cheaper than a coke habit, even if it wasn't covered by insurance
Tomorrow morning I'm going to have a septoplasty; i.e. a bit of the cartilage inside my nose will be removed.
[update: not that it really matters, but I described the procedure a bit wrong. No hard tissue has been removed - the cartilage has just been straightened, and some soft tissue around the inferior turbinates removed]
Some time ago, I promised Melinda I'd get some medical attention for my chronic snoring. It's really a combination of two problems: there's the obvious sleep problem for her, but also a subtler one for me. I very rarely have trouble falling asleep, and don't tend to wake up in the middle of the night, but I routinely feel like I've not had enough sleep even if I don't set an alarm clock and stay in bed till I'm too restless to go back to sleep.
I went to an ENT specialist, who took about 5 minutes to diagnose a deviated septum, but also referred me to a sleep specialist because he wasn't convinced this was the sole cause of the problem. The sleep specialist had me do a sleep study, which involved spending a night with electrodes attached to me. Based on the outcome from that, he diagnosed moderate obstructive sleep apnea. I hate and fear the idea of CPAP (basically because I don't want to be dependent on some machine for my wellbeing if I can possibly help it; especially not a machine that needs an electricity supply), so we decided to start with a passive oral appliance. It's kind of like a pair of rugby mouthguards, with an attachment to hold the two jaws in place relative to each other - the idea is to stop my lower jaw from moving backwards when fully relaxed, and it seems to have helped me a lot. A second sleep study confirmed this, and I do feel rather better even with a little less time in bed than I used to need, and apparently snore less.
I still need to get the deviated septum sorted out for a few reasons, though. First of all, neither the apnea nor the snoring are completely resolved and this should still help. But in hindsight, there are several other symptoms which this ought to help with. None of these are terribly important, but it will be nice to get them resolved:
In further hindsight, there were two occasions on which other doctors ought to have picked up that something was amiss, but because I was a child at the time they just pooh-poohed my self-reported symptoms. When I was about 7 or 8 years old I distinctly remember trying to explain to a hotshot ENT specialist that I simply couldn't blow my nose. Instead of taking this seriously and checking if there might be an underlying pathology, he talked over my head to my mother, and told her to have me inflate balloons with my nose to get practice exhaling through my nose. I never ever managed to inflate a balloon with my nose, and yes I am a tad bitter about that, since you asked.
Then when I was about 15 I asked the family doctor about my constant tiredness, and he too was dismissive. he just told me that if I wake up without an alarm then I've obviously I've had enough sleep, and of course I felt tired all the time because I was a teenager. So I just got used to it and came to see this as normality. Since getting the oral appliance that has half-fixed the apnea, I've discovered that this was not the case, and let me tell you it's been quite the revelation. I had believed that doctor when he told me my condition was normal, so I had never realised that having difficulty getting out of bed, taking several hours to wake up, crashing at 4pm and having trouble keeping my eyes open through even the most interesting of lectures were not inevitable facts of life. Again, I'm just a tad bitter about that fact that this could have been sorted out 15 years ago had either of these doctors decided to take me seriously.
Anyway, back to the point. I'll be going in for the surgery tomorrow, as an outpatient. The procedure itself only takes a few minutes, and the whole process from check-in to being ready to go home should be around 4 hours. It's a pretty minor procedure, with no external incision even needed (they go in through the nostrils), and while I'm likely to get some facial bruising it's possible that there won't even be any outward sign that I've had anything done. I'm wondering if my voice will change, though....
Recovery is supposed to be fairly quick, though I've been told to expect nausea and pain tomorrow. For the first day I'll be left with some packing inside the nose, which I need to go back to the doctor on Thursday morning to have him remove. And for the first couple of days I need to rest a lot, sleep upright (fortunately we have a heavenly easychair and I invested in one of those U-shaped pillows people use on airplanes) and take great care not to disturb the nose. Oh, and I'll be at risk of nosebleeds for the first few days, so I'm trying to avoid doing very much. Fortunately I own several red shirts (not just this one).
[update: not that it really matters, but I described the procedure a bit wrong. No hard tissue has been removed - the cartilage has just been straightened, and some soft tissue around the inferior turbinates removed]
Some time ago, I promised Melinda I'd get some medical attention for my chronic snoring. It's really a combination of two problems: there's the obvious sleep problem for her, but also a subtler one for me. I very rarely have trouble falling asleep, and don't tend to wake up in the middle of the night, but I routinely feel like I've not had enough sleep even if I don't set an alarm clock and stay in bed till I'm too restless to go back to sleep.
I went to an ENT specialist, who took about 5 minutes to diagnose a deviated septum, but also referred me to a sleep specialist because he wasn't convinced this was the sole cause of the problem. The sleep specialist had me do a sleep study, which involved spending a night with electrodes attached to me. Based on the outcome from that, he diagnosed moderate obstructive sleep apnea. I hate and fear the idea of CPAP (basically because I don't want to be dependent on some machine for my wellbeing if I can possibly help it; especially not a machine that needs an electricity supply), so we decided to start with a passive oral appliance. It's kind of like a pair of rugby mouthguards, with an attachment to hold the two jaws in place relative to each other - the idea is to stop my lower jaw from moving backwards when fully relaxed, and it seems to have helped me a lot. A second sleep study confirmed this, and I do feel rather better even with a little less time in bed than I used to need, and apparently snore less.
I still need to get the deviated septum sorted out for a few reasons, though. First of all, neither the apnea nor the snoring are completely resolved and this should still help. But in hindsight, there are several other symptoms which this ought to help with. None of these are terribly important, but it will be nice to get them resolved:
- If I talk while taking even light exercise I get out of breath quickly, in spite of being fitter than I look (yeah, I'm rather fat, but my blood pressure is 116/57 and I make a habit of riding my bike up good-sized hills).
- If I talk for a long time, I start having to stop to catch my breath (I suspect this is also why I've got into the difficult-to-shake habit of overusing commas when I write - I'm reminding myself to breathe).
- If I'm concentrating on something manual (e.g. threading a needle) I breathe through my mouth.
- When I recover from a cold, it seems to take me longer than it ought to to shake the blocked/runny nose.
- Most mornings I wake up needing to blow my nose, even when I don't have a cold.
In further hindsight, there were two occasions on which other doctors ought to have picked up that something was amiss, but because I was a child at the time they just pooh-poohed my self-reported symptoms. When I was about 7 or 8 years old I distinctly remember trying to explain to a hotshot ENT specialist that I simply couldn't blow my nose. Instead of taking this seriously and checking if there might be an underlying pathology, he talked over my head to my mother, and told her to have me inflate balloons with my nose to get practice exhaling through my nose. I never ever managed to inflate a balloon with my nose, and yes I am a tad bitter about that, since you asked.
Then when I was about 15 I asked the family doctor about my constant tiredness, and he too was dismissive. he just told me that if I wake up without an alarm then I've obviously I've had enough sleep, and of course I felt tired all the time because I was a teenager. So I just got used to it and came to see this as normality. Since getting the oral appliance that has half-fixed the apnea, I've discovered that this was not the case, and let me tell you it's been quite the revelation. I had believed that doctor when he told me my condition was normal, so I had never realised that having difficulty getting out of bed, taking several hours to wake up, crashing at 4pm and having trouble keeping my eyes open through even the most interesting of lectures were not inevitable facts of life. Again, I'm just a tad bitter about that fact that this could have been sorted out 15 years ago had either of these doctors decided to take me seriously.
Anyway, back to the point. I'll be going in for the surgery tomorrow, as an outpatient. The procedure itself only takes a few minutes, and the whole process from check-in to being ready to go home should be around 4 hours. It's a pretty minor procedure, with no external incision even needed (they go in through the nostrils), and while I'm likely to get some facial bruising it's possible that there won't even be any outward sign that I've had anything done. I'm wondering if my voice will change, though....
Recovery is supposed to be fairly quick, though I've been told to expect nausea and pain tomorrow. For the first day I'll be left with some packing inside the nose, which I need to go back to the doctor on Thursday morning to have him remove. And for the first couple of days I need to rest a lot, sleep upright (fortunately we have a heavenly easychair and I invested in one of those U-shaped pillows people use on airplanes) and take great care not to disturb the nose. Oh, and I'll be at risk of nosebleeds for the first few days, so I'm trying to avoid doing very much. Fortunately I own several red shirts (not just this one).