Viated Septum

For as long as I remember, I've had a deviated septum. But today I had that surgically repaired. At long last, mine is once again a viated septum.

As tortured as that term sounds, that's as tortured as I felt when the anesthesia wore off. One would think that the worst pain was in my nose and generall sinus area, but one would be wrong. Instead, my throat was the source of agony. My nose merely ached a bit. My first thought as I came back to consciousness was, "I hope I've just had a dream about how bad I could feel if I go thru with this, because I'm going to tell them that I've changed my mind." Needless to say, it was too late.

My next thought was about that unfortunate pro football player who likely will never regain complete use of his limbs as a result of an accident a couple days ago. That guy must have been thru a lot more surgery than I'll ever endure. My third thought was that my wife survived thru 3 nasty deliveries, the last a planned C-section. Maybe I could toughen up a bit. My choices were: complain or refrain. I went with 'refrain.' It's not like I could have whined about my plight anyway, since I could barely speak.

Your throat hurts after nasal surgery for the specific and obvious-later reason that in order to operate on your nose, the doctor has to intubate you. 'Intubate' comes from the Latin "in-," meaning "in," and "tuba," meaning "feels like a tuba has been pushed." Actually my throat feels as tho I swallowed some sand paper and then threw it back up. And then swallowed it just once more. And the worst part of this whole experience is that, at least until my nose gets unpacked by the doctor tomorrow, I have to breathe thru my mouth, compounding the problem. Ice cream and icies help, as do cough drops, but only so far.

I was lucky enough to have a wonderful friend take me to and from the hospital. Diane is my kids' great-godmother, if there could be such a thing. Her title is somewhat odd since no one in my family has believed in a god for many generations, but if there were a god, then there could be saints, and Diane would qualify in my book. She made sure I got home okay and then explained the redressing of my bandages to Shirra. In case it wasn't already painfully obvious, I couldn't have driven myself home if not for the pain but also the pain meds. Shirra has been a saint since I got home, and the kids were great. Eventually my second batch of meds kicked in and I was ready for dinner, an online game of Scrabble, some TV, and this blogging. The pain is coming back, so I just took my codeine dose #3, and I'll have to hit the sheets soon.

So why is my formerly-deviant* septum fodder for my blog about unicycling? I only had this operation in order to have an easier time with my breathing during exercise, and my only exercise is unicycling. I race every summer at the annual unicycling Olympics, and I'm going to be riding over 120 miles in 5 days during a big race in 2008. I had begun to notice that it was possible for other people to nose-breathe during races but not for me. It was also impossible for me to sleep on my back, since I would probably attract the turkeys that always roam about our garden, but as I slept on my side since college, this was really not the issue. It really came down to unicycling.

I nearly started the 2nd sentence in that last paragraph with the word "Because." Clearly the codeine has taken effect. I'd better head to bed soon.

* Shirra's joke