Deviated Septum Surgery Tips Photos
When I was in my early 20s I got into a car accident. I was driving late at night, fell asleep at the wheel, and ran off the road. I was actually very lucky to crash into a parked semi-tractor trailer, because that section of the road had a big drop-off. I would have gone off the cliff and sailing into trees. Still, I got squished a bit in the resulting impact. My nose was broken and the insides - the "septum" - were pushed very much awry.
The way your nose works is that you have a bone at the very top, that goes down to about where your eye pupil is. Then beneath that is "cartilage" - the squishy bone-like stuff that's in your ears. So that forms the top of your nose. Inside your nose is a thin membrane that divides your nose into two halves - the left and the right. That's why when you close one nostril with your thumb you can breathe down the other channel. Both of those channels should be about the same width and height, divided by the septum.
So in my case I had two problems, which you might be able to see in this "before" photo. First, the top bone of my nose had gotten separated from the cartilage part. My nose was pushed to the left of where it should be. Second, the inside septum had been pushed far right. This caused me all sorts of trouble breathing. You can see the outer break, but it's pretty much impossible to photograph the inner problem.
I'm not sure if you can see in this photo Bob took of me, but the "break" is right about at the eye pupil level.
When I talked with a doctor about it, they told me it would cost $5,000 to fix and I'd have to be awake during the procedure. No way!! I am petrified of needles and hospitals, and I would never survive 1 minute of something like that. However, I also knew this was not healthy for me, to have a faulty nose.
In 2008 we were doing up "Vision Boards" with BellaOnline and my vision was to finally be brave enough to go on TV shows to help promote BellaOnline, to bring more traffic to the editors. I started making a checklist of things I should get done before I took on a stressful task like that. My list included fixing my wisdom tooth and my deviated septum so I was as healthy as I could be. I did get the wisdom tooth taken care of last winter and survived that process. So it was time to talk again to my doctor about getting my nose fixed.
Pre-Operation Talks on my Deviated Septum
Day 1 - Surgery Day
Day 2 - Post-Surgery Day
Day 3 - Healing
Day 4 - Healing
Day 5 - Healing
Day 6 - Stuck Bowels
Day 7 - Removing the Nose Cast
Day 8 - First full day with castless nose
Day 9 - One week until splints are out
Day 10 - First Day Out
Day 11 - Saturday
Day 12 - Sunday
Day 13 - Monday
Day 14 - Bruise Almost Gone
Day 15 - One Day until Splint Removal
Day 16 - Nose Splint Removed!
Aftermath
One Year Later
Before and After
Lisa's Biology Pages