Nose

I had some work done on my face last Friday. I had a rhinoplasty, bilateral nasoseptal reconstruction, submucous resection and a chin lift. ouchie! No, it hasn't been that bad. The surgery went well. I remember them putting me on a little table thing in the middle of a cold white room and then putting a nice warm blanket over me and the anesthesiologist telling me that he was going to give me 'sleepy juice' :) I was so bummed, I wanted to count down from 10 really fast just to see if I could but I don't think I even got my first number out :) I asked the doctor a few days later and he said he didn't remember :) I had the surgery at the new IMC hospital and all the nurses were great. It was the first time really that I've been in a hospital. Of course I didn't really like it but that hospital was pretty nice. The only complication I had was with the pain meds. See, they got a little confused and thought I was the incredible Hulk and so the perscribed me for up to 15 mg of pain meds every 3 hours. Well, it should really be closer to 2.5 mg every 3-4 hours. We knew there was a problem when I was TOO vegtable-like and wasn't responsive. For a few days I've been on a MUCH lower dose of pain meds and also a small dose of nausea meds (the nausea has actually been 100x worse than the pain ... and the pain isn't much fun). I went outside for the first time in 5 days 2 days ago for a 'walk'. We made it all the way around the culd-a-sac in about 30 minutes! Yeah! In case you don't know, we live on a really SMALL culd-a-sac :) Yesterday we walked to my friend's house and we sat on the porch and visited. That was nice. Today Ryan's mom took me to my appt and I got the splint taken off and the splints taken out of my nostrils. I didn't even know I had splints in my nostrils :) He just kept pulling stuff out of my nose and I was like 'where did that come from!'. I'm already excited about the results and the swelling will still go down a lot. They say in about 6 weeks I will be able to feel my lips. (The chin implant was inserted between my lower lip and lower teeth and it's all stitched up now). The swelling on my face will be down in about 3 months and it will take about a year for everything to have feeling and really be normal. So I'm in the recovery phase but it is getting a little better each day. Luckily I have had an amazing appetite and have eaten real food this whole time. I think that has helped a lot. It has been very peaceful and relaxing. I didn't even turn on the tv for about 5 days (well, even a light or any movement made me totally dizzy/nauseous). Ryan has been great and his favorite part is putting hydrogen peroxide on a q-tip in my nostrils because of the cool noises it makes (sorry, that might be tmi). I got the most tender little care package from my mom. That has been the hilight. She is the most thoughful person! They were just down a couple weeks ago and we decided that if she was down I would be too tempted to 'over do it' and that they'd come down after the recovery. Man was I wrong! I wanted her every second of every day! Good thing for phones! I called her ALL THE TIME and just mumbled to her (most of the conversations I remember ...) She let me mumble all I wanted :) And my parents didn't even complain when I accidently called them in the middle of the night TOTALLY out of it because I got really scared and not with it. So thanks mom and dad and Ryan and Ruth and everybody that has made my dream become a peaceful, 'manageable', smooth recovery!

This is probably my only picture that won't gross you out :) This was on the very tired day two.