Septoplasty Recovery – Day 7

We’ve definitely turned a corner.  The bleeding in my left nostril is beginning to subside.  I still have the drip pads, but they’re due to the fact that the amount of snot coming out of my nostrils could fill a bucket many times a day.  I am very discouraged by this.  It feels like the worst cold I’ve ever had – complete with grogginess, headache and a sore throat – but with the addition of blood and throbbing nose pain.

A strange side effect relates to my eye.  The tear duct on the side with the bleeding nostril is sore and occasionally releases a whole bunch of tears at once even though I’m not crying.

I’m more discouraged today because I didn’t sleep well last night.  Rather than taking Afrin I took some Sudafed which doesn’t seem to shrink swollen nasal passages as much.  Also, I didn’t take pain killers.  It wasn’t that I had a lot of pain – that’s actually why I didn’t take them.  But at night pain killers seem to relax me enough not to care that my breathing isn’t great, and that’s something that keeps me up – the feeling that my breathing isn’t very free.  They also tend to make me very sleepy.  I don’t think I went to sleep until at least 4:30 this morning.

At this point my only question is when it’s going to end.  It’s clear that I’m moving in the right direction, but snottiness can stick around for a long time.  Am I going to be toting around my personal box of tissues for the next month?  Longer?  Will my splint removal make me feel better?  When I can finally blow my nose (hard) will that help matters?

I’m still of the opinion that I should have stuck with Breathe Right nasal strips.  Yes, they were annoying, but nowhere near as awful as this.  I still think this was a bad plan.