Tag Archives: sinus surgery

I SMELL

Well, I used to smell.  Since my little sinus surgery, I’ve lost my sense of smell and taste.  This has had an interesting effect.  I usually have this strong craving for popcorn with butter on it – 24/7.  I’ve thought about my popcorn, out of habit, I guess, but I haven’t gone and made any.  It’s not worth it if you can’t taste it.  I might as well be eating cardboard.

Can you imagine not smelling coffee, gasoline, red wine, sewage, Magic Markers, worms on the driveway?  Popcorn at the theatre.  That pine scent I spray on my fake Christmas tree?  I wonder if it will come back?  My family calls me sonar nose.  I’m the weirdo that would smell a gas leak on the way to driving the kids to school, call and report it, and on my way home find six bulldozers tearing up a gas pipe on some poor soul’s front lawn.  (I’m petrified of gas leaks).

I can smell BO from a mile away.  I can smell Florida when I land there.  I could smell smoke a mile away.   I was a devout smeller.  Now I can’t smell sh#t.  Literally.

Tasting – I also can’t taste.  I was eating some cracked-pepper crackers today.  Nada – zilch.  No pepper taste, but my mouth is sort of burning from the pepper.  I’ve lost four pounds with this no taste/smell/surgery thing.  Maybe I hope it never comes back!

What is the thing you would miss most if you couldn’t taste it ever again?  Or what smell would you miss most if you couldn’t smell it again?  My quick answer without thinking too deeply would be my beloved popcorn with real butter – for both my taste and smell.

And to think I just paid a gazillion dollars to have a venting machine put in my basement so it didn’t smell like an old person’s basement.  I bet Marty wishes I had had my surgery before I found this company that makes these venting machines.  I have no idea if it’s working or not now.  Marty’s sniffer stinks – ha.  So I don’t trust his judgement.

So you people out there, stop taking your sense of smell and taste for granted.  So much for my career in taking Padma’s place in Top Chef.

Love, Little Miss Sunshine

COCAINE WITH YOUR SURGERY, MADAME?

I’ve never done any type of illegal drug.  Never.  I can’t even say, “I didn’t inhale” because no joint never even came to my lips.  Clinton was so silly, wasn’t he?

As of right now, my alarm will go off in four hours.   Tomorrow morning, I go under the chisel and mallet.  Not kidding.  I’m having my deviated septum fixed and having those nasty turnbinates taken out of the way of my encumbered path of breathing through my nose.  I made the mistake of watching the surgery on YouTube.  YUCK.  All my other surgeries I feel I could have done myself – I could have taken my own gallbladder out, my own Madame Bovary out, my own adhesions out, my own breast lump out, put my own screws in my feet, fixed my own shoulder.  But this one has me freaked.  Someone’s actually going to banging on my face, with a mallet.  That’s the stuff you see Daffy Duck doing.  Or the Roadrunner.

The biggest thing everyone complains about after this surgery is that they have to pack your nose with a gazillion feet of gauze-type packing which proves to be painful.   Taking it out is apparently not only disgusting but uncomfortable.  Well my doctor said he doesn’t use it.  He uses cocaine as it’s a great vasoconstrictor.  Great, my first time I could “trip” without guilt  and I’ll be asleep for it.

A lot of my friends have had the surgery, they most often suggest  to have plenty of Chapstick around since I’ll be breathing out of my mouth for three or so days.  I can remember my sister telling me to “SHUT UP” when we were watching TV because I was breathing through my mouth, loudly, apparently.   I’ve never been able to breathe really well through my nose.

All this is done in hopes of making a path of clear sailing up to my brain.  New evidence shows that migraines could come from a lack of oxygen and the vessels in your head constrict.  We always knew I lacked oxygen to my brain (seems obvious?), but maybe there’s actually something to it.  Plus those darn turbonates apparently are giving off negative ions.  ?  I kid you not.

So think of me as you’re reading this, I’ll have a nice straight septum, you will not most likely; my swollen inflamed turbinates will be gone, yours most likely will not; and I will be enjoying pain medication, you most likely will not.

Love, Little Miss Sunshine.

PS: Don’t know if you noticed I left one major surgery out that I know I could not have done myself.  Just can’t reach there, ya know?