True Fact for Friday!

Dan Flavin installation

DID YOU KNOW that you breathe--and feel--much better when you don't have a gel sponge crammed up your nose?

Aren't you amazed? I sure was!

Yesterday afternoon, after begging for an appointment, I dragged myself to see Dr R, who did the surgery on me last week. (Technically: septorhinoplasty with external osteotomies; bilateral inferior turbinate reduction and outfracture; endoscopic sinus surgery with opening of the frontals, maxillary, and ethmoid sinuses bilaterally. Or: nose & sinus job.)

I could hardly breathe through my nose, felt nauseous, exhausted and flu-ish. And there was this enormous slimy thing stuck way up my right nostril. I didn't know if it was a blood clot, a space-alien sea slug, or my brains leaking out. Probably a space alien.

After Dr R sprayed numbing stuff up my nose, he looked inside it with this really cool blue light that shoots out of a flexible, transparent tube. (Dan Flavin would have had a field day!)

"So what IS it?" I asked worriedly.

"Oh, it's just a gel sponge I put up there so the bone wouldn't cave in." He quickly inserted a long tube thing that sucked it out. (I kept my eyes TIGHTLY shut.)

Voilà! I could breathe again.

"Why didn't you tell me you'd put the sponge in there?" I persisted.

"Because it usually dissolves in a few days."

"But it didn't." No response.

I'm going to have another chat with Dr R about the sponge issue when I see him again next week. In the meantime, I'm feeling much less draggy and am happily breathing through my nose again.

I said to the good doctor on my way out, "I like breathing. Everybody should be able to do it." At least we agreed on that.