WARNING: As the title of this post suggests, I’m going to discuss surgical procedures and nose-related issues. If you’re squeamish, you can skip to the next post, a sad little story of my old dog. Deeper down, I promise there are some happier stories.
As I sit here writing this, I can breathe through both nostrils, if you can believe such a thing! Yes, to most, this would hardly be worth noting, but for me, it’s astonishing. Because, for as long as I can remember, I have had severe nasal issues. I’m trying to make this as un-icky as possible, but of course, the broad details will conjure images of snot and all that.
Thinking back, I remember being an extremely young child with a perpetually blocked nose. A very specific memory is of my father holding a tissue to my nose, telling me to blow, and being unable to ever get both nostrils clear. Always, either my left nostril or my right nostril would be blocked. Weirdly, the one that was blocked tended to switch back and forth every couple of hours.
What made matters worse was that my entire family are cat people, and I’m severely allergic to cats. At the time, we just thought that I sneezed a lot. One time, a doctor prescribed me some nasal spray for it once. Unfortunately, it didn’t really do anything. But when I finally moved away for university, I can remember being amazed at how much less I sneezed. Then, when I’d head back to my family home for Christmas and so on, the sneezing would start again.
Despite the lack of sneezing, my constantly blocked nostril, which switched back and forth, remained. If I wanted to sleep on my side, which I frequently do, I would have to lay on the side with the unblocked nostril facing upward, with the blocked one against the pillow, just to be able to breathe clearly. And no, I couldn’t just breathe through my mouth. I know they say it’s a myth that spiders crawl into people’s mouths as they sleep, but I’d still rather not take the risk.
So I studied, worked, moved to New York, got married and pursued my career, all with a nostril blocked. Sure, it’s hardly a debilitating condition, but it was damn annoying. So finally, last year, with the worry that my health insurance would get much more expensive if Trump got back in, I asked my doctor just what was going on.
First, he gave me allergy pills. No change. Then a bunch of nasal spray. No change. Then he booked me an appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor. At the appointment, I sat on a chair as a young doctor picked up a small black device, a camera that looked much like one of those really thin bendy LED lamps that clip onto work desks. Then he shoved it down my right nostril. I felt searing pain as the device extended into my cheek, yet he said it seemed pretty normal. I tried looking at the camera screen, but it proved challenging. Then he pulled it out and tried pushing it into my left nostril. I thought that the pain my right nostril was excruciating, but this was on a whole other level. After a few more pushes from the doctor and a few grunts of pain from me, he concluded that the camera wouldn’t go in.
After a painless MRI scan, they found the culprit. I was a little disconcerted from seeing my own skull, yet the message got through. I had a deviated septum on the left and a concha bollosa on the right. They were working as a team to restrict my airflow to one nostril as my nose did that thing that noses do where they regulate smell and air.
They explained that it could be fixed, but only with surgery. I would be anesthetized, and the recovery would take a few weeks. At first, I was a little reluctant. I asked them an, I’m sure, annoying number of questions about the risks. Eventually, they convinced me, and we booked the date. I tried to get an appointment on a Monday or Tuesday, as, apparently, those are the best days to get surgery. The surgeon said that she only operates on Fridays, so I agreed. Later, I looked the facts up again and learned that, statistically, Friday is the worst weekday to go through surgery.
So the months went by, with me getting on with life, only slightly worried that I wouldn’t wake up from the procedure. The day before the operation, I was trying my hardest not to think about the slim likelihood of something going terribly wrong, when I got a call from the hospital. They informed me that the operation was canceled at the last second. I’d scheduled my work around this so was pissed off. Luckily, I had a new surgery date for two weeks’ time. Therefore, I had to get through two more weeks of just a little too much worry.
Two Fridays later, and I was changing into one of those surgical shawls at the hospital. I walked into the operating theater, sat on the bench/table thing and had an oxygen mask put on me. I asked if it was the anesthetic, and the anesthesiologist said that it was just oxygen. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, being wheeled along a corridor, with a wet cloth stuck under my nose and with an uncomfortable feeling in my nostrils. The doctor explained that they had put stents in my nose. They chose not to explain why they lied about the anesthetic. They probably thought I would panic, or something. In hindsight, that was a good idea on their part.
A little later, after I’d had a healthy dose of morphine, Willa, my wife*, picked me up. Luckily, we live only two blocks from the hospital, so she didn’t have too hard a time navigating me home. I didn’t even fall over once!
As the morphine wore off, I tried to numb myself with over-the-counter painkillers. They were about 20% as effective as the morphine had been, so I realized I was in for a rough time. Honestly, I’d rather not go into the details of the following week. You can picture it pretty accurately by imagining a man in his 30s in an apartment, stating the following words over and over: Ow, ow, ouch, ow, ow my nose, ow.
A week later, they pulled my stents out and put another camera up my nose. This time, they used a children’s nose camera. I remember thinking that, even with my still sore post operation nose, that the kiddie nose camera felt much less painful. Personally, I can’t understand why they don’t just make them all that small. It seemed to do the job just fine!
After that appointment, I decided to take Huxley, my dog, to Prospect Park, as it was a beautiful Friday. We sat at my favorite spot, and I remember being overwhelmed by the smells I could detect. Basically, the park smelled 10 times stronger than it had before. The doctors told me that my sense of smell would change. I wasn’t prepared at all for something so extreme. Later, as I was cooking, I ended up crying profusely as I chopped up an onion. Onions had rarely done this to me in the past. This time, the tears were streaming like the Niagra Falls.
Over the next week, as my nose healed, I worked mostly from home. Which brings me to today. This Friday, there’s another check-up. On the whole, my breathing is so much better. And it’s all thanks to the New York City health system. Yes, it’s not perfect, and the last-minute delay was a little annoying, but all things considered, they did a damn fine job overall.
The moral of the story is that breathing through both nostrils is definitely easier than just the one. Who would have guessed? I just wish I could smell foul things slightly less than I currently do!
*For some reason, I’ve always referred to my wife as just “my wife” throughout these blog posts. I don’t exactly know why, but I kind of thought it had a nice old-fashioned vibe. Maybe it’s just the increased airflow I’m enjoying, but it seems kind of sexist now. From now on, in that case, she’ll mostly be referred to by her name, Willa.
