Wednesday, 11 January 2017

The Nose Dot

So what exactly am I talking about here? After surgery I woke up in the recovery room, in agony and totally groggy. I woke up with weird numbness and a crazy level of pain radiating along my jaw, down my neck, back and shoulders. meaning I was completely paralysed in these areas and unable to move my head. On top of that, I had a splint in my mouth, which was not holding in place my bottom teeth, as I now had a 3mm overbite and I had a lot of excess saliva in my mouth. Anyway, besides all of this going on, I was very aware of how painful the bridge of my nose felt. It was so painful that I actually thought it had been broken. I didn't remember my surgeon talking about a nose job and I had no way of checking what was going on or why it hurt so much. 




I was wheeled back to my room an hour later to be welcomed by the sight of my mum's horrified face. I had external stitches and a noticeable red dot in between my eyebrows. All of which I was totally unaware of and too drugged up to care about. 

After a couple of days in hospital I was able to look in the mirror and see the images mum had taken of me on her camera phone. It was then I noticed the bloody scab between my eyes and what seemed to be the main cause of all my nose pain. 



Before I was discharged I had to have the splint removed by my surgeon's assistant. It was causing me to gag and produce a lot of saliva. And it was also restricting me from drinking and swallowing properly. When he removed the splint I was finally able to talk with a little more clarity. It was then that I asked what had happened to my nose.



My surgeon's assistant went on to tell me that the dot was caused by a pin that had been inserted into my face during the operation in order for my surgeon to use as a reference point to align my jaws. He assured me that my nose wasn't broken, but admitted that he was quite baffled as to why it was causing me so much pain. 

Over the next few weeks I visited the hospital for a weekly check up and was told to avoid my stitches when washing my face. I was told that my nose dot would disappear within a few weeks, the pain would subside and the dot would simply dry up like scab and fall off. 



It went on for weeks. I was careful not to scrub it and gently patted it with wet cotton wool when I washed my face. Eventually the scab fell off, revealing what I felt like, was a mammoth hole in my face. As we can see from the images, it was not big, nor a hole, but merely a small dent. To be honest, I was mainly annoyed that I'd never been told anything about this pin or the possibly of it marking my face. Thankfully, the pain in my nose had died down and I was only left with the dent. The dent that I still have to this day. 


You can now continue the chat and speak with other patients on my new closed Facebook group:


Looking forward to connecting with you soon!

Lots of love always,

Steffie

x.x.x

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