My Newfound Fear...

I think most of us... even the big, burly, men in our lives... have our own personal list of things we are afraid of. Some people are afraid of snakes, some are afraid of needles, and some are afraid of flying. I myself am not at all a fan of heights, the smell of a dentist office makes me weak in the knees, and I start sweating and want to throw up at the sight of a spider crawling up the wall. No... I've never fallen from anything high, I've never had an awful experience at the dentist, and I've never been bitten and/or almost killed by a poisonous spider.

There is no reason for them. They are simply my fears. And yesterday, I added a new one to the list.

I have an extreme fear of unusually long objects being stuck up my nose!

I had another post op appointment witn my ENT surgeon at 2:20pm. When he did my sinus surgery, he cleaned A LOT of infected gunk out of my head. However, there was still more in there that would need to drain, so he place a sponge in my sinus cavity that was supposed to absorb the rest of the gunk, break down, and eventually fall out on its own. At my first post op appointment, he gave me a sinus rinse bottle that has really helped to keep my nose cleaned out and to rinse out any loose pieces of the sponge. It's not a great thought... I know.

Well yesterday, my super nice surgeon man comes in and tells me that he wants to look up my nose to see how things are going. No problem... I've done this a few times before... piece of cake. He shoots this numbing spray up my nose, leaves me for about 10 minutes, and then comes back. He takes this really long light (looks like a long pencil, only really skinny), sticks it up my nose, and goes to looking. No big deal... a little weird feeling, but I'm good!

Then he tells me that he wants to try to get the rest of the sponge out, but he wants to put more of the numbing stuff up there to make me more comfortable. Ok... Cool. I'm all in favor of the numbing stuff! He takes a small cotton ball soaked in this stuff and uses a really long pair of tweezers to stick it somewhere up my nose. He tells me to lay my head back and he'll be back in a few minutes.

So as I'm sitting there with a cotton ball stuffed up my nose, this numbing crap is starting to run down the back of my throat, making it numb as well. It feels almost like it's closing up, but I can still breathe fine. It's a little unnerving, but I let it go.

Dr. L comes back and is ready to get down to business... little dorky headlamp strapped on and everything. So I lean back and close my eyes... And dang it to heck, I should've kept them CLOSED!! I quickly opened them right as he was stuffing this really long metal object up my nose... And this thing just kept going farther and farther and farther in. Then, I hear this sickening sucking noise (very similar to the dentist) and felt a really weird pressure somewhere in my head. Dr. L was very nice and kept saying "I'm sorry... I'm sorry... Are you ok?" I assured him that I was fine, but I did not like it AT ALL.

I did my best to stay calm, but after about the 3rd time he stuffed that thing up my nose... I HAD HAD ENOUGH!! I had tears running down my face (not at all from pain), I was sweating like you wouldn't believe and I was breathing like I had just run a marathon. I told him I was done! Dr. L said that was fine. He gave me a few minutes to calm down and then handed me my paperwork.... With a note at the bottome to schedule another appointment for next week. I HAVE TO GO BACK!!

I got up to leave and left puddles of sweat in the chair where my legs and back were. I walked out of the waiting room with my shorts and shirt clinging to the back of me and my flip-flops making "farty" noises because my feet were all sweaty. It was awful!

I came home, had a pain pill, made myself an apple juice slushy in my super cool margarita machine, and hit the couch. That appointment was the only thing I did all day... and it was exhausting!!

I'm already dreading next week...