I have had a lot of people who have asked for me to send pictures. I will warn you - they are not pretty. Not pretty AT ALL! In an effort to make them a little less dramatic, I will say that I did run the photos thru Instagram to actually make them look better than what they initially look like. I don't think I was that successful...
I also should share that the pain has not been nearly as bad as what I expected. In fact, it's been quite minor to what I had built up in my head. However, the swelling and bruising is about 10 times worse than what I expected. Which is infinately more entertaining.
So without further ado....
My surgery started at 7 a.m. last Thursday. Intially it was supposed to be an hour and a half to two hours long tops. However, my doctor ended up keeping me under for close to three hours because I had significant scar damage from a prior break (softball between the eyes in 8th grade is our best guess). This scar damage was in a unique pattern that required much more attention that initially expected. Kendall said Dr. G had shared that it was hooking or circling around itself in a way that even the good doctor had never seen. The doctor was predicting that by removing this scar tissue my breathing will improve by at least 70%! That alone is worth all of the thumbs ups that you are about to see...
I was out of surgery by 11 a.m., home by noon. I don't really remember any of this.
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Here I am about 2 p.m. (3 hours post surgery). This was the first that I was up and awake, giving Kendall permission to take photos. He said that he wished that I would have told him it was ok to take photos before the surgery because every time that he came into the bedroom, it kept getting worse. I guess when I came out of surgery, he was actually surprised at how normal I looked. Even here, I don't look that bad....
That did not last long.
This is just before bed on Thursday night (9 p.m. the day of the surgery). Still rocking the thumbs up. Way to be optimistic drugged up Katy....
This is at 6 a.m. on Friday morning - basically 24 hours post surgery... this is where the anesthesia was probably worn off, with reality and the swelling really starting to set in. The mask underneith my nose was catching the "drainage". Kendall was replacing the gauze about every 3 hours thru Friday. I hated that thing.
This is Friday afternoon, about 3 p.m. I finally made it downstairs to the couch and promptely fell asleep, sitting up. The dogs were very cuddly and sympathetic - although they kept wanting to smell and lick my nose. I'm sure they were confused by the "bloody" smell that was now hanging around my face. Luckily neither of them got close enough to bump my nose.
Friday night, around 9 p.m. I am starting to understand what my doctor meant when he told me to expect full "Raccoon Eyes." But hey - at least I'm still giving the thumbs up and am smiling (again - great drugs, GREAT DRUGS!)
I believe that the above was the picture that I sent to both my mom and my aunt, to which they both texted me back that it was really too bad that there wasn't a Zombie Crawl for me to partake in this weekend. I appreciate their sense of humor. Laughter is the best medicine - unless you just had nose surgery and laughing pulls at the stiches that are under your nose.....
This is Saturday. Still swollen, with crazy purple eyes, but no drainage! And my friend that is a dentist sent me a postive text that shared that all looked good because it was very symetrical and showed little inflamation! Success!
And who would have thought that that color of purple would have brought out the blue in my eyes so well?! I may need to get myself some new eyeshaddow in a few weeks....
Here's the picture from yesterday (Sunday). The swelling went down tremendously around the eyes, and also around the nose. I don't think that you can really see that in this picture so much, but I could feel it. I could also now feel the tubes that were placed up both nostrals to help keep the airways clear and I could start to breathe thru my nose. This has started to give me hope that things may return to normal one of these days. I felt much better, to the point where I even went over to a neighbors to watch the Super Bowl. Only a few people commented on the fact that my eye black matched Ray Lewis's.
And here I am this morning (Monday) - 4 days post surgery. The swelling in my eyes is almost 100% gone. I have limited myself to 1 pain pill every 8 hours. I am back to feeling like myself - but am glad that I took today as a sick day as well. I'm planning on working from home the rest of the week with limited phone calls and carrying out some mindless admin tasks that have been building up. Please don't judge me on that I am wearing the same sweatshirt or am giving a half ass attempt at my a thumbs up, which now I regret. But that's about the only thing that I regret. Although some day I may regret sharing these photos so publically. Well, probably not. It's a pretty good documentation for anyone who may be thinking about going thru something similar. I wish that there would have been something similar for me to look to when I was coaching myself thru pre-surgery anxiety. Other than Doctor 90210 episodes, that is.
I also want to use this blog as a venue to send a huge thank you out to Kendall for being such a great nurse. This will have been the fourth surgery that we've been thru together during the eleven years that we've been together, the first where he has had the opportunity to serve on the side of caretaker. The nurse/caretaker roles have been very one sided for quite some time as he has been on a cycle of having one limb reconstructed about every other year. It has been a running joke that he would owe me BIG TIME after his first elbow surgery when he briefly thought about having both elbows taken care of at the same time. (That was quickly dismissed when his doctor asked him how he planned to wipe his own A#$ with both arms in casts up to his armpits... we weren't even engaged yet... Kendall looked over at me and I walked out of the room).
I think I had built an idea up in my head of what my own surgery experience would be like based off of Kendall's. Unfortunately, I don't think I gave him quite as many funny moments as he gave me the multiple times that he's had coming out of surgery. There was no Diana Ross singing, although I did throw out some Seinfeld references (the crackers were making me thirsty, that's kind of a given line). He's been telling people that I have been a much better patient than he ever was - I think the difference may have been in that I couldn't really see due to the swelling, therefore I was VERY limited in what I could actually perceive that I could do by myself. I couldn't help myself around if I tried. I was 100% dependent on him thru Sunday and was glad that he set aside the entire weekend to make sure that I was taking medication on time, making sure that I was eating and drinking, keeping the dogs at bay, helping me keep ice packs on my face, take the above pictures, update my parents and friends on my progress, and playing episode after episode of "How I Met Your Mother" on netflix so I had something to hear in the background when I wasn't sleeping. It was a gorgeous weekend here in Fort Collins with temperatures in the 50's. I'm sure that he spent a lot of time looking out the window and wishing that I would have scheduled my surgery during a different stretch of the month. Even I would have rather been hiking. Well, I would have rather been doing a lot of other things - but I am glad to have finally gotten this off of my to-do list.
So that's where we stand my friends. Tubes, stiches, and tape is all removed on Wednesday afternoon and then we will get the first good hint of what my new nose may look like. I have been told that it could take up to 6 months before all is "settled" to what it will look like in the in long run. Which means that I may look different in every picture you see from here until July. I'll do my best to post photos - but I don't think that any will be nearly as dramatic as these here will be.
And again, thank you to all of you for your support and for all of the well wishes, prayers and love sent my way. Your support has made this a much easier decision and process for me.
Cheers!
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