field notes.

Last Tuesday I went into the hospital for outpatient sinus surgery and came out {hopefully better} on the other side. To make a short story short, I do not have a sense of smell. I’ve mentioned my lack of smell briefly in this post, but it’s not something I casually talk about often, or hardly ever, so a lot of people that I know have no idea at all. About 2 years ago my sense of smell slowly faded {reason unknown, but all signs point to severe allergies and sinusitus} and since then I’ve been through lots of appointments and tests and scans to try to figure out what the trouble is.

I had a MRI, which was scary. And then a CAT scan which showed a LOT of inflammation in my sinuses, completely blocking my sense of smell. For a long time I was just satisfied with the fact that I did not have a brain tumor, but more recently I considered options to try and fix the problem, or at least try to help it best I can. I changed my diet, which did help with my allergies, but still my smell did not return. And so, I opted for surgery– Balloon Sinuplasty which is a minimally invasive and fairly painless procedure, and hopefully {fingers crossed!} will help bring my scent back soon.

Since this was my first time in the operating room, I thought I’d jot down a few field notes on my experience, as it was overall a pretty okay adventure for me.

I arrived at the hospital at 2:00 for a 4:00 surgery which was late considering I couldn’t eat after 12:00 the previous night. I was hungry, but kept myself busy enough during the day to not think much about it. I also couldn’t drink any liquids, which was a pain, but fine. My mom came in to town from Syracuse to drive me to and from the surgery and also just to be around during the days following. Zan would have taken off work if she hadn’t come to visit, but I liked the situation as it was– there’s nothing like your mom taking care of you, am I right?

There was a complication with one of the surgeries scheduled before mine, and so I actually had to wait until 6:30 to go into the operating room! The waiting was the pits, but I felt like I was in good hands, so my anxiety level was low. About an hour before I went into the operating room the nurse and anesthesiologist came to visit me, asking lots of questions about my allergies to certain medicines and also getting me all set up with the intravenous, which, a short time later caused my blood pressure to drop/severe dizziness to happen. Whoa! Within seconds the nurses came rushing in to pump some fluid through me and after a minute or so it seemed I was back on track and better than ever. An adventure, indeed!

I really loved all the doctors and nurses– they were so kind and reassuring. I just felt safe and calm the whole time, even when I didn’t {if that makes any sense}.

When the surgeon and the rest of the team came to wheel me to the operating room I was ready to go. The operating room was big and blue and very bright. Much brighter than Grey’s Anatomy I was sure to tell everyone in the room {my most specific connection to a surgical environment, I obviously had to bring it up}. Best show ever, I also stated, and though I didn’t get any comments , I did catch a few smiles. I still felt calm and safe and ready and as I was being given the anesthesia I simply remember thinking, here we go! Before I coughed in the medicine and blacked out.

//

Waking up from surgery and the hour following was the worst part for me. My throat hurt miserably as well as my front teeth and my face. But slowly, slowly, after some much needed medicine and just a little bit of time, I started to feel okay again. Not perfect, but better. I had to wear a gauze under my nose for a few days, and will have to do a nasal spray to help the healing, but over the course of a week I have quickly come back to life. The healing should take 3-4 weeks in it’s entirety so right now I just have to keep up with the spray and wait and see.

The hard part is over, and now the hoping and wishing for smell is where I’m at.

Wish me luck and say a prayer will you? I’ll take all the love I can get.