I Know What You'll Be Doing

It's so good to be myself again after a week of being bed ridden and drugged up.  While most people were looking forward to the yummy fat turkey and pies, I was nervously looking forward to getting my first surgery ever! I've always been a mouth breather. I also grew up with this little bony bump on my nose. Attractive right? For the longest time I just didn't know why that was. It was a few months ago that my mother decided it was time to get my nose checked. One look into my nose and the ENT diagnosed me with a deviated septum. The bump on my nose was just a little bony protrusion that had nothing to do with my breathing.  After spraying some yucky spray in my nose, he was also able to tell me that my turbinates were just a little inflated. So what did all this mean? It meant that if I wanted to breathe better, I would need rhinoplasty, turbinoplasty, and septoplasty surgery...... English please?  

If it hadn't been for Anatomy, I would have just nodded my head, pretended like I knew what was wrong with my nose and what they were going to do and just gone along with whatever had to be done.  Anatomy is so cool though! It's been so wonderful learning more about the body and what we're made out of. I was not naive this time. I knew that a deviated septum meant that my perpendicular plate, vomer bone, and cartilage in my nose dividing my nasal airways was not straight, making air in one nostril almost impossible to enter. (It was really deviated...). Fixing this is what is called septoplastly. Although the little bump on my nose didn't affect my breathing, I decided since they'd be working on my nose they might as well just shave that little extra nasal bone off.  This would be rhinoplasty surgery.  Thanks to anatomy, I also knew that turbinates was just another name for my nasal conchae.  The process of shrinking the tissue on them is what is called turbinoplasty. 

It was good to just feel informed. I felt more comfortable as I waited for the nurses to take me back for surgery.  Although I knew I would be knocked out during the surgery, it felt nice to sit there and not have that panicking thought of "what are they going to do to me?". I calmly waited, and as they took me back, the only thought that came to me was "I know what you'll be doing."

... I do have to admit the recovery process was rough....