The person responsible for swinging this door open and shoving me inside is Skyler McCurley, my very soon to be husband, and the man who has had the most incredible impact on my life in every way.
Back to my surgery...
With all the time I have cooped up inside my home, I wanted to document the surgery for those of you who are considering it, have had one in the past, or are just downright interested. Do not let my experience scare you out of it. Spoiler alert: It gets awesome. I will update as my recovery unfolds, but I am in day 4 now, which is light years from total healing. FML.
Day of Surgery (Monday 9-19-11): This picture is about a month old, and it is one of the rare times in the past 20 years I have not turned my head to the left to hide my honker and show a good angle. It is "full left rudder" as Skyler would say. It's an honest depiction of the condition of my septum. My very selfless sister Michelle drives me to the medical facility and waits with me to get admitted. It is a brand new, state of the art, very polished, doctor owned hospital. Fancy stuff. I feel good here. The couches are plush and comfy, I have my kindle, and I'm about 60% done with Rob Lowe's autobiography. He is the face of my generation, so I thought I would get to know the man behind the actor. I'm impressed. Anyway, I get a hand held buzzer that lights up when it is time to get admitted, and I tell Michelle I'm good, go on your way, see you in a few hours. While I wait alone, I begin to ponder the complete mystery of what lies ahead. I picture many scenarios and really look forward to the drugs (this backfires later) and waking up with a new, improved nose. I go back to what looks like an ER and they put me behind the curtain in a room that has icicles hanging off the bed and bring me a fluffy blanket fresh out of a heated box. I change into my gown and socks (with tread). So far, so delicious. In walks pregnant nurse Amber who robotically lists off things that are about to happen. She exits and I snuggle into my hot blanket that feels like a big toasty loaf of fresh baked bread. In fact, I think I smell bread baking. (Remember driving past the Mrs. Bairds plant on Mockingbird back in the day, Dallasites?) Anyway.. In comes another nurse with all the paraphernalia to start an IV. Suddenly, my blanket has run out of warm pockets and I am freezing. She finds a huge vein in my arm and goes in. It hurts very bad and I silently cry inside, but big tears roll out. I am suddenly 8 years old, and I'm ok with that. She exits. In walks a very tan, bearded man of about 6'8 in scrubs who appears to have JUST left his job chopping coconuts on a small island in the Caribbean. He seems gigantic to me. He has magic needles in his pocket and he is jangling them around. We are alone. He says to me, "you ready to pahty?", sounding exactly like he looks. I readily nod and he puts some juice in the IV that had the following effect on me: The IV lady has re-entered and is having me sign consent forms. Within 3 minutes I am laughing so hard signing the papers, I could not finish writing Stacey Sosbee. She is laughing with (at) me, and helping me sign my name, which isn't that long. I am giggling uncontrollably at nothing. She leaves, and I feel like I am that feather on Forrest Gump that floats aimlessly through the film and doesn't care where it lands... In walks Dr. Hung (I'm not kidding, look it up), who is so sweet and so good at what he does. He holds my hand and I watch his mouth move in slo-mo and words do not really come out, but he is smiling and nodding and I am weightless and glassy eyed. I think he is telling me we are about to get started, because now the curtain has opened and I see the giant anesthesia mon. My last memory is of me being wheeled down the hall on a gurney by Dr. Hung and 3 others. A pleasant doctor he is. I mean look at him:
Post Op: This part is so vague and awful, I won't go into detail except to say that I woke up to what I thought was a catastrophic injustice to my body and face, and my poor sister was totally traumatized by the whole scene. Alot of this is certainly a reaction to the anesthesia.Waking up from surgery is really not cool. It is jarring and brutal, and I had ingested ALOT of blood during surgery, so that was making an appearance into a clear bag, and I think Michelle thought she was on the set of a Rob Zombie movie.. I stayed post-op 3 hours longer than I should have because I was so groggy and completely out of it. I have no recollection of this time. I was in and out of sleep, and when I would rise and attempt to get dressed and leave, I would throw up. It is now 10pm, and I had arrived at this building at 11am. The surgery took about an hour and a half. Long day, to say the very least. Ok, let's get down to recovery...
Side-Bar: I may seem strong like ox in alot of areas in life, but medical isn't one of them. Anyone who knew me back in the day can confirm this. I was once put in a straight jacket around age 7 so the doctor could sew up my busted, bloody chin because I could not be held down. Not my proudest moment. Blood and needles cause me to feel fatigued and light headed, so the above post-op experience may just be a particularly bad experience in a sea of otherwise very smooth ones. Based on my history with all things medical and how poorly I handle them, I would say my post-op experience is not typical. Let me also note that in June I am marrying Skyler, who is a DOCTOR:
Anyway.
I arrive home with Michelle and she gets me on the couch. My friend Halle has volunteered her time and shuffled her schedule around to attend to Raven for me. I am simply not able.The unwavering help and care I receive from Michelle and Halle during the next 72 hours literally save my life. Each of them went so far out of their way to tend to me, and if I needed anything, one them would be standing right there with it. I needed them. I try to eat a bite of Campbell's chicken noodle soup, which Michelle forgot to add water to, and I almost threw up at the sight. It looked like worm pudding. I take my Vicodin and nod off on the couch. I sleep in this terrible, choppy haze sitting upright on the couch. I wake up a couple of hours later and have no idea where I am, but I know I feel like I am in the worst shape of my life. Literally.
My head is pounding. My nose is rock hard. There is a 4 inch splint up each nostril, a hard cast on top, and stitches on the outside skin of my septum. I have to wear this gauze hammock under my nostrils to catch blood and other things that drip and ooze forth. I have to change it constantly, it seems. Breathing is not an option. The drugs are having a very negative effect on me. I'm completely out of it, nodding off all day long. But I continue to take the vicodin as directed. It seemed excessive, like one every 4 hours or something, and I wasn't feeling acute pain, more like pressure and headaches. I don't have an appetite at all and it's hard to get up and move around, so I sit out trips to the kitchen to drink and eat. Later, I get a little tiny urge to take a hot bath and try and move around some. So I do that, and feel kinda good for a minute. I'm sipping gatorade which I find out later, on the brink of dehydration, I should have been guzzling. I'm struggling massively, and Halle and Michelle come and completely take over mine and Raven's care. Day one is bad news bears, just as I had anticipated. But talking to Skyler for 3 hours made me feel so much better.
I sleep in a vicodin haze last night which sends me into a 6 hour hallucination of peoples faces melting off and some scenes from Saving Private Ryan, so that was a nice little panic journey for me. In the midst of this, my skin and face itch so badly from the meds that my tired, heavy hands are clawing away at myself in my "sleep", and I feel like that mom in Requiem For a Dream. In addition to these harrowing details, I am snoring through my mouth, because my nose is no mas, which wakes me up AT LEAST every ten minutes, for 6 hours. Did I eat a "grilled cheese" at a Grateful Dead show, or just take the meds I was supposed to? This aint right. I need relief NOW. After the awful night I have, I am mentally beat down, and I began to feel a little claustrophobic under this cast on my face.This is clearly becoming as much a mental setback as it is physical. I am not prepared for this aspect of recovery. I have stopped the vicodin completely the minute I wake up, and Halle brings me a bottle of tylenol for pain. I have never been happier to see a bottle of tylenol. I have some major swelling under my left eye and I am just really needing my doctor to tell me I am OK, so he agrees to see me on very short notice. I have a very hard time today, I can't manage my life very well and parent Raven, so I melt down in tears around noon. The pressure from this episode opens up an incision which was made on my septum during sugery, and I begin to bleed out from there as a result. I get my sad self to the doctor, and he says "you're doing great, Stacey. Take it easy and relax some." This was his way of saying "Chill the F out, you are making this so much worse than it has to be". I was doing as expected, but the bleeding was of concern to him, so he puts packing (cotton/gauze) deep into my nostril and sends me home. Halle and Michelle arrive like magic fairies to save the day, and I am still bleeding like a stuck pig from that nostril and very worried (shocker). Halle is helping Raven with a school project and getting me fluids, and Michelle and I are in the mirror looking at my bleeding nose. I page the on-call doc, he calls RIGHT back (he is clearly at a restaurant enjoying himself, lots of laughter in the background). He gives me some directions to stop the bleeding (apply pressure to inside of septum with afrin soaked cotton ball for15 mins). 3 calls and 45 mins later, the blood has lessened but not stopped, and everyone is exhausted, sitting on my bed with me, watching, waiting. So I send "The Help" home and decide to get some sleep. I have been off vicodin for over 12 hours, and Dr. H had advised me to nibble on some anxiety meds, so I did just that, and slept for a very long time....
Day 4 (Fri, 9-23-11, Today)
Today has been good to me so far. The gauze had no blood on it, so this means the bleeding has stopped. Yay! I have irrigated my nose over and over with saline rinse, and it is starting to clear out a little, at least on the left side where there is no packing. I wake up after a good nights sleep (again, anxiety meds, NO VICODIN), and go in the kitchen for some ice cold apple juice. Right when it hits my throat, one tiny little bubble opens up and I can taste the juice fully! It is the first thing I have tasted since last Sunday night when I ate my last meal pre-surgery at Cafe Express! It is such a joyous moment, I run and text Skyler and feel strongly that I have really turned a corner. I have become obsessed with irrigating, because one cannot over-irrigate, and the results keep getting better and better. What congestion?! I have a pretty good day, and go get Raven from school. Now that my taste buds are back in action (at a minimum), Raven and I decide to go to Taco Diner and destroy some mexican food. We sit on the patio, it is a breezy 78 degrees, I have an insane plate of chicken enchiladas and an ice cold DosXX. I feel like I am at a resort, I soak in every single second of this experience, thoroughly enjoying myself and Raven.
Tonight, I take Raven to a football game at Jesuit to meet his buddies, and even go and pick him up. I am getting back to normal activity and don't even realize it. I feel so much better today, and it really is encouraging. I have finally removed the blood hammock from my face permanently, and it is so liberating!
The stitches are still in my septum, and the cast is still on, but Tuesday those will be gone and I will have my face back. I have looked in the mirror for the past 5 days and seen nothing short of Hannibal Lector in my reflection. For a girl with an addiction to lip gloss and a daily commitment to primping, this has been humbling. But after a day or so, I stopped seeing my face and started seeing my self. So while I am getting a straight, unobstructed nose out of this, I am also getting a valuable life lesson. I don't know if I am out of the woods completely, but I will update as I go. Here's me right now, and I'm about to irrigate and go to sleep in an upright position. YAAY!
