Friday, February 20, 2009

I'm an Idiot and Back to the Doc

Everything is fine but here's what happened.

On Wed I had the splint removed and after leaving the doctors office in the afternoon my nose felt cavernous. I understood that my septum without the splint was susceptible to bumps and the doctor said he wanted to know about any.

Wed night, I was in a chair and reaching to the bottom drawer of a low chest of drawers (in the dinning room if you know my home). As I pulled, the drawer stuck and my chair rolled towards the cabinet and after a moment I realized my nose was resting on the lip of the chest. Uh oh. So then I realized that my right nostril was bit a more closed than I had remembered that afternoon. But it could have been it was just clogged, etc. I had plans Thu afternoon and figured I'd see how it felt. Unfortunately at night I was kept up a bit wondering if I had done some damage. After all, at some point I had broken my nose and hadn't realized it, how did I know what my nose was supposed to feel like?

So today I called the doctor and got an appointment for 3:30. I was appreciative they could fit me in. When the doctor walked in he ask if I had been kick boxing and I explained my stupidity at opening a drawer. He checked me out and my septum was fine.

He said a few times that he was glad I came in for a few different reasons. First it's much easier to just replace the splint in the few days after it comes out rather than waiting longer and having to reset the septum. Second he rarely sees a patient so soon after a post-operative visit and he was happy for the opportunity to see how I was healing. First off he vacuumed my nose again which was nice. As a comment on what makes an ENT's day he seemed really excited about finding "large chunks". This is a man who's found his calling.

He also noticed that there were some dry spots on my septum and taught me how to use an antibiotic ointment (not vaseline) to help that. Apparently there is so much airflow through my nose that my body will take a month or two to figure out how much mucus to generate to properly coat the surfaces. It also doesn't help that it's winter and the air is dry.

I also realized (and asked) that the reduction in airflow I experienced Wed night was in part due to the really good antihistamine from the examination wearing off. Combine that with the vacuuming wearing off and it makes sense that I feel not quite as good as I did right after the visit.

So I'm happy I'm still healing fine. I'm breathing much better and am definitely seeing an improvement in sleep. But cavernous might have been too strong a word. Even though my septum might think so, I still feel like I have a cold and have to blow my nose fairly often (using a gentle technique not really suitable for public use). But this is all normal recovery.

My next followup is in three weeks. I plan on not visiting him sooner. :)

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