Operator and Operand
The joys of surgery
BEN POGGEMILLER STAFF
This summer I underwent a minor surgical procedure. I had a fun double-header consisting of an adenoidectomy and a procedure called septoplasty. Like most people, I was born a child, and like most children, I was born with adenoids. As they get older, most people lose their adenoidal tissue, but mine chose to wear out their welcome. Mine would have wild parties until late at night, make long distance calls on my body’s phone and block my nasal passages. The doctor told me that adenoids are kind of like “tonsils for your nose.” I nodded and said “OK,” but had no idea what he meant. Apparently the adenoids are removed by going up through the mouth and into the nasal passage (which I previously thought was a one-way street) and cauterizing them. It also turns out that my septum was bent, blocking my nasal passage further. Septoplasty, a delightful procedure, is the rearrangement of the septum via Black and Decker drill.
The most difficult part of the whole ordeal was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight on the day of the surgery, which was scheduled for around 10:30 a.m.. Anybody who knows me will attest that when I’m hungry I get irritable, dizzy, nauseous, and my IQ is cut in half. Those symptoms, coupled with the fact that my body didn’t have enough moisture in it to swallow, caused me to wake up at 3 a.m., parched and starving. I whiled away the hours, trying to distract myself from dehydration and the thought that my stomach was sucking up against my spine, until it was time to go to the hospital. Once I arrived, they informed me that I would have to be virtually naked for nose surgery. Once I was outfitted in my paper socks, weird blue apron, and cheap bathrobe, it was roughly a two-hour wait until my scheduled time. The Flipwait was fairly uneventful until the anesthesiologist came. She asked me a string of routine questions at warp speed. “How are you? Is there a history of bleeding disorders in your family? Did you have anything to eat today? Are you Lindsay’s brother?” The last one threw me. I answered “yes,” fully expecting to get an explanation of how she knew my sister, but got none. At least this kept me occupied until it was my time. Once it was my turn, I was escorted into the operating room, where my glasses were removed, as was my bathrobe. Once I lay down, I was told that the apron would have to be undone, causing my entire backside to be completely exposed. I never bothered asking why this was necessary for nose surgery because I was too distracted by the cold breeze that I had just noticed.
The anesthesiologist came in and greeted me again, and this time I was determined to get an answer. I asked her how she knew my sister and the answer somehow pertained to volleyball but I think the anesthetic had started to kick in by that point. Getting knocked out before surgery was certainly one of the higher (haha, get it?) points of my life. Anybody who has experienced this knows that once it starts working, you can’t even finish your current thought. When my cousin was going under, she recognized her anesthesiologist’s face and felt it was necessary to point out, “Hey, you’re my anesthesiologist!” The word “anesthesiologist” is difficult to say even at full mental capacity, but she managed to get it out before peacefully falling asleep. I only got as far as thinking, “Hey, I feel kind of . . . ” and then I was out.
Waking up in the recovery room is far less pleasant. My brain was the first part of me to wake up, and “the voice” immediately knew when I was conscious. I couldn’t open my eyes because an ice-pack the size of Nebraska was covering my entire face. The voice said it needed me to move up on the bed I was lying on. Keep in mind that my body hadn’t got the memo that it was supposed to be able to move. This is a fun little joke nurses like to play on people just waking up. I think they all laughed about it in a back room somewhere and took bets on whether I’d be able to do it or not. I used all my strength to start wriggling up the table without moving my limbs, but the voice informed me that wriggling wasn’t going to cut it and I needed to push with my legs. After a long struggle to prop myself up, I felt great, still in a fog from the anesthetic. Once the ice pack was removed, I got all the ginger ale and water I wanted. After a while they brought in another girl whose operation was obviously a lot more serious than mine. She was in pain and had a difficult time waking up. Meanwhile, I’m joking with the orderlies, sipping my ginger ale and wondering if I’d be home in time for Star Trek. At one point, an orderly came by and asked how I was doing. “Super! I’m doing great!” was my answer. Then the girl next to me, still writhing in agony, groans, “I wish I felt like that,” and I shut up for the rest of my stay.
The instruction sheet I got prior to the operation said that there would be dissolvable packing in my nose that would dissipate over the next few days. In the medical world, dissolvable means it never dissipates and you have to yank it out due to frustration from having a three-inch synthetic booger in your nose. The sheet also said to use nose drops several times a day for one week. This instruction was obviously to distract me from my painful, sensitive nose because the nose drops would touch the edge of my nostril, hit the packing, and roll into my eye. All in all, it was a fascinating experience, and my breathing is much better.
