Surgery Day! Deviated Septum Surgery (Septoplasty), Turbinate Reduction (Turbinoplasty), Balloon Sinuplasty, Nasal Polyp Removal

Day 1: Surgery Day
Surgery day has come for the following procedures to be done to me:
Deviated Septum Surgery (Septoplasty), Turbinate Reduction (Turbinoplasty), Balloon Sinuplasty, Nasal Polyp Removal

Although my ENT told me that I should not have any food or drink (even water) past 12pm I opted to stop drinking and eating anything after 9pm.  The reason for this is because when you are put under general anesthesia you may get:

Risk of inhaling stomach contents into the lungs is reduced. When you are going under anesthesia, your body and all its functions are “put to sleep” making normal reactions, like swallowing, impossible. Since you are unable to control your gag reflex, if you eat something before surgery your stomach contents could regurgitate into your airways, causing complications such as pulmonary aspiration which, in severe cases, can be fatal.

My brother is an anesthesiologist and upon his recommendation I stopped eating and drinking anything as soon as possible.  My surgery was scheduled to be at 9am, I was required to come at 7am to get registered and prepped for surgery.  Also, make sure the morning of your surgery do not put any lotion on your face or brush your teeth (they will ask you when they are registering if you had even any SIP of water).

Once I got to the ENT facility they registered me, took my height and weight, blood pressure and temperature.  I then had to strip naked and put on a gown with a scrub hat.  I was brought into the pre-op room and the Nurse and Anesthesiologist spoke to me explaining what they were going to do to me.

Next thing I know I am in the operating room, the Anesthesiologist states he is going to be my bartender and I will feel like I knocked back a few drinks.  Moments later I passed out and awoken with my friend to my side.  I was very nauseous and my nose was in severe pain.  The nurse will ask you, don't be afraid to tell them exactly what you are feeling.  5 minutes later she pushed some drugs into my IV and my Nausea and Pain was alleviated instantly.  30 minutes later I felt good enough to walk and they brought me to the post operative room to get dressed. 

I had a gauze mustache on the bottom of my nose to help catch the blood and fluids draining out of my nose.  I was able to breathe pretty good out of both nostrils at this point.
(this isn't a picture of me, but this is what it looked like)

 

I got car service home.  As soon as I got home I took extra strength Tylenol to prevent the onset of any pain.  I also took the antibiotics prescribed to me (Bioxin).

This is the Tylenol I got:


I used Ocean Spray Saline mist every hour to help prevent any scab tissue from forming.  I would recommend the double pack, you are definitely going to use up both of these bottles.


Make sure you have a lot of gauze so that you can make a gauze mustache, you are going to be bleeding a lot.  I probably changed my gauze a total of 12 times throughout the day.

You will need waterproof tape in order to tape it onto your face.


The only way that I was able to breath was to use a combination of Ocean Spray Saline mist and then use Afrin and then back to Ocean Spray Saline mist .. my nasal passages cleared up to a reasonable amount to a point that I could get a good nights rest.


Will update you on Day 2 soon!

Cheers!
-David