I went to the ENT today. When I left the appointment,I felt like I'd been run over by an 18-wheeler going 60mph.
Let me give you a little bit of my medical history. Two years ago, I had the "big" sinus surgery. Sinus surgeries are pretty common for CF patients. I had a few surgeries when I was younger to help open up the sinuses and whatnot. However, two years ago, my sinuses were fully developed, and my ENT could go in for the kill. He not only worked on the mucous membrane to remove nasal polyps and to open up airways, but he also fixed my deviated septum by chiseling away bone in my nose. I am not fully aware of what went down in that surgery, but I do know that I was the most miserable I've ever been in my life the week after surgery. I had packing stuffed up my nose, and I could only breathe out of my mouth for a week. Whenever I tried to go to sleep, I would subconsciously start trying to breathe in and out of my nose, which made me experience sleep apnea type symptoms and would wake me up with a jarring feeling of being unable to breathe. I was also in intense pain from the surgery, and I was incredibly bored because I literally couldn't do anything that involved major movement. It was another three weeks after the packing was removed for me to be feeling back to my normal self.
My doctor has been talking recently about how I might need another surgery to clean things up. I thought that this surgery wouldn't be a big deal. A week at most recovery, feeling good as new in no time. I already did the big surgery, so this one shouldn't be as big obad, right? Wrong. When I went in to my appointment today, he told me that I would probably need packing again for this surgery (um, what?) and that recovery would be four weeks until I'm back to being able to do everything normally. I was floored. That's not exactly how I expected to spend the end of my summer. I can handle a lot of crud that comes with having CF--taking pills, fitting in treatments, going in IVs frequently, getting blood drawn constantly, going in for random surgeries. I think this is so much harder on me because I know how absolutely miserable I was last sinus surgery, and I really don't want to go through that again. But unfortunately, I'm going to have to get through it. It's just a part of CF life.
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