Written on the 25th… Finally got my surgery, and now I’m going to try to get caught up. I was giddy with relief when I saw the text message saying to show up at St. Joseph’s the following morning, with the only disappointment being that it was three hours later. It would have been much better if we had to be there at 5:30 rather than 8:30 because Tampa traffic is a nightmare. I thought we’d be home by 1:00 or 2:00, but instead we got home at 10 minutes to 5:00, just enough time for him to call the company we rented a car from so that they wouldn’t report it as stolen. He dropped it off a little later, but unfortunately this ordeal is going to cost us yet more money, and we’ll probably be charged for another day.
It was a Chevy Malibu, and like most modern vehicles, it was loud, something I still don’t get. Since they just keep adding appointments, we’re going to take our car down to Tampa and charge it a few times the day I get the packing removed, but I don’t want to jump too far ahead in this journal. The splints will come out at the beginning of March.
After the valet person parked our rental, we checked in. I thought I’d have to play 20 questions again, but I was just asked basic identifying info and that was it. We sat there in uncomfortable chairs definitely not built for short people for about 45 minutes before I was called back to the prep room. I had to dip a toothbrush into a bottle of liquid and brush my teeth with it, and then use another brush to brush my guns and tong—oh my God, speech-to-text is having such a hard time understanding me since I can’t breathe out of my nose at all. My gums and tongue, I was trying to say. This was to reduce bacteria.
Then I had to take off everything but my panties and wash my body with warm wipes. I saved the last one for the nurse to do my back. After that, I was given a hospital johnny and non-skid socks. Then she swabbed a solution in my nose, and it was time for my blood pressure reading, which was through the roof. My heart rate was elevated too. I think it was more the exhaustion than nerves since I’ve had plenty of surgery before. She took my temp, and I was not happy that the IV had to go in my hand, but it wasn’t too bad since she was able to place it closer to my wrist. The probes were then stuck to me, which the heart leads attach to.
After I was propped up on the gurney, she went and got Tom, who’s been totally awesome throughout this ordeal. I could never have handled this alone. The extreme exhaustion and what these health issues have taken out of me have really affected my brain. My thinking and memory have been horrible, but if this procedure is a success, hopefully I can sleep better—as long as there isn’t really a curse on my sleep that’s just going to do something else to fuck with it—and some of the brain damage will be reversed.
Then I met the surgical team, the anesthesiologist, and the respiratory therapist who put the breathing tube down my throat because of my sleep apnea so I didn’t wake up with tight lungs, especially since the one-hour surgery became a two-hour surgery, which is longer than the cholecystectomy was. Originally, he didn’t know exactly what he was going to do. He knew he was going to reduce the turbinates but didn’t know for sure if he would do the septoplasty. Well, he did.
I was discouraged at first because he said, as a conservative surgeon, he was only 60% confident that I would find relief after surgery since my symptoms seemed a bit extreme for what he saw upon examination—not that he didn’t believe me. AI said this means he’s a good surgeon to downplay the results, LOL, and that they usually underestimate like that. He showed Tom before-and-after pictures while I was in recovery, and Tom said he made it a lot roomier in my nose. There were signs of allergies, so I’ll probably still have to do some kind of allergy regimen, although he believes it wasn’t caused by allergies and likely would have happened even if we hadn’t moved here. That’s great to know since we’re almost certainly going to spend the rest of our lives in Florida!
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