first time in a week. It was weird though but the nurse told me that was normal because of the numbing and because I had become accustomed to breathing out of my mouth. After the numbing wore off, I tried breathing out of my nose but it burned. I assumed it was because he had just been in there with his mini hoover and because I was still healing from surgery. It's actually not as bad now so I'm pretty happy about that.

Oh, and the lump in my throat is bigger than ever. It gradually started getting a bit harder after surgery but over the past two days it has absolutely ballooned up to "facial disfigurement" levels. I mentioned it to the doctor when he first came in the room. Since I was laid back and had my chin on my chest, he didn't notice it until I told him and then lifted my head up. Mom said the doc's goofy grin dropped immediately upon seeing the tennis ball jutting out of my throat. He then prescribed some stronger antibiotics and some steroids to hopefully cause the lump to go down and disappear for good. He said he didn't like that the lump was painful for me but he said it was actually a good sign cause it shows that the nose and the lump are correlated like he thought. So, while I thought I'd be done with antibiotics by Friday, I've got ten more days to go! Stronger stuff, too. Will I ever feel like myself again?

Being whacked out on all these pills have really made me feel like I am outside of myself, some kind of observer and not actually me, and in some ways it's nice because I've gone this whole time without thinking very much. While it's nice to be blank-brained for a change, it's unfamiliar and in some ways, it's stifled me. Before the operation, I was going through a semi-major crisis of faith: faith in God, faith in man, faith in myself and where I am in the world but now I'm too tired to think about any of that. I've put God and everything else on hold until I can clear my head of this haze. I haven't been writing anything of substance. Not to mention I've put my book on hold. The good thing is that I care and I'm itching to get back to writing it. It felt good writing and I know the more I work on it, the better I'll feel. If only I could get my head in the right place.

It's so funny because so many times I've wanted to take a break from my head and now that I have, I'm ready to dive back into that mess that is my mind. I still have a lot of work to do.